Broadway Christian Church ·Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship ·May 15, 2005

Pentecost Sunday

Prayer of the Day

Come, Holy Spirit, come forth from within us and help us to accept and live your energies.  Let your presence be seen.  Shine through us; be goodness in us.  May we be aware of your rushing wind, and may it bring about change in and through us.  Amen.

Scripture
I Corinthians 12:1, 3b-7, 11-27

What I want to talk about now is the various ways God’s Spirit gets worked into our lives, [says Paul].  God’s various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit.  God’s various ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit.  God’s various expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God is behind it all.  Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits.  All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people!  The variety is wonderful.  All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one by the one Spirit of God.

You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body.  Your body has many parts – limbs, organs, cells – but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body.  It’s exactly the same with Christ.  By means of his one Spirit, we all say goodbye to our partial and piecemeal lives.  We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which Christ has the final say in everything.  (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.)  Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain – his Spirit – where we all come to drink.  The old labels we once used to identify ourselves – labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free – are no longer useful.  We need something larger, more comprehensive.

I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less.  A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge.  It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together.  If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so?  If Ear said, “I’m not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don’t deserve a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body?  If the body was all eye, how could it hear?  If all ear, how could it smell?  As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where it belongs.

But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance.  For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of.  An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn’t be a body, but a monster.  What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place.  No part is important on its own.  Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, “Get lost; I don’t need you”?  Or, Head telling Foot, “You’re fired; your job has been phased out”?  As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way – the “lower” the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary.  You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach.  When it’s a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower.  You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons.  If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher.  If you had to choose, wouldn’t you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?

[Kim’s aside comment: Well, obviously a man wrote this!]

The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t.  If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing.  If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.

You are Christ’s body – that’s who you are!  You must never forget this.

Message
Goodbye to Partial and Piecemeal Lives
Kim Ryan

I have a story I want to share with you this morning.  It’s a true story.  On April 8, I spent an afternoon with a young woman.  Let’s call her Kay.  I had not met Kay before, but I knew of her through her grandmother, who is a very good friend of mine.  I had been hearing of Kay for 16 years through very proud grandmother stories and pictures.  So, of course, I knew that Kay was beautiful, and smart, and an excellent student, and an accomplished world traveler at age 25. 

A few weeks before April 8, her grandmother called me and said Kay was coming to visit, and would I have time to meet with her, because she had some questions about faith, and Christianity, and her life.  Perhaps we could talk.  I said, “Sure, of course.”

April 8 was one of those early warm Fridays, so we grabbed a quick lunch.  We got acquainted, and we set out for the Katy Trail.  We walked, and we talked for two hours.  Her grandmother was right.  She was a lovely, lovely young woman.  She was incredibly open and eager to talk about herself and her questions.  You see, Kay didn’t grow up going to church.  Her mother had been raised in the church, but she became so disappointed and disgruntled at the way women had been treated over the centuries by patriarchal Christianity that she had stepped away.

Kay said, “She’s a good person.  She’s one of the kindest, most loving people I know.”

She told me her father was Jewish, in an ethnic sense of being Jewish, not in a practicing, spiritual kind of way.  She had gone to church over the years, usually with a friend, usually to conservative churches, where she was more interested in the friendships and the relationships than she was in what was being taught or preached.

Her family had lived in Italy for a while, and there she experienced the Catholic influence in that country.  While she lived there, she even attended a Pentecostal church, until someone told her that her mother was going to go to hell, because she didn’t go to church, and her father was going to hell because he was Jewish.  All that was said in the sweet name of Jesus!

So at age 25, living in Boston, applying for a double masters degree program in law and social work, dating a practicing Catholic, Kay has questions.  You bet she does!  Now, what is taught and preached matters a great deal to her.

She told me she is repulsed by the images of Christianity portrayed by the media and by the current politicizing religious arrogance.  Yet she is drawn to the teachings and stories and the witness of Jesus Christ.  We talked about baptism.  We talked about the Church today.  We talked about alternative perspectives of Christianity away from the political or media personification.  We talked about the Bible and ways to take it seriously and have it be born within us, but not have to take it literally.  We talked about the Catholic Church, and the Protestant Church, and the Disciples Church.  I will tell you I waited until she asked me, “Do you have any books to suggest?”  Now those of you who know me know that I don’t always wait for that question.  I am more than glad to make a suggestion or two of a book.  But she asked, so I suggested.

I suggested Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, where Anne tells about having been raised in an atheist family and how she came to an experience of Jesus Christ.  I talked with her about Marcus Borg’s Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, and his amazing courage and honesty and integrity as he deals with some of the hardest questions of faith and tells about his own journey into the answers.  She went out that afternoon and bought that book, and she has read it.  I told you she was a smart girl!

