Sermon from January 20, 2008 For just a moment let's imagine something pleasant. Let’s imagine ourselves on a beach. The air temperature is 85°, and the ocean temperature is 85°. The wind is blowing enough to generate three-foot swells that break pleasantly on the beach. Now, let’s imagine ourselves walking into the ocean so that the water comes up just below our knees. Then, in our mind’s eye let’s begin to walk parallel to the ocean and the boardwalk.
Sermon from January 20, 2008
For just a moment let's imagine something pleasant. Let’s imagine ourselves on a beach. The air temperature is 85°, and the ocean temperature is 85°. The wind is blowing enough to generate three-foot swells that break pleasantly on the beach. Now, let’s imagine ourselves walking into the ocean so that the water comes up just below our knees. Then, in our mind’s eye let’s begin to walk parallel to the ocean and the boardwalk.
We can’t go very fast. Water is heavy enough to make our progress slow. If we try to run, it is even more difficult. Just when we think we’ve gotten control of things, a sudden swell bears down on us, breaks where we are walking and nearly knocks us off our feet. We have to stop to brace ourselves, or we have to pick ourselves up from the sand where the ocean has deposited us and walk back into the ocean.
Now, let’s stop imagining this, or I will lose an entire audience. I wanted your imagination engaged enough that you could feel the power of water to inhibit the ordinary act of walking or running. I wanted that, because I want to compare something to it. Changing people’s perceptions can be as hard as walking in the surf.
Here’s the case in point. For most of us, I daresay for all of us, church membership means having your name on the membership roll. In schools, teachers called the roll by reading off each name, and each student present would say, “Here.” Churches don’t have roll call, but everyone knows there is a roll or a list of members. That’s what church membership is: having your name on a membership roll.
I’d like to change that perception. Trying to do that is like walking in surf with six foot swells coming at you and threatening to flatten you. However, I have learned how to keep on my feet, and even if I can’t remake your perceptions about church membership, I think I have a chance to modify your perceptions.
To do this we are going to need help from the Holy Spirit, and we have asked for that help. Keep asking! We are also going to need help from Holy Scripture, which talks about church membership. Ephesians 4:25 is really quite striking in the way it puts church membership in a new light.
Members of One Another
Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body – Ephesians 4:25. This verse has been damaged in translation. The damage occurs in the last word of the verse: members of one body.
The Apostle Paul wrote this letter in Greek. Verse 25 does not have the Greek word for body in it. It uses a completely different word. There is no way for me to know why the translators damaged the verse this way. They may have thought that Paul’s word introduced an idea that was too difficult for modern readers to understand. They were trying to make the verse easier. It is easier to read; it’s just not what Paul wrote.
The King James Version and the Revised Standard Version both translate what Paul wrote. We can restore Paul’s intention if we change the last word, so that verse 25 reads like this: Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one another. I hope you will draw a line through the word body and write in the word another: we are all members of one another. That is harder to understand but not impossible to understand, and understanding it will help change our perceptions of church membership.
Let’s go first to the beginning of verse 25. It starts off with something we learn very early in life: don’t lie. Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor. This moral principle was universally held and sometimes drastically enforced by some mothers in my childhood, who threatened to wash their children’s mouth with soap, if they caught them lying again.
Christianity, which never destroys what is good in nature, reinforces this natural rejection of lying. Where Christianity distinguishes itself is in the new motive it offers for telling the truth. Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one another. In effect, it is saying, “Don’t lie, it hurts the Church.” The notion that lying might diminish the Church of Jesus Christ is a new motive for telling the truth. But how precisely does lying hurt and diminish the Church? That question forces us to look more closely at this unusual expression: we are all members of one another.
What does that mean? An English interpreter put it this way: “we are one another’s limbs.” (H.C.G. Moule, Ephesian Studies, 231) The idea behind these words is not difficult at all. Haven’t you ever said, “Could somebody give me a hand?” We have no trouble understanding that expression.
The apostle’s statement in verse 25 means that each of us is committed to being the hand another person needs as reliably as if you were that person’s own hand. Each of us is committed to being the eye or foot another person needs as reliably as if you were that person’s eye or foot.
Now, think a little further about verse 25. Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one another. It is because we are interconnected with each other that lying hurts and diminishes the Church of Jesus Christ.
Think about this way. If disease or injury causes your hip to hurt, and you get no relief, the pain in your hip will cause you to limp. If your limp persists, it can begin to damage your knee and cause pain in your lower back.
Lying to each other, untreated, like untreated pain in your hip, sets off a chain reaction that places the whole congregation in distress, because we are as interconnected to each other as are the parts of a human body,
Think of the ways that other people at BVBC help and encourage you. Make a list, and when you’ve made your list, come talk to me, and let me identify the people you left off, because you didn’t know how many people contribute to your faith and life.
The essential idea thus far in this discussion of church membership is commitment. The apostle’s statement in verse 25 means that each of us is committed to being the hand another person needs as reliably as if you were that person’s own hand. When a baby is born, the ten fingers and ten toes are meant to last a lifetime.
Church membership is like that. You can count on me. We can count on each other for a lifetime. We’ll do what we can for each other. When we don’t know what to do, we’ll support the efforts of others. We’ll pray for them, speak well of them, cheer them on, say a word of encouragement, or write a note.
