We’re thinking again this week about Body building as we continue through 1 Corinthians Chapter 12. Body building changes flab to muscle, weakness to strength. So it is with the body of Christ.
We looked last week at how the ministry gifts of individuals are given to strengthen the church for the common good. To best use these gifts God’s given us we need to be organised and not freelance. Otherwise we’ll see body breaking and not body building! This truth is taken up in verse 28 and following at the end of this week’s section when Paul speaks of the special authority of apostles, prophets and teachers and so on.
On Saturday we launch our stewardship renewal at a special supper. In coming weeks we’ll be inviting church members to consider what God has given them and how they can put their gifts to the best use. I believe this scripture passage is God’s gift to us at this time.
Let’s turn to the passage then and read together verses 12 to 14: 12The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13For we were all baptised by one Spirit into one body – whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Now the body is not made up of one part but of many.
You and I are one with Christ. When they say Jim and Sue are an item we know what they mean. Paul is saying you and I and Christ are an item, a unit.
Saint Teresa of Avila’s made a famous commentary on this passage Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours, yours are the eyes with which he looks in compassion on this world, yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours, yours are the eyes with which he looks in compassion on this world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
It’s a rich passage but there’s a problem with this interpretation of 1 Corinthians 12. We are sinners but Christ is sinless. Yet the Church is Christ’s body of which he’s head and he needs our gifts to do his work. Last week I was listing some of the ministry gifts we exercise here at St Giles. Richard Harrison is to share about the ministries that keep our buildings in order at the end of the service.
Some would question how the body of a man who lived and died in poverty could live on associated through his members with the splendour of St Giles. Richard will have an answer!
More profoundly when you read through Paul’s laboured description of different body parts working together its uncomfortable to recall there are now 39,000 Christian denominations. At least tonight the three or so local variants of Christ’s body will be coming together. This is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity – but if Christians really were one with Christ there wouldn’t be need of such a week and we’d be one body and not 39,000!
Do we see what Paul is saying about the church as Christ’s body as just an image? Or is the body of Christ to be seen as an organic reality? I believe the second myself and lament the visible disunity of Christians. Would that nothing we do as Christians worked against the maximising of Christian unity!
One illumination of the word and concept is found in the Hebrew understanding Paul would share. Hebraic thought is different to Greek thought which is interested in the meaning of things in themselves. The Hebrew and biblical understanding sees things by contrast in relation to what they’re called to be. The meaning of an object doesn’t come from analysing it but in its purpose.
Just to illustrate this, the consecration of the Eucharist is an event that’s linked to biblical Hebrew thinking. When Jesus says, or I as his priest say for him over bread, ‘This is my Body’ that bread does not cease to be bread but becomes what it is not. By the biblical promise it becomes the instrument and bearer of God’s presence.
In the same way when we say we’re Christ’s body – or Christ has no body here on earth but ours – we’re talking not of what we are – gifted but sinful beings – but of what God’s calling us to be – sharers of the divine nature!
If you read through Paul’s letters, again and again he tells you Christ is in us. Again and again he tells us that sin is in us. The church is sinful yet Christ-filled. As such it’s a place of hope. As the French theologian Péguy once wrote, a Christian is a sad man saved from despair by the Cross of Christ.
St Paul says he’s ‘a Hebrew of the Hebrews’ and he also regards the Church as the organ of Christ’s presence uniting his members to himself and to one another. He’s talking though more of what we’re to be than what we are now. Our calling is like the consecration of the bread of the eucharist which becomes his body despite its ordinariness. Jesus gives it new purpose.
For us the obstacle to being used by God – our sin - is more than our ordinariness. It’s the destructive virus of sin. Christ by his death has the antidote to sin. Christ by his resurrection life has the empowerment we need to hallow God’s name, build his kingdom and effect his will.
As we read earlier we were all baptised by one Spirit into one body. Our unity as a church within the universal church is given us by our baptism and the associated determination to drown our sin and drink of the one Spirit to use the imagery of baptism. Christ’s body is a body of death – a body that’s discovered how to do away with sin – and a body of life – a body that’s got within it a fluorescent stream of life that shines out from all who bear the Holy Spirit.
