God builds the body with unity: Christ is the Chief Cornerstone

Sunday, August 22, 2004

Typed from audio transcript

PASTOR BURCHAM'S SERMON

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

This morning I'm going to need a little bit of help, and, Jordan, you're my man. So, after service, you're going to say, “Mom and Dad, why did we sit up front?!” You don't mind, though, right? I just have a simple question for you. If I gave you a Popsicle stick, do you think you could break it in half? Not too much trouble. If I gave you another Popsicle stick, do you think you could break that in half? If I gave you five Popsicle sticks, ten Popsicle sticks, you could break them in half? Okay, even 25, right? I have about 25 of them here. Just go ahead and bust those puppies right in half. There you go. Maybe I should have tried someone else. No, thanks. I don't think any of us could have done that. You see, you take one Popsicle stick and it's just not that tough to break it in half. You could do that all day long. I could even do it one-handed, not that I'm Brutus or anything. But you take all the Popsicle sticks and you bind them together, I'm not sure there's anyone here who could break them apart. When they stand by themselves, they're pretty weak. They're pretty fragile. You can break them easily. But you put just even a group of them together and you bind them together tightly and they form a unit that virtually is unbreakable.

St. Paul said, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit.” St. Paul was talking to the Church at Ephesus, and he was talking to them about remaining united in one faith, one Lord, one baptism. Not that the Church of Ephesus really was divided. They weren't, but Paul was giving them a warning that they needed to stay united. St. Paul knew what would happen to a church that was divided. He had dealt with the Church at Corinth. The Church at Corinth was divided over everything. At the Church at Corinth, there were some that said, “I followed Apollos.” Another one said, “No, my favorite preacher is Paul.” And someone else, “No, no, my favorite preacher is Barnabas.” They were divided over the sacrament and how the sacrament should be distributed. They were divided about how they should reprimand a member who was caught. They were divided over everything, and it was tearing them apart.

So St. Paul, when he writes to the Church at Ephesus, he says, “Hold on to the unity, the unity which God has called you into because you have one faith that unites us, one baptism that unites us. There is one father of us all that unites us. And if we are united, then we're unbreakable. We're untouchable. But if we splinter off and find ourselves divided and split up, then we're susceptible. When we're divided, we're weak because division brings weakness to it.”

Aesop's Fables has an interesting story. One of his fables is this: He talks about a lion who's rather hungry. And he keeps roaming around this same meadow day in and day out. And, as he roams around the meadow, he looks in and there's a herd of oxen that are there. But he notices every time the oxen get the idea the lion is about ready to attack, then all the oxen would turn their tails into each other and form a circle so no matter which direction the lion would come from, he's be faced with some horns and their defenses faced right against them. The story goes on that, for whatever reason, there was a disagreement between the oxen. I don't know what oxen disagree about, don't ask me. But they had a falling out, and the falling out got so severe that they decided they didn't want to be with each other anymore. They just couldn't stand to be in each other's company. So when they went back out to the meadow, each one of them went to their own parcel of property. Each one of them split up and went to their area of ground that they were going to graze in. The fable ends with the fact that, day after day, week after week, the lion just picked off each one of them with little to no effort.

I wonder if Peter was thinking about that in his first letter, the fifth chapter. He says, “Be on your guard. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion waiting for someone to destroy.” The devil prowls around Christians, and he's ready to pounce and destroy. And he likes nothing better as when Christians start fighting with Christians, when churches start fighting with churches, when denominations start fighting against denominations, when there is division, when there are splinters, and we all go off and do our own thing, then that leaves us open. It's like open season declared upon us. When we splinter off from the unity God has given to us, then we are susceptible to all the temptations the devil can throw at us. And he's seeking to pounce on us and destroy us. The devil loves it when Christians fight against each other. Now I'm not suggesting we'll never have disagreements in the body of Christ. That would be foolish. We all have differing opinions on a variety of issues. But what happens when there's disunity is when we let those disagreements go too far, and pretty soon that disagreement forges a wedge between us. And sooner or later, it turns into an argument and all of a sudden that argument turns to anger. And then that anger turns to bitterness. And then pretty soon, we're open to a whole host of things the devil can ensnare us in. So maybe someone over here, you get mad at a person over on this side. And so pretty soon you start in a discussion and then you're not talking to each other. And then, instead of talking to the brother over there, you're going to tell everybody around you just what a rotten scoundrel he is over there. And pretty soon, the 8 th Commandment's thrown out the window. You don't even know what it says anymore about not bearing false witness. And meanwhile, this person over here, they want to tell everybody they can about what a rotten person he is over there. Before you know it, you've even forgotten what the issue was at hand. But the devil has had a heyday, and he's been roaring around and he's pouncing on us and he's tearing apart the body.

