“Our Common Connection”

By Rev. David E. Gray

Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church

February 15, 2009

Mark 1: 40-45; I Cor. 12: 12-26

Near the beginning of the second creation story in the Book of Genesis, God looks at the person God has created and as our NRSV Bible puts it God says, “It is not good for man to be alone.” So God makes a partner for God’s first creation to connect with. Whatever you think of the creation stories, they help us realize that we were not meant to be isolated, but to be connected. Last week, we read from Paul’s first letter to the Church at Corinth about how the Holy Spirit gives us different gifts and God calls us to act for the common good. Paul was writing about the common source of all our gifts to help people understand their relationship with God. This morning, we focus on our common relationships with each other. We continue reading in First Corinthians where Paul helps us see how we all are connected and that we belong to an entity greater than ourselves. 

It is amazing to see how people use technology to connect with each other these days. One of my favorite Christmas cards that we received this year was from a Virginia family where the mother told the story of attending one of the political conventions last summer. She was on the convention floor waiting for the party nominee to give a speech when she decided to log on to her Facebook page from her Blackberry. Blackberries are handheld email devices and Facebook, if you are not familiar with it, is a social networking website on the Internet. It has a person’s picture and profile and many people update their Facebook pages several times a day describing what they are doing at a given time. Anyway, as she was waiting, the mother got onto Facebook and saw that her husband had updated his profile to read, “I’m just sitting here in the Emergency room with our 5 year old who fractured his arm climbing a tree this afternoon.” The father hadn’t called his wife to tell her their son was in the hospital, but took time to update his Facebook page.

While I was on jury duty this week, I was impressed by the technology in the D.C. Superior Court – televisions in the waiting room, free wifi in the halls so jurors can surf the internet in between interactions with the judge, and a business center where jurors can connect with the outside world while on jury duty. As I didn’t have a computer or anything as I waited I flipped through some magazines and enjoyed a cartoon in the New Yorker magazine where a pastor was leading a worship service and as part of the order of worship he said, “We will now have a moment of silently checking our Blackberries.”  

Is no place sacred?    That wouldn’t create much of a sense of community at church, wouldn’t it? As some of you know, I am a fan of the use of technology to gain information, to get information about the church to the outside world, to stay in touch and to conduct business more efficiently while saving money on gas and improving the environment by cutting commuting. 

When it comes to creating a deeper connection, a feeling of actually belonging to something or someone, there is nothing that can replace personal contact. That kind of connection has been important in the church. The Apostle Paul uses the metaphor of the physical connection to describe how members of the church connect to each other through Christ. He uses a metaphor of the “body” of Christ.

In the Greco Roman philosophy and the governance of the ancient world, there was an idea and often a culture of “body politic,” where the politics or the state were embodied by the sovereign. Power was often concentrated in relatively few hands and sometimes all the power was embodied in the body of a monarch. These social systems helped keep vulnerable people and those in the lower social classes from making social progress.

So in our second lesson for today, Paul used that same metaphor of the “body” when he writes that all the members of the church are part of the same body, the body of Christ. For Paul, being a member of the church was not about being on the membership rolls, but about being a functioning organ of a living body. When the church is strong, there is mutual dependence among the members of the body of Christ, just like the parts of our bodies are mutually dependent. Paul writes that “God has so arranged the body that……the members may care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it. If one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” Paul wanted the church in Corinth to know that it would prosper when the members felt connected to each other, cared for each other, shared each others’ sufferings and rejoicings. Each part of the body belongs to the body. When we think as Paul did, it changes how we interact, greet visitors, reach out and grow as a church.

One of the great theologians of the Middle Ages was Saint Anselm of Canterbury. Anselm was an eleventh century Christian philosopher known for his argument for the existence of God and his opposition to the crusades. Anselm is famous for writing, “I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand.” Anselm’s idea was been summarized in the church as “faith seeking understanding” or “believing leads to understanding.”

Building on Anselm’s ideas, some leaders in the modern church have argued that believing leads to belonging. That is that people first believe a certain thing and then join with people who believe the same thing. That is certainly true to a certain extent. As we proclaim in our ecumenical church documents that we here at Bradley Hills are a diverse group, but we all witness to the Gospel we share in common. On the other hand, as I have met with many of you during our adult ed class time between services, I have been impressed by the number of people who bring a variety of faith tradition experiences from their childhood’s or other parts of their backgrounds to their membership here at Bradley Hills. We have great experiential and intellectual diversity here and for many of us here, there is something in addition to doctrine that brings us together. Whether it is the music, the children’s program, the mission outreach, the proximity to our homes, or the friends, there is something in addition to believing that brings many people here.