Let’s look back one last time at our passage, skipping over the large repetitive section and read verses 26 and 27: 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it. 27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
We’ve just come out of a time of hardship weather-wise that confirms this sort of thinking for us as a village. We’ve seen people baking for one another, sweeping snow and giving lifts to one another. This is the very sort of solidarity Paul speaks of when he writes of how in the church If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. Isn’t this also true of the international response to Haiti? It has also been impressive to see Christian priests and nuns in the vanguard of caring for the distressed in that troubled situation. People ask where God is in this tragedy but all the evidence is that God’s people and priests are there getting there hands dirty.
The solidarity we know in Christ’s body is built both on human fragility and divine purpose.
Just as human beings gain solidarity from severe weather or an earthquake so we members of Christ’s body find unity in our need for the forgiveness and healing God gives us in Christ.
Just as human beings gain solidarity to serve a purpose such as earthquake relief so we as members of Christ’s body find unity in our desire to hallow God’s name, build his kingdom and effect his will.
To live as Christ’s body is to live united both by our need of grace and by a common cause, the cause that’s been served 800 years on this hill and that will outlast all of us. The coming weeks are a time to consider the investment of our lives and to commit ourselves more fully to this cause which is Christ’s cause no less.
If Jesus Christ be God, and died for us, then no sacrifice can be too great for us to make for Him. His sacrifice is being recalled now at this altar. Will you be more fully part of his body, his cause and his sacrifice?
Showing posts with label scripture authority ecclesiology Horsted Keynes belief bible notes word of God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scripture authority ecclesiology Horsted Keynes belief bible notes word of God. Show all posts
Sunday, 24 January 2010
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Bible Sunday Mark 10.46-end 25th October 2009
It’s Bible Sunday. This morning we have a reminder that there are really two tables at which we feast on Christ: the table of the Word of God and the table of the Blessed Sacrament.
Man shall not live on bread alone but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God our Saviour said as he was strengthened by the memory of his Father’s word in the desert. All scripture is breathed out by God, Paul says to Timothy, scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
Christians believe in the Bible, because we believe in its ultimate authorship. It contains the promises of God which cannot fail. We believe in the Bible out of love for its ultimate author. The words of scripture are there because Jesus is the Word of God through whom all things were made. The scriptures bless us. The Holy Spirit who inspired their writing can inspire us as we read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them.
Yet, sad to say, without the Holy Spirit who leads the church forward into all truth (John 16:13) the scriptures fall on deaf ears.
The Bible is God’s Word in our words. It’s also the family album of the church tracing God’s action back to our first days. Christians believe in the Bible but look to the church to guide them to its truth.
What about the factual errors and inconsistencies people say they find in the Bible? We don’t need to defend the Bible here because we have God’s promise that it contains the truth necessary for our salvation. This doesn’t make the Bible, for example, a science text book because it addresses the why questions more than the how questions in life.
Approached with humility the Bible brings spiritual encouragement. Approached with argumentative pride it presents a different picture. Christians believe the Bible can’t be mistaken as it presents the good news of Jesus to honest seekers.
It’s true there are difficult passages. Mark Twain said pointedly it wasn’t the passages of the bible he didn’t understand that troubled him so much as the passages he did understand! On Bible Sunday we salute God’s word and pledge to heed it more profoundly with our lives.
People mention sometimes the violence in the Bible especially parts of the Old Testament. The church uses these passages carefully and only in the light of Christ who fulfils the Old Testament. The sacrifices offered in the Old Testament point towards the meaning of the Cross as the fulfilment of the scriptures.
When we say as we shall say in a moment ‘on the third day he rose again’ we add ‘in accordance with the scriptures’. Without the framework of God’s dealings with Israel in the Bible the Christ of the Gospels would be a beautiful picture but one without a frame. His entry into history would be one unprepared and unexpected.
Through the Bible God’s people welcome this frame for all that Jesus stands for as well as the word and promises of God that bring power and direction into the life of the church.
If the Bible to do its work in us, then the starting point is to somehow get the words of the Bible into us. Once God’s word is in our lives it can start to challenge our values and opinions, to set off the process Paul calls ‘the renewing of your mind’ so that we will not ‘conform’ ourselves to this world, but let God 'transform' us (Romans 12.2).
So what can we do to get more into the Bible and more of the Bible into us?
You could make it the basis for a daily or maybe occasional special prayer time. Dedicate a time. It needn’t be first thing in the morning or last thing at night. It could be part of your lunchtime routine, a way of getting away from the desk. Choose a portion for study, maybe Mark’s Gospel which takes an hour and a half in total to read for an average reader. Don’t beat yourself up about it if you miss a few days. If reading the Bible is difficult, why not buy one of the readily available CD or MP3 recording and listen to that?
