Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "A Church Is Born"

Text: 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

I went to kindergarten at the Lutheran church,

and we had chapel service every morning.

Pentecost must have come in May that year,

because I remember that we learned about it in chapel.

And what they taught us at Christ Lutheran kindergarten was this:

Pentecost is "the birthday of the church."

So for years, that was all I knew about it.

I didn’t attach the Holy Spirit to Pentecost

in my mind, until many years later.

It was just a day for celebrating and remembering.

People have birthdays …

how nice that the church has one, too.

And you didn’t even have to buy it a present!

But then, a few years later, junior-high age or thereabouts,

after I heard the Holy Spirit end of the story,

I couldn’t understand where those crazy Lutherans

got that whole birthday idea.

Pentecost was when the Spirit came.

It said so, right there in Acts.

There was a wind,

and tongues of flame –

and they weren’t birthday candles –

and the disciples were speaking in languages they didn’t even know.

The word "birthday" isn’t anywhere in the second chapter of Acts.

So I spent some time being confused about all these things,

and figured that maybe it was just one of those things

I would understand when I grew up.

And I don’t know when it finally came to me,

except that it must have been very gradual …

that these two separate stories I had heard

which made me feel so confused,

are really one and the same.

The Spirit comes, the church is born;

it’s really the same thing.

Oh, I guess you could say that

one is the cause and one the effect,

but even so, they are the same event.

It is the Holy Spirit

that gives birth to the church.

It is the wind of the Spirit

that gives to the church the breath of life.

It is the free movement of the Spirit

that animates the church, the body.

Without it,

there would be no us.

Well, hallelujah, now it all makes sense.

But now that we know it,

what do we do about it?

I mean, that’s one thing that’s pretty certain

about the Christian life:

whenever God reveals something to us,

God expects us to respond in some way.

The Spirit has come,

and brought the church into being.

The body of Christ is becoming a reality.

Now what?

Well, if we were those earliest disciples,

we’d have to begin at a pretty basic level.

Before we could work very hard at being the church,

we’d have to build the church.

Not in the sense of building a building, necessarily …

But we would have to grow and develop initially

before we could do very much of the work Jesus left us.

It’s like Paul’s analogy of the body:

when we’re very young, and small,

there’s not much yet we can do.

Our number one priority at that point

is growth and development in the right direction.

But we, here and now,

aren’t beginners and babies any longer.

We have had many generations of "church"

handed on to us from parents,

from church people we’ve known,

from preachers, theologians, books,

all kinds of places.

There is no need for us to go all the way back to stage one

and start building the thing all over again.

Perhaps where we need to begin

is by looking at the shape of the body we’ve become.

What kind of shape are we in, as the body of Christ?

How healthy are our various parts?

Have we nourished some parts,

but neglected others?

Have we treated some parts as if they

were more valued and special than others?

Are we able-bodied as a church,

or have we become disabled in some way?

If there’s one thing we learn as we grow up and grow older,

and put up with various illnesses,

and injuries, and other afflictions …

it’s that the body just doesn’t function as well

without all of its parts.

Many of you saw me, a few years ago,

re-learning how something as small

and seemingly trivial as one broken toe

can disable a whole body

and keep it from many of its other functions.

The body of Christ works the same way.

When even one part isn’t doing its share,

or isn’t able to do its share,

the whole body suffers.

Paul takes that very seriously,

in his words in 1 Corinthians.

He tells them – and through them, he tells us –

that everyone is given gifts by the Spirit,

and that we are to use them for the common good.

That is, we don’t get to keep those gifts for ourselves alone.

They are meant to be shared with the whole body …

whether our "part" seems to be

something major like a heart,

or something minor like a toe.

So one thing for us to do at Pentecost,

is to examine ourselves, individually and corporately,

and ask, how healthy a body of Christ are we?

Let me add a word here,

to remind us that health

doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with size.

There is a tendency among churches to think,

oh, if only we were a little bigger,

we’d be ever so much healthier.

Well, maybe … and maybe not.

Think again of the analogy with human bodies:

Sure, the tall ones have more success at basketball,

and the heavier ones may be better boxers …

but the smaller ones make much better gymnasts,

and ballet dancers.

Different doesn’t have to imply better, or worse.

In fact, often it’s the smaller churches that are healthier overall,

because each part, each individual,

can see that they are important.

And so they feel more of a level of commitment.

Whereas, it’s easier for "parts" of a larger church

to get flabby …

because people begin to think that

their own contribution to the body is not important,

and so they feel free to do nothing.

Any size church can be a healthy body.

Any size can be sick.

And so, the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost

gives to the church both good news and …

not bad news, but "heavy" news,

news of a great responsibility.

The "heavy" news is that we are the church;

every one of us is the church.

It’s not just the pastors and other staff,

not just the elders and the deacons,

not just the choir or some other select group.

The church is made up of,

and it is incomplete without,

each one of us.

The Spirit has given each one of us different gifts,

and has put us in place to use them.

And if we don’t act our part,

the whole body suffers,

because the Spirit has put us together into this one body.

Again from personal experience,

I re-learned this the Christmas I broke that toe.

I limped for weeks,

because one little toe was unable to do its job.

And because of that, my knees hurt, my back hurt,

my whole body was thrown out of whack

because one small part wasn’t working.

The body of Christ works, and suffers,

in the same way.

And yet, strangely,

our dependence on one another to form the church

is also the good news.

It means that none of us alone

has to be the church.

The knee doesn’t have to be a foot;

the eyes don’t have to hear;

the liver doesn’t have to speak!

Yes, each of us is given gifts by the Spirit,

but there are also gifts which others have that we do not,

and God does not expect us to use gifts we haven’t been given!

Don’t ever let me or anyone else

pressure you into taking on something

that you honestly believe you’re not gifted to do.

Rather, find what it is the Spirit has called you to be and to do,

and leap in, and do it, and enjoy it,

and see how you benefit Christ’s whole body.

And again, it doesn’t matter whether

your gift is as visible as someone else’s,

or doesn’t seem to you to be as important.

It is.

Because it is yours,

and you are part of the body.

The Spirit has come.

The church is born.

Let us work together to be

the healthy body God has created us to be.

Amen.

© 2005 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)