Division brings weakness, whether that's the church international, whether it's the church nationwide, or whether it's the congregation here in Urbandale. If we let divisions splinter us and break us apart, we're open to all kinds of attacks from the devil. We have a higher calling than that, St. Paul says. St. Paul says, “Stay true to the high calling that you've been given.” St. Paul reminds us that all of us have been called to faith in Jesus Christ, that all of us start out on a level playing field. Each and every one of us falls short of the glory of God. Each and every one of us would be condemned without God, but God and His love and His mercy and grace called each one of you to faith. He called you through the gift of baptism where He used the power of His Word to create faith in His Son in your heart. You've been called to faith in the Son of God, a God who had such a love for you that He'd be willing to become one with us, to die for us, and to be raised back to life again for us. That's the calling you have, and that calling brings with it a responsibility. We who call ourselves followers of Jesus have a responsibility. We have a responsibility first to Christ. If Christ has showered us with that much love and grace, something we haven't deserved or earned, then we have a responsibility to respond back to the love God has showered upon us, to show that same love, yes to Him, but to show that love to others. We have a responsibility to live our lives like Christ lived His life. We have a responsibility to each other. We have a responsibility, fellow members of the body of Christ, because if one part of the body is hurting, then the whole body is hurting.

Take for example, let's say you have to get up at 3:00 in the morning and, you know, you're walking and all of a sudden you stub your big toe. Well, how big is your big toe, maybe this big? In comparison to everything else, it's pretty small, right? How's your walk back to bed? It affects everything, right? You're limping and trying to get back. What if you're trying to nail two boards together and, boom, you hit the wrong nail? That's a little bitty nail in comparison to the rest of my body, but I'm useless as long as it's throbbing and it's in pain. I can't really think straight. I can't really move. If I hit it hard enough, I probably can't even talk. When one part of the body is hurting, the whole body hurts. If one section of the body is arguing and fighting and is angry with one another, even if you don't know the people that are involved, that spreads throughout the whole body and the whole body is affected by that. We have a responsibility to each other, a responsibility to hold onto the unity, a responsibility not to cause divisions or to drive wedges between us and a fellow member of that body because it affects far more than just you and the other person. It affects the whole body which God has brought together.

We have a responsibility to the nonbeliever, a responsibility to the person out there who doesn't know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. What are they to think of the church of Christ when they look at the church and all they see are people fighting, when they see denominations fighting against each other, when they see churches within denominations fighting against each other, when they see Christians of the same congregation warring at each other and tearing each other apart, what kind of witness is that to the world out there that doesn't know Christ? Why would they want to become a part of that? We have a responsibility to them. We have a responsibility to have a united church, a united people, so we have a strong witness, so with those who have not experienced Christ's love, when they see us, they see that love and that love is demonstrated in everything we do. We have a responsibility to them to maintain the unity, the unity God Himself has given us. Because when we are united, we are strong. When we are united, we are invincible.

Now I'm not so foolish to think we'll never have disagreements. I'm not so foolish to think we won't have differing opinions. Every congregation, every church body, every denomination has disagreements and has differing opinions. We probably have differing opinions just even in this room right here. Somebody thinks that Kathy there played the hymns too fast. Some people say she played them too slow. Other people say, “Those were great hymns we got to sing today.” Others say, “I didn't know one of them.” Some people say, “The sermon's too long.” Other people say, “The sermon's too sh. . .” All right, we agree on one point. We can build on that.