You have the texts of the Sunday readings to take away each week with the thoughts on them given by the preacher. If you miss Church on a Sunday you can check the church website for the readings and sermon. This is an opportunity to thank our web master David Ollington for his work on keeping the site updated week by week.
There are some bibles at the back of Church if people want to use them when they come to pray in Church. Each of us, or each family, should ideally have a bible in modern translation. The New Revised Standard or New International Version are in wide use. There is also a very popular American paraphrase called The Message that folk are finding helpful. Buying a new modern translation can be a helpful tool to awaken us to the meaning of the original text, the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament.
You could subscribe to Bible study notes. I have listed some resources in the news sheet. There are a few taster copies at the back of church today of Bible Alive, Closer to God and Every Day with Jesus
You could join St Giles weekly bible study, the Tuesday 1.30pm Life and Faith discussion group which is currently looking through the Acts of the Apostles. We have more group Bible study planned during the coming year especially in Lent.
In all of these ways we can develop our understanding of how to apply the teaching of God and his church in today’s world through reflecting on what the Bible says and how best to respond in our situation.
I want to use my remaining time to demonstrate how one might look prayerfully through a scripture passage using today’s Gospel from Mark Chapter 10 verses 46-52. Let’s have another look at this passage.
Look at v46: As Jesus left Jericho with his disciples and a large crowd, Bartimaeus (that is, the son of Timaeus), a blind beggar, was sitting at the side of the road.
1) Holy Land Geography meant Galileans coming to Jerusalem Feasts came through Jericho to avoid Samaria
2) Jesus approaches his Passion of 20 pages of Mark's Gospel 10 are about Holy Week & Jesus' suffering, death & resurrection. Chapters 1 10 set the scene for Chs. 11 16 and our passage is the last word before Palm Sunday
3) The large crowd were no doubt drawn not just to Jerusalem for Passover Feast but drawn to travel with Jesus to Jerusalem.
4) The preoccupation of Jesus with his coming Passion...the last few days of teaching before His saving action...the pressing in of the crowd.in all of this Jesus is open to the Spirit drawing him to stop and give his all to one needy person...Bartimaeus son of Timaeus.
Wonder at the availability of the God Jesus shows us...
v47 8 second paragraph: When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout and to say, 'Son of David, Jesus, have pity on me.' And many of them scolded him and told him to keep quiet, but he only shouted all the louder, 'Son of David, have pity on me.
1) Join with Bartimaeus with his special gift of faith in hailing Jesus as who He is, the 'Son of David', the Messiah, the One promised in the Old Testament who would bring in God's rule over all evil. The One Isaiah said would 'open the eyes of the blind'.
2) 'Have pity on me'. Can I join with Bartimaeus in that cry to Jesus? The prayer of the lips has to become the prayer of the heart. Only when I admit my need for God deep down can He fill me deep down - however many times I pray with my lips...
3) Note the determination and persistence shown by Bartimaeus. He wasn’t messing around with the Lord He meant business. Have you got business with God this morning? Facing Jesus means facing yourself and all that falls short in your life, your relationships, your sin.... Yet the Lord has deep compassion. Our sins are but dust before Him.
Read v49 52 last paragraph: Jesus stopped and said, 'Call him here'. So they called the blind man, 'Courage’, they said, ‘get up; he is calling you'. So throwing off his cloak, he jumped up and went to Jesus. Then Jesus spoke, 'What do you want me to do for you?' 'Rabbuni', the blind man said to him, 'Master, let me see again'. Jesus said to him, 'Go; your faith has saved you.' And immediately his sight returned and he followed him along the road.
1) Notice the eagerness and openness in that action of throwing off the cloak. Much of Christian discipleship is a matter of 'throwing off the cloak'. Facing God, letting God into areas of our life He knows full well about but needs our permission. It's up to us not Him to reveal ourselves, to cast off our cloak bit by bit for the healing work of the divine mercy.
2) Jesus said to him, 'What do you want me to do for you?' What a blind beggar in front of him and Jesus asks 'What do you want me to do for you?'? Jesus in this testing question might have been making a final check on whether Bartimaeus really wanted to lose his blindness it was after all a source of income. If we want to be healed we must be prepared to face the consequences – for Bartimaeus it would mean earning his own keep rather than begging...