I also told her about Sue Monk Kidd’s book, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, and how Sue had to come to terms with and face the patriarchal Christianity of her Baptist upbringing.  I told her about Joyce Rupp’s book, May I Have This Dance, a book that transformed my personal spiritual journey ten years ago.

During our conversations, Kay said something I will never forget.  She said, “I know I want to be part of something bigger than my own particular drama.”  Bingo!  “I know I want to be part of something bigger than my own particular drama.”

Most of the time, as I talked with Kay, I kept wishing that she had us, Broadway Christian Church, because we could help her with that.  We’ve got lots of dramas.  We know about the big dramas here.  I kept wanting to tell her about our Bible studies,about our outreach ministry, about our small groups.  I wanted to tell her about our focus seminars that help us discover our spiritual gifts and help us begin to put into words our particular way of being connected in God’s grand and exciting drama.  How did our Scripture say it?  “We said goodbye to our partial and piecemeal lives.”  Amen!

Well, while I was wishing that she had us and that we had her, charming young woman that she is, fortunately I remembered a church in Boston that our Pentecost offering is supporting.  It is a new church, and one of the Bethany Fellows – one of the young people whom I am connected with in that work with new ministers – is the minister of that congregation.  They started about three years ago.  Liz is the pastor.  She is young.  She is bright.  She is dynamic.  The congregation is growing and is charged with the Spirit.  Kay has been visiting there the last several weeks, and she loves it!  Thanks be to God.  Thanks be to God!

So what about you and me?  Do we have questions about faith?  Sure we do.  Tired of how Christianity and Christians are portrayed in the media?  I will tell you.  Sometimes I am so embarrassed about what is said and done in the name of Jesus Christ, it is enough to make me walk away from institutionalized Christianity and from being a minister.  It is appalling.

Are we hungry for fresh ways to understand the Bible and have it come alive in our lives?  Of course.  Are we drawn to the life and teaching of Jesus Christ?  Absolutely, most of the time.  Am I longing to be part of something bigger than my own drama?  God, yes!  Absolutely!  The good news – the really good news – is that God’s exciting and adventurous drama is ready and waiting for us, counting on us.  And I have a story about that, too.  A shorter story!

Some of you know Ingrid Luckenbill.  She is a Broadway Christian Church member, and her husband, Tom, and daughters, Emily and Alicia, have been here for several years.  Not too long ago, Ingrid left a position at her work that had been fulfilling.  It had been energizing for years, but it was no longer working out.  She began a time of transition, a time of waiting and praying for what would be next in her life.  In that waiting and praying time came one of Broadway’s opportunities to participate in the Life Focus Seminar, and she signed up.

Here is what she discovered.  Her strongest gifts are mercy, help, hospitality, and leadership.  Her emerging mission statement – her personal mission statement – is that her mission is to share, improve, work with integrity and honesty with people from different countries.  Ingrid is from Belgium herself, and she speaks several languages.  So the other Life Focus participants, brainstorming with her about how those gifts and interests and passions could be a part of God’s mission and purpose, suggested she think about getting involved with Broadway Christian Church’s refugee resettlement efforts.

Well, she is more than involved.  Ingrid is now leading and coordinating our involvement to host a family who will be arriving soon from either Cuba or Somalia.  Last year we had lots of people willing to help with the refugee resettlement, but no one was able, no one was willing, to take charge.  Now today, Ingrid is joyfully using her gifts of hospitality and leadership to involve others and their gifts in service to God and for God’s precious children.

Friends, that is the Body of Christ in action, in God’s drama.  It is Eye, and Ear, and Hand, and Stomach, and Bad Hair knowing and living the greatest reality.  I need you, and I need you, and you need me, and together we are living God’s drama.

On April 8, I did tell Kay, as we were finishing our conversation, “Kay, I love the Church.  I love the Body of Christ.  I love the community of faith, as dreadfully human as we are and as wonderfully human as we are.  Because I know of no other place or people or way where we can find our unique place in God’s great drama.  I know of no other place or people or way to so wonderfully say “goodbye to partial and piecemeal lives.”  I know of no other place or people or way for us to live what Paul proclaimed, “You are the Body of Christ – that’s who you are!  We must never forget!”

Amen.

Benediction

Spirit of the Living God, thank you for pouring life and gifts upon us.  Help us to recognize and use these to further your kingdom.  Light a fire in our hearts, in our minds, and on our lips, that we will open our eyes, tune our ears, lift our hands, and hasten our feet to bring heaven to earth.  Amen.