If some of you are the sharp thinkers I take you for, you may be thinking to yourself, “What Pastor Bo is describing is not just true of the Church; it’s true of a sports team or a business organization or a political party.” You’re right. It’s the next step to understanding church membership that makes the Church unique.
Members of Christ’s Body
You can see what I mean, if you will turn to the next chapter, to Ephesians 5:29-30. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church – for we are members of his body.Again, our insipid habits of thought make it difficult to change perceptions. We are bound in mental chains, so that when we think of membership, we think only of membership in a local ecclesiastical organization. In saying what I say next, I feel like our ocean-walker, reeling under a crashing six-foot wave. Church membership will remain a tasteless idea, unless we grasp the fact that we are members of Christ’s body.
What your body is to your thoughts and purposes, we the Church are to the thoughts and purposes of Christ. One writer has put it this way about the Church: “She represents (Christ), in the full and ancient meaning of the term; she really makes him present. She not only carries on his work, but she is his very continuation.” (Henri de Lubac, Catholicism, 76)
I said earlier that each of us is committed to being the hand another person needs as reliably as if you were that person’s own hand. At a deeper level, each of us is committed to being the hand or eye or foot Christ needs as reliably as if you were Christ’s own hand or eye or foot.
The Apostle Paul, who gave the Church this daring way to think about herself, applied the idea in two powerful ways. Let’s look at both of them, both of which he gives in 1 Corinthians.
First is 1 Corinthians 6:15. The last half of this chapter addresses how Christians are to behave sexually. Verse 15 has special power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!With a few brilliant strokes the apostle has extended membership in Christ beyond its ecclesiastical neighborhood and made it a matter of daily life. Wherever we go and whatever we do, a little piece of Christ goes and acts. We make Him present in that office and school and card game and the house of ill repute. He doesn’t belong everywhere we take Him. Such is the power of this truth.
Paul applied this truth in a second way in 1 Corinthians 1:11-13. My brothers, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas,” that is, Peter; still another, “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?
The great power of the human body is its unity, all its parts acting in concert with each other to make possible purposeful action. So it is with Christ. “Destruction of unity is a corruption of truth.” (ibid, 77) And I hope you can begin to see that this applies not only to the people within one congregation but also to congregations and to denominations. The old confession reads: “I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.” There is one body of which Christ is the Head and of which we are His members.
Joining the Church
Into this perception-altering context I would like to reintroduce the ordinary idea of church membership with which this sermon started. Church membership also means having your name on the membership roll of a particular congregation. And here’s the next question we have to ask: “Is that necessary?” I’d like to propose for your consideration that it is far more necessary than we usually think.
First of all, baptism once served the purpose of identifying those who were members of the body of Christ, the Church. We have made something of a hash of that. For example, some churches don’t recognize the baptisms of other churches as valid.
So, churches have developed formal procedures of identifying people as members. We have such a procedure here at BVBC. Unlike baptism, these procedures can seem more like bureaucracy than like an act of faith. But that’s what thousands of churches do. They need marks of membership. That brings me to a second point.
Deep, unseen commitments need to be declared by some outward, tangible sign. You see this in wedding ceremonies. The couple exchange vows. It takes less than three minutes; it’s all words; but the inward commitment of the couple will last a lifetime. It is wise that the exchange of rings comes next. Those rings signify tangibly the unseen commitments, and they have great power to help the couple make good on their vows.
In spite of what we’ve done to it, baptism still functions the same way. On the Day of Pentecost the people said to Peter, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins may be forgiven” – Acts 2:37-38. Repentance is our deep, unseen commitment to God. Forgiveness is His deep, unseen commitment to us. Baptism signifies tangibly both unseen commitments.
In the Church, the body of Christ, each of us is committed to being the hand another person needs as reliably as if you were that person’s own hand. We make Christ present wherever we go and whatever we do. That is our deep, unseen commitment as members of Christ. Baptism signifies tangibly that unseen commitment. I believe formal membership in a local church also does that. It tells us whom we can count on.
The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Does formal membership in a congregation guarantee that we will make good on our unseen commitment? No. Does baptism itself guarantee that? No. Does the ring on your finger guarantee fidelity to your spouse? No. Shall we do away with rings? No. Neither should we do away with baptism and formal membership.
I could understand, if someone was unpersuaded by all I have said, and said to me, “Pastor, I have never joined BVBC, but the truth is that I work just as hard and maybe harder than many members, and I give just as faithfully as they do; I wouldn’t give any more than I do now. So, why is it necessary for me to become a member?”
My response to that would be Matthew 3:14-15. Jesus had come to the River Jordan to be baptized by John the Baptist. Verse 14: But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. The sinless Son of God submitted to a sinner’s baptism, because it was the right thing to do. Joining BVBC is just the right thing to do.
Our world glorifies individualism at the expense of the common good. Submitting to formal membership challenges that. It declares openly your commitment to be eyes and hands and voice for your brothers and sisters in Christ, that they can count on you. It declares openly your commitment to make Christ present in all of life. I ask you to declare these commitments openly by the tangible sign of formal membership in BVBC.
© Copyright
, Brandywine Valley Baptist Church. All rights reserved.