Bartimaeus gained access to a greater beauty than physical sight can show us, the beauty of Jesus in his fullness as Lord and Saviour.
This Bible passage was written nearly 2000 years ago about Bartimaeus and Jesus. If we have welcomed the Holy Spirit this passage is seen to be really about God and I.
I am Bartimaeus in need of sight and light on my life's journey.
I am Bartimaeus persistent in prayer, determined to get what God wants for me.
I am Bartimaeus ready to throw off the cloak of pretentiousness and open my life to the Lord.
And if I am Bartimaeus Jesus is the Son of God, the same yesterday, today and always.
He is present right now as he was in Jericho and is willing and capable of flooding my soul with Light, Glorious Light.
Let us turn our thoughts into quiet prayer as we digest the word of God this morning
Man shall not live on bread alone but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God our Saviour said as he was strengthened by the memory of his Father’s word in the desert. All scripture is breathed out by God, Paul says to Timothy, scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
Christians believe in the Bible, because we believe in its ultimate authorship. It contains the promises of God which cannot fail. We believe in the Bible out of love for its ultimate author. The words of scripture are there because Jesus is the Word of God through whom all things were made. The scriptures bless us. The Holy Spirit who inspired their writing can inspire us as we read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them.
Yet, sad to say, without the Holy Spirit who leads the church forward into all truth (John 16:13) the scriptures fall on deaf ears.
The Bible is God’s Word in our words. It’s also the family album of the church tracing God’s action back to our first days. Christians believe in the Bible but look to the church to guide them to its truth.
What about the factual errors and inconsistencies people say they find in the Bible? We don’t need to defend the Bible here because we have God’s promise that it contains the truth necessary for our salvation. This doesn’t make the Bible, for example, a science text book because it addresses the why questions more than the how questions in life.
Approached with humility the Bible brings spiritual encouragement. Approached with argumentative pride it presents a different picture. Christians believe the Bible can’t be mistaken as it presents the good news of Jesus to honest seekers.
It’s true there are difficult passages. Mark Twain said pointedly it wasn’t the passages of the bible he didn’t understand that troubled him so much as the passages he did understand! On Bible Sunday we salute God’s word and pledge to heed it more profoundly with our lives.
People mention sometimes the violence in the Bible especially parts of the Old Testament. The church uses these passages carefully and only in the light of Christ who fulfils the Old Testament. The sacrifices offered in the Old Testament point towards the meaning of the Cross as the fulfilment of the scriptures.
When we say as we shall say in a moment ‘on the third day he rose again’ we add ‘in accordance with the scriptures’. Without the framework of God’s dealings with Israel in the Bible the Christ of the Gospels would be a beautiful picture but one without a frame. His entry into history would be one unprepared and unexpected.
Through the Bible God’s people welcome this frame for all that Jesus stands for as well as the word and promises of God that bring power and direction into the life of the church.
If the Bible to do its work in us, then the starting point is to somehow get the words of the Bible into us. Once God’s word is in our lives it can start to challenge our values and opinions, to set off the process Paul calls ‘the renewing of your mind’ so that we will not ‘conform’ ourselves to this world, but let God 'transform' us (Romans 12.2).
So what can we do to get more into the Bible and more of the Bible into us?
You could make it the basis for a daily or maybe occasional special prayer time. Dedicate a time. It needn’t be first thing in the morning or last thing at night. It could be part of your lunchtime routine, a way of getting away from the desk. Choose a portion for study, maybe Mark’s Gospel which takes an hour and a half in total to read for an average reader. Don’t beat yourself up about it if you miss a few days. If reading the Bible is difficult, why not buy one of the readily available CD or MP3 recording and listen to that?
You have the texts of the Sunday readings to take away each week with the thoughts on them given by the preacher. If you miss Church on a Sunday you can check the church website for the readings and sermon. This is an opportunity to thank our web master David Ollington for his work on keeping the site updated week by week.
There are some bibles at the back of Church if people want to use them when they come to pray in Church. Each of us, or each family, should ideally have a bible in modern translation. The New Revised Standard or New International Version are in wide use. There is also a very popular American paraphrase called The Message that folk are finding helpful. Buying a new modern translation can be a helpful tool to awaken us to the meaning of the original text, the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament.