We will always have differing opinions, and we will always have disagreements. The point is how do we handle those disagreements. How do we handle the differing opinions? That's what sets us apart from everyone else, and that's why St. Paul says to the Church at Ephesus, a church really that was united, and that's what St. Paul says to us, a church that is united, but he says maintain that unity. And you maintain that unity when disagreements, differing opinions come up, first of all, St. Paul says, “You maintain the unity by maintaining humbleness and gentleness.” It is a humble spirit; it is a gentle spirit which promotes unity. When we can be humble enough to say that my opinion is not the only opinion. When we can be humble enough to say, “I want to listen to what you have to say and find out that maybe I'm wrong,” and be humble enough to admit and to swallow our pride and to say, “You know what, I was wrong on that. You were right on that.” When we can approach things with humbleness, unity is maintained. But if arrogance and pride step in, unity is lost. If, in arrogance, we say our way is the only way, my opinion is the only opinion, if pride steps in and won't allow us to say when we were wrong, then unity is lost. Humbleness, God says, humbleness in our attitude, that lets us maintain unity. And gentleness, a gentleness about us so if we have a disagreement, when we voice that disagreement, we do so in such a way that defenses aren't raised, nobody feels like they're being attacked but simply a conversation, a discussion is taking place and we treat each other with respect and gentleness. But if we get overbearing, if we get boisterous, if we refuse to let other people talk, that only brings disunity. Unity comes from a gentle spirit, gentleness which is disarming.

St. Paul says, “Unity comes from patience.” We need to be patient with one another. One of the biggest temptations for us when we're convinced about something, when we know to the bottom of our soul that we are correct and you may very well be correct, we tend to get impatient. The thoughts that go through our mind are, “It's so obvious. It's a black and white issue. How could they not see what's before them? How could they not understand that this is the solution?” And all of a sudden, we become impatient with people, not allowing them the time to process it through in their own mind, to understand it according to how they think. Patience. Patience to be led by God's spirit. Patience so others can come along. Patience so hurts can be healed. That fosters unity. That makes us united.

Finally, what wraps it all together is love. It's love that enables us to have a gentle spirit and to be humble and to be patient. When the motivation we have is a motivation of love, one of having experienced God's love for us and now wanting to share that love with others. If we can maintain love for one another, we will maintain unity. Now we may not like one another and I'm serious about that. We have all kinds of personalities, and you may not care for the person sitting on the other side of the room. You just don't like their personality, but you can love them. You may disagree with them, but you can love them. You may have a differing opinion, but you can love them. Love has to be the motivating factor for all we do. The greatest example of that, I think, comes from my own home. If you think I have peace and unity with four daughters under one roof (laugh), come live with me for one week. Well, we're down to three now. We shipped one off to college. But I have to tell you, there's still no peace and unity in that household. But they all love each other. The two youngest ones, only 18 months apart, they can just be going at it tooth and nail, fighting like cats and dogs. One of them can have the head of a stuffed animal, the other one will have the feet of the stuffed animal just tugging for all their worth and I'm convinced it's going to split in half and they're screaming at each other. Finally, you take the stuffed animal away and say, “It's time for bed.” And you try to put them in their separate bedrooms. You know what, you will not leave that bedroom before one of them says, “Well, I have to go give Mackenzie a hug and kiss goodnight.” Two minutes before, they were fighting, tearing each other apart. They won't go to sleep at night until they give each other a hug and kiss goodnight because they love each other. I think we all could learn from that.

We can disagree with another person, a fellow member of the body of Christ, but we never stop loving that person. We never stop valuing them the same way that Christ values them. That's what God has given to us. He's given us a unity in Christ, a unity that binds us together. We come from all walks of life, from all kinds of places, but we're united. We're united in Christ. That's what His love does for us. That's why St. Paul says, “There's one Lord, Jesus. There's one faith. There's one baptism that was given to all of us. There's one father who is the God of us all.” Just one. And there's just one people of God, and that's us, united in Christ. Because when we're united, we're invincible. Amen.

Copyright 2004 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church