One Body

On Thursday of this last week, God taught me a valuable lesson about the body. At work, getting ready to walk some more. I close the door to my mail truck differently than normal and this time, it catches my finger and smashes it. I call the supervisors and they come to investigate the mishap, all the required forms in hand. I end up at the ER to get xrayed, to make sure the finger isn’t broken. Four hours later, I am released and ready to come back to work, with not much of the work day left to go. Some things I noticed about that day and the subsequent days since then. I Corinthians 12:12-31 is a passage that came to mind during all this.

1. Every part of the body is vitally important

God placed every part of the human body on or in us for a reason. Some of those reasons, we’re not sure of yet, but God has a reason. The same is true of the body of Christ. Every one has been put into His body for a reason. Verse 18—God put the parts there just like He wanted them…for a reason. There are times when the body has to do without a certain part or with out the use of a certain part for a season. We get by, but life is not lived to its fullest. My intestinal surgery in 98 was where I learned about this. When the parts of the body are affected, the body compensates, but that is outside of the design that God made. Same with the church. People think they can go away and nobody will miss them. WRONG!! When they are not here, they are missing and the Body of Christ has to compensate and that is NOT God’s plan, to just compensate and just get along. God’s plan is that His church thrive and prosper, with all the parts working together.

2. When one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers

Have you ever had a time when you injured a small part of your body and it just cramped your style?? When I lived next door to a doctor friend of mine, I got up at 330 in the morning to go to work and found a 16 foot long piece of treated 2 x 10 he had left in the kitchen to fix the back deck. I found it with my little toe. Split it wide open and bled like a stuck pig. I hobbled next door to try to wake him up so he could look at it, but he slept on. But I walked funny for almost a week, as it was hard to wear shoes. This finger this week, that started these thoughts…you should have seen me trying to fill out the forms to get admitted, and the forms for the postal service with a bleeding and throbbing middle finger on my writing hand. Every time I turned around, someone had a form in my face saying’ “here, we need your signature on this.” Even though it has been healing well, still, any pressure from the side is very uncomfortable. It makes doing my job quite a bit harder. Small part of the body, but the body feels it and I have to compensate to do what I normally do without thinking about it. Same with the body of Christ. Verse 26—when one member suffers, the whole body suffers. When one part is honored, the whole body is honored. Part of God’s design. Verse 22 says "on the contrary, even those parts of the body that seem to be most delicate are indispensable. (Williams paraphrase)

3. Not all body parts do the same job, each one has it’s own.

When I smashed my finger, I wish I could have taken a good toe or something to replace the finger for a while, so I could just go on and keep working without stopping. The thing is, by design, is that toes are not supposed to do what fingers do. Each of us here at the Crossing have unique gifts and abilities and we’re not all the same. Look at the praise team for a great example. Do all the members of the praise team play drums? No. Do they all play guitar? No. Do they all play bass? No.

I was watching This is Spinal Tap the other night and in the midst of the “rockumentary” Nigel (who is Christopher Guest) gets fed up with the way things are going and quits the group. David (who is Michael McKeon) tries to get the keyboardist to play the guitar part with one of his hands so he wouldn’t be missed as much. But Nigel was the one with the outlandish shredding guitar solos…and nobody in the group could duplicate that, even if they tried. All’s well for a happy ending, as Nigel comes to visit the group to deliver a message and David, while trying to play a trademark Nigel song, motions him back out on stage to rip it up with the band. It is a perfect example of the body of Christ. Verses 29-30 All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they? All do not have gifts of healings, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they? Paul’