Sermon 13th October 2013

Today, our Honorary Assistant Minister, Gill Tayleur, continues our study of Paul's letter to Ephesus.  Her sermon is based upon the reading from Ephesians 4: 1-16 

UNITY OF THE BODY

A man stopped at a local petrol station and after filling his tank, he paid the bill and bought a soft drink.

He stood by his car to drink his Diet Coke and watched a couple of men working along the roadside. One man would dig a hole two or three feet deep and then move on. The other man came along behind him and filled in the hole. While one was digging a new hole, the other was 25 feet behind filling in the hole. The men worked right past the man with the soft drink and went on down the road.

“I can’t stand this,” said the man tossing the can into a recycling bin and heading down the road toward the men. “Excuse me,” he said to the men. “Can you tell me what’s going on here with all this digging and refilling?”

“Well, we work for the council and we’re just doing our job,” one of the men said.

“But one of you is digging a hole and the other fills it up. You’re not accomplishing anything. Aren’t you wasting the taxpayers’ money?”

“You don’t understand, mister,” one of the men said, leaning on his shovel and wiping his brow. “Normally there’s three of us: me, Greg and Matt. We work in a team. I dig the hole, Greg sticks in the tree, and Matt here puts the dirt back. Greg’s off sick so today it’s just me an’ Matt.”

Working as a team can only be effective if every member of the team plays their part!

The Unity of the body is the heading of the Bible passage we’re looking at this morning.

But what exactly is this unity that Paul says Christians have? In these verses we’ve read this morning, Paul says we are one in body, Spirit, hope, Lord, faith, baptism and God!

One in body – Christian believers together make up a body, an entity, a community, that is the church. And we’re to function like a body, with different parts having different roles. More about that in a moment.

We’re one in Spirit – that is to say, all Christian believers have the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, living within them, his power enabling us to live for God, to become more like him, to play our part in his body the church.

We have one hope – that glorious future to which we are all called; the future of living under God’s loving and just kingdom rule, partially now, and fully for all eternity.

One Lord – the Lord Jesus Christ, the only son of the Father, God incarnate, God made man, the one Lord to whom we all belong, and who we all follow.

We have one Faith – our shared commitment and allegiance to that Lord Jesus Christ.

One baptism – the sign of our entry into the deeply caring community that is the church.

And one God – our Father, who loves us for all eternity.

So, there is one body, Spirit, hope, Lord, faith, baptism and God! This is the truth, but how do we experience, live in and build, this unity that we have in theory?

Let’s look at the reality of this unity in the universal church, unity in the local church, and

unity between individuals.

Christian unity on the global scale is a very mixed picture. [As Tom Wright says,]

We have grown accustomed to so many divisions within the worldwide church: Orthodox and Roman, Catholic and Protestant, the dozens of churches that began a distinct life after the sixteenth century Reformation and the thousands that have sprung up in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sometimes customs and practices have grown up in these churches which are so different that members of one have difficulty recognising members of another as fellow Christians. Sometimes, indeed the boundaries are blurred, and it may be possible for a church to wander off course so much that its claim to be loyal to Jesus Christ is seriously called into question.

But Paul here, and Jesus himself, clearly taught that we should live in the unity that we have as his fellow believers and followers. In John 17 we read that Jesus prayed: “I pray that they might be one as you and I are one... may they be brought to complete unity so that the world might believe...”

Unity among his followers mattered to Jesus, so it must matter to us as those followers. And so we need to work to maintain, defend and develop the unity we already enjoy with other Christians around the world. And we need to work to overcome, demolish and put behind us the disunity we still find ourselves in. Otherwise, we can scarcely claim to follow Paul’s – or Christ’s – teaching.

So what do we need to do about this? We can pray for Christian unity, pray for our fellow Christian believers in other places, as we often do together on a Sunday morning. We can support them practically and financially as needed.

We can join in local efforts to express the unity we have in Christ – such as in our own local ecumenical body, Churches Together in South Southwark. Churches Together in South Southwark is the group of 23 churches from a wide range of different denominations, including Baptist, Roman Catholic, Salvation Army and Pentecostal churches. We meet a few times a year, at some weekday meetings, some weekends and evenings, and our aim is to “grow in friendship and to work together to be signs of God’s kingdom in the midst of urban South London.”

On the first Friday in March each year, local churches come together to worship for the Women’s World Day of Prayer, using a format designed each year by a different country, next year Egypt, to help us to learn about and share in their joys and pains.

And this very week I heard that we need someone to represent our parish in organising that event. (That only involves a planning meeting and being there on the day, not a big job. See me for details after the service.)

What about unity in our own church St Saviour’s/St Paul’s? And in our own parish, with St Paul’s/ St Saviour’s?

The picture of the church as a body with different parts, each part with a function and gift to be used for the benefit of the whole body, is used in several places in the New Testament. Each gives a different list of the gifts we have from God, so they’re obviously meant to be examples. This one has apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Other lists include administration, acts of mercy and encouraging others. The point is that every member of the church has a gift to be used for the benefit of all.