There has been much discussion in the modern church about why people no longer attend church in the numbers they used to in previous decades. A common idea in church growth circles builds on Anselm’s theory that believing is primary.   Traditional church writers contend that people who leave the church quit believing and then the stopped belonging. 

Yet I think that when it comes to creating a church where members feel connected to each other, Paul might say something different. Paul writes that “the foot cannot believe and say ‘because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body.’ That does not make it any less part of the body.” For Paul, belonging to the body trumps individual belief.

Robin Gill, an English theologian goes a step further and argues that in matters of church attendance, belonging leads to believing. Gill went through church survey data from as far back as the 1960’s of people who were once active members of congregations, but who had become inactive members. Gill writes that only a small percentage of those surveyed listed a “decline in belief” as the reason for their inactivity.  

Gill also went through surveys of people who were inactive, but who then became active Christians and found that belief was seldom mentioned as the starting point for the new Christian life. Whether people came to faith for the first time or returned to the faith they knew as children, the most common theme was that they were encouraged to return to church by another person, usually a friend or family member. 

Dr. Lovett Weems of the Lewis Center on Church Leadership explains that belief needs to be shaped and nurtured by a worshipping community.

Inactive members of a congregation become active members when the church is inviting, relevant, nurturing and gives them a reason to feel that they belong.

In seminary, I got to hear about a pastor who shared his background of becoming a pastor. He didn’t grow up in the church and didn’t feel that he fit in many place growing up, but he began to become acquainted with the church through a basketball league. Then he joined the men’s ministry. Then he was asked to help build a house. Then he went on a mission trip. And through these contacts he grew to be open to the values and ideas of the people who had accepted him. And he went on to become a pastor.   Belonging often leads to believing.

There are many hurting people in the world, especially at this time of great economic crisis, who need to feel they belong somewhere.

When Paul writes that “the members of the body that are…less respectable are clothed with greater honor because the more respectable members do not need this,” he makes an important point.

Different parts of the body need attention at different times. Those times when we are hurting or vulnerable, we need attention. When others are hurting, our attention should go their way. 

Consider Jesus’ action in our first lesson for today. A leper came to Jesus. Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him and healed him. Lepers were the untouchables of the ancient world. They were excluded. They did not belong to anything of status in the ancient world. For a respected teacher like Jesus to physically touch the leper made quite a statement. A statement that Jesus is welcoming. There is a place for all of God’s people in the body of Christ. We are not worthy of being connected to the body of Christ either, yet in grace God chooses to reach out to us. Part of our common connection to the body is our need for grace. We know that God has the whole world in his hands, and yet God chose to touch the untouchables. God reaches out through Jesus so that we can belong.

I love how the poet Mary Oliver describes how she recognizes the Lord as she writes of God, “… I have always known you are present in the clouds, the black oak I especially adore, and the wings of birds. But you are present too in the body, listening to the body, teaching it to live.”

What makes us feel alive and what helps us know we belong is found in the simple moments of connecting.

Technology cannot replace our shaking hands with a visitor when they come to Bradley Hills for the first time. This morning we have our congregational life lunch after the service and I hope you can use that time to speak with someone you haven’t met before.

 There is nothing like sitting and listening to someone in pain or being there to look a child in the eye when the child has a question. There is nothing like holding the hand of someone in the hospital at a critical moment.

It is in these moments when our ability to reach out and connect physically makes a difference. When we shake hands, listen attentively, look each other in the eye, or hold someone’s hand, we make a unique, personal connection. 

We are the body of Christ. We are Christ’s eyes, ears, and hands now. Eyes the connect, ears that listen, hands that comfort and greet. 

As complex as our world is, as much as technology helps us communicate, sometimes it makes us feel more alone. And God said it wasn’t good for us to be alone.  

So let us make room to connect. To honor the common touch. To experience God’s grace within the body of Christ. And to connect so that others feel they belong. Because at one time, the person who finally got to the place where they finally felt they belonged, might have been you. Thanks be to God. Amen.