You could subscribe to Bible study notes. I have listed some resources in the news sheet. There are a few taster copies at the back of church today of Bible Alive, Closer to God and Every Day with Jesus
You could join St Giles weekly bible study, the Tuesday 1.30pm Life and Faith discussion group which is currently looking through the Acts of the Apostles. We have more group Bible study planned during the coming year especially in Lent.
In all of these ways we can develop our understanding of how to apply the teaching of God and his church in today’s world through reflecting on what the Bible says and how best to respond in our situation.
I want to use my remaining time to demonstrate how one might look prayerfully through a scripture passage using today’s Gospel from Mark Chapter 10 verses 46-52. Let’s have another look at this passage.
Look at v46: As Jesus left Jericho with his disciples and a large crowd, Bartimaeus (that is, the son of Timaeus), a blind beggar, was sitting at the side of the road.
1) Holy Land Geography meant Galileans coming to Jerusalem Feasts came through Jericho to avoid Samaria
2) Jesus approaches his Passion of 20 pages of Mark's Gospel 10 are about Holy Week & Jesus' suffering, death & resurrection. Chapters 1 10 set the scene for Chs. 11 16 and our passage is the last word before Palm Sunday
3) The large crowd were no doubt drawn not just to Jerusalem for Passover Feast but drawn to travel with Jesus to Jerusalem.
4) The preoccupation of Jesus with his coming Passion...the last few days of teaching before His saving action...the pressing in of the crowd.in all of this Jesus is open to the Spirit drawing him to stop and give his all to one needy person...Bartimaeus son of Timaeus.
Wonder at the availability of the God Jesus shows us...
v47 8 second paragraph: When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout and to say, 'Son of David, Jesus, have pity on me.' And many of them scolded him and told him to keep quiet, but he only shouted all the louder, 'Son of David, have pity on me.
1) Join with Bartimaeus with his special gift of faith in hailing Jesus as who He is, the 'Son of David', the Messiah, the One promised in the Old Testament who would bring in God's rule over all evil. The One Isaiah said would 'open the eyes of the blind'.
2) 'Have pity on me'. Can I join with Bartimaeus in that cry to Jesus? The prayer of the lips has to become the prayer of the heart. Only when I admit my need for God deep down can He fill me deep down - however many times I pray with my lips...
3) Note the determination and persistence shown by Bartimaeus. He wasn’t messing around with the Lord He meant business. Have you got business with God this morning? Facing Jesus means facing yourself and all that falls short in your life, your relationships, your sin.... Yet the Lord has deep compassion. Our sins are but dust before Him.
Read v49 52 last paragraph: Jesus stopped and said, 'Call him here'. So they called the blind man, 'Courage’, they said, ‘get up; he is calling you'. So throwing off his cloak, he jumped up and went to Jesus. Then Jesus spoke, 'What do you want me to do for you?' 'Rabbuni', the blind man said to him, 'Master, let me see again'. Jesus said to him, 'Go; your faith has saved you.' And immediately his sight returned and he followed him along the road.
1) Notice the eagerness and openness in that action of throwing off the cloak. Much of Christian discipleship is a matter of 'throwing off the cloak'. Facing God, letting God into areas of our life He knows full well about but needs our permission. It's up to us not Him to reveal ourselves, to cast off our cloak bit by bit for the healing work of the divine mercy.
2) Jesus said to him, 'What do you want me to do for you?' What a blind beggar in front of him and Jesus asks 'What do you want me to do for you?'? Jesus in this testing question might have been making a final check on whether Bartimaeus really wanted to lose his blindness it was after all a source of income. If we want to be healed we must be prepared to face the consequences – for Bartimaeus it would mean earning his own keep rather than begging...
Bartimaeus gained access to a greater beauty than physical sight can show us, the beauty of Jesus in his fullness as Lord and Saviour.
This Bible passage was written nearly 2000 years ago about Bartimaeus and Jesus. If we have welcomed the Holy Spirit this passage is seen to be really about God and I.
I am Bartimaeus in need of sight and light on my life's journey.
I am Bartimaeus persistent in prayer, determined to get what God wants for me.
I am Bartimaeus ready to throw off the cloak of pretentiousness and open my life to the Lord.
And if I am Bartimaeus Jesus is the Son of God, the same yesterday, today and always.
He is present right now as he was in Jericho and is willing and capable of flooding my soul with Light, Glorious Light.
Let us turn our thoughts into quiet prayer as we digest the word of God this morning
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