As Paul wrote to the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 12)

¹² Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.  For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body - whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free - and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.  Even so the body is not made up of one part, but of many.

 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?  But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.  If they were all one part, where would the body be?  As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

And then a few verses later,

There should be no division in the body, but its parts should have equal concern for each other.  If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.

So the obvious question is, which part of the body are you? And are you playing your part for the benefit of all? Are you using your gifts, your time, abilities and money, to build up the whole church body? Many of us are, in many ways. But let’s all think about it again, not least in the light of the areas of our church life where we are lacking.

Here at St Saviour’s, we need more parts of the body to be on the Welcome Team, to help with Children’s Church, to man the OHP screen or the sound deck at the back of church. They are all on rotas, only needing your contribution once every few weeks.

Or maybe you’ll be the representative for us in the Women’s World Day of Prayer service?

Here at St Paul’s, we need more parts of the body to help setting things out for worship here in the hall week by week, to help with Children’s Church, Or maybe you’ll be the representative for us in the Women’s World Day of Prayer service?

Paul says something fabulous about what happens when all God’s people work in Christian service to build up the body of Christ. He says we become mature people,

reaching to the very height of Christ’s stature  (because Christ is the perfect example of humanity, mature and Godly in every way) no longer children, but are growing up.

 “So when each separate part works as it should, the whole body grows and builds itself up through love.”

We become mature together! Babies are great, we love them, but no one wants to stay a baby. Babies need to grow and grow up. Paul says there are three ways in which we shouldn’t be like babies.

First, babies aren’t discerning. They eat anything – they can’t tell what’s good for them and what’s poisonous. They don’t know that if they roll around they might fall off the bed. Or the danger of fire or knives or anything else.

Similarly, Paul says, if we are mature, we won’t be taken in by the teaching of deceitful men, who lead others into error by the tricks they invent.

As we mature in our faith, we’ll grow in our understanding of our faith, know our way around the Bible, become theologically more astute, and be able to spot the teaching and tricks of deceitful men.

Second, Paul says as we grow to maturity we’ll become more steady. Babies and young children aren’t steady! They laugh and cry at a moment’s notice, their attention span is very short, they swing all over the place and keep changing their minds and their feelings. Paul says they’re “carried by the waves and blown about by every  shifting wind”

Are we spiritually steady? Are we faithful even in difficult times? Do we follow through when we come to see our sin, follow through on obedience and endurance?

We grow into maturity through the unity we have in the church – in other words, through our deep involvement in the Christian community. Which brings us to the unity we have between individuals.

Babies and young children are self centred. They want things now! They have to learn to wait for things, to share things, to take turns, be polite, help others.

And spiritual babies are self centred too. Are you – and I – always thinking about yourself? Conscious of how other people are looking at you, or treating you? Can’t take criticism, or admit when you’re wrong? Absorbed in yourself, not thinking about others? Often getting your feelings hurt? Feeling slighted, taking offence?

A few years ago, at Daisy Dixon’s funeral, her dear friend Freda Champion quoted  Daisy, that she used to say, "It's not Christian to take offence". Freda said that her first instinct had been to counter that it's not Christian to give offence, but she came to see that Daisy was actually more right, because offence does in fact have to be taken ...

How quickly do we take offence?!

Listen again to the first few and last few verses of today’s reading: Be always humble, gentle and patient. Show your love by being tolerant with one another.

Speak the truth in a spirit of love.

Be humble, gentle and patient, be tolerant, or bear with one another.

Does that describe you and me?!

Being humble, gentle and bearing with others only applies when we’re with others that hurt us, irritate us, or let us down in some way – you can’t be humble, gentle and forbearing by yourself!

So, who annoys you or has hurt you or let you down, in the church?................

And if your answer is no-one, I’d suggest you don’t know the others around you in the church well enough!!

And Paul said to Speak the truth in love.

We won’t grow into maturity unless there are people who are prepared to speak the truth to us, about our weaknesses and sin, in love.

BUT the two, truth and love, have to be in perfect balance. Absolute honesty has to be saturated with the sweetness and tenderness of love.

Truth on its own will simply be hurtful. Love on its own will not lead us to change and grow.

We probably all have a preference, temperamentally, for truth or love – but both are needed. And we see both in perfection, in Jesus Christ and his death on the cross. The truth is, we are sinners, living for self and not God, and needed Christ to die for us, to put us right with God. And God/Christ loves us so much that he did it! Truth and love, perfectly combined at the cross.

Do we speak the truth in love? Dare we?!

And so it is in unity that we grow. And as we grow, we grow in unity! The unity of the church, locally, wider and worldwide, and unity between me and the person sitting next to me.

I finish with a quote from John Sentamu, Archbishop of York:

“There is such a thing as society, and we all have our small part to play in making things better. We are interdependent beings living in community. If we do not dare to contribute our talents to help the flourishing of the common good, who will?  Stop moaning and start doing something positive.”

And so let’s pray...