Christ Who Fills Us
One sentence has haunted me this week as I read and prepared for this sermon. William Barclay wrote about this passage from Ephesians, “It is on the Church that the fulfillment of God’s plan depends.” I don’t know how that strikes you, but for me that is humbling; that is frightening; that is exciting. “It is on the Church that the fulfillment of God’s plan depends.”
As research tells us that secularism is on the rise, and people are less open to the idea of church, it is on the Church that the fulfillment of God’s plan depends. As we wrestle with the reality that going to church is no longer a normative behavior, that church attendance is not a cultural expectation, it is on the Church that the fulfillment of God’s plan depends. As we face the statistics that say 1 in 5 Americans describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” and almost 3 in 4 Americans 35 and younger seek spirituality but not through religious organizations, “It is on the Church that the fulfillment of God’s plan depends.”
Yet, one of the contributing factors to the increase of churchless people is skepticism about the church’s contribution to society. According to Barna research, “when the unchurched were asked to describe what they believe are the positive and negative contributions of Christianity in America, almost half could not identify a single favorable impact of the Christian community.” While three in five were able to identify a negative impact.
Much of the reason people are leaving the church is that the church has not been executing God’s plan! God’s plan depends upon the church to be the fullness of Christ, who is the head of the body. We are the hands and feet, the eyes and ears!
Unfortunately, our assemblage of the body of Christ is not unlike the Mr. Potato Head my children received. It was a hand-me-down. It had already been used, played with, pieces lost. Some of the pieces were for a small potato that was no longer with the set. I’ve seen it with a cowboy hat and mustache with long eyelashes and pink eyeshadow, and one long arm with one short arm, and there have been times when eyes have been put in the ear hole, and smiles put on upside down.
That’s the church, folks. And it always has been. Paul knew it. He was writing to the church at Ephesus in the second half of the First Century. And he’s writing to random Potato Head parts trying to assemble themselves. He says to them, I give thanks for your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in your love toward one another. Because, that’s central! Without faith in Jesus as Lord, the leader, the head of the body, and without love for one another, there’s no way you can assemble one body. You have to have a head, and the pieces have to connect.
And Paul prays that they might have a spirit of wisdom, to give them eyes to see the hope and power in Christ. And, we need that same prayer offered for our churches today – that we would have the spirit of wisdom allowing us to see the hope and power in Christ. It is easy to look around and see the failures of churches and governing bodies. It is easy to find stories of wrong-doing and failure. Where the skeptics are right is that sometimes the church fails to look like Jesus.
Author and pastor Benjamin Corey wrote a blog post that listed 10 reasons people are leaving church. The reasons boil down to people leave when they aren’t accepted into a the community and accepted for who God made them to be, when the people aren’t real with each other, when conflict isn’t dealt with in a healthy way, and when the community doesn’t look like the body of Jesus. He writes, “ Church should be a place where people are busy loving the unlovable, embracing the outcast, serving the widow, immigrant and fatherless. It should be a place where power is rejected, gender and race is irrelevant, and where the most coveted position is the position of servant.
I think we need to just start being honest with ourselves and admit that a lot of people reject our churches because they’re too interested in Jesus to accept a counterfeit version.”
The body of Christ looks like Jesus and acts like Jesus, and when it does, there is hope and power to fulfill God’s plan. Rev. Kari Nicewander is a Presbyterian missionary in Zambia, serving as a church growth and discipleship specialist. She told about a recent visit to a church in Mazabuka, a church that acts and looks like Jesus, a church that has hope and power to fulfill God’s plan. I want to share with you a little of her experience:
When she got there, the leaders were in the midst of a debate. They were speaking rapidly in the local dialect, and she couldn’t make out all of what they were saying, something about a man in prison who would soon be released. She filled in the blanks, of course, there would be concerns about a prisoner released into the community. Could they let him back into the congregation? Could he be trusted? Would they be safe? But, then she noticed that they were smiling, “Were you following?” asked her liaison with the church.
“Very soon one of our members will be released from prison. He is getting an early release and we are very happy. So, we are planning on throwing him a party. We are figuring out how to raise funds for this party.” Kari says, “She returned to the conversation and I nodded as if that was exactly what I had expected. Of course. They weren’t debating whether or not this man could return to their community. They were discussing the details of the party they would throw for him.
I spent that morning with the congregation, and by early afternoon it was time to begin the long drive back to Lusaka. As we were ready to depart, the minister asked us to wait outside for just a few minutes. We complied, and I wondered what they needed to discuss without us present. It took longer than a few minutes, and I began to feel a bit impatient. I don’t like driving in the dark and I really wanted to leave in order to get home before nightfall.
Finally the minister came out of the church building and said farewell. As we were getting into the car, she shoved a wad of money into my hand. “Please, use it to buy food and soft drinks on your drive home,” she said. I began to protest, but she stopped me immediately. “Please. You must. This is for you.” I accepted the gift, realizing that they had been taking a special offering to collect this money.
We did not need soft drinks, and we had traveled with a bag of food and water in the car. That money could have gone to feed someone else — someone who was hungry, someone who did not have a couple of chocolate chip cookies hidden in the glove compartment. But we had to accept this extravagant generosity — from a church full of faithful Zambians who throw parties for prisoners and collect money to feed Americans.
There is no doubt that this congregation is caring for its neighbors. It already runs a small community school, where kids can come and learn for free. They are beginning plans for a Home Based Care program, to provide assistance to people living with HIV/AIDS. They provide clothes and sustenance for those who are struggling. But they also throw parties for prisoners, they also shove cash into the full hands of American missionaries, and they also dance and celebrate and trust in God.”
That is the body of Christ. People who live in community – loving one another, depending on one another, welcoming one another home no matter what – people who live in hope and who believe in the power of Christ. And because they live in hope and believe in the power of Christ, they respond to needs whenever they present themselves with what seems, it’s embarrassing to admit it, to us like extravagant generosity, and to them like the most natural thing in the world to do.
On Christ the King Sunday we celebrate that God’s Kingdom has come and is coming. Christ is King. God’s Kingdom comes as God’s will is done. We are the body of Christ – we’d like to think of ourselves all put together with all our parts in the right place – like this Potato Head – but the good, and amazing thing is that God uses us even when we don’t! The coming of God’s Kingdom, the fulfillment of God’s plan depends on us – four arms, no ears- us. It depends on the church. It depends on our impact on the world around us, not as individuals, but as a community. It depends on a community of believers who have faith in Christ and love toward one another and who meet the needs of the world around them with extravagant generosity because of the hope and power they have in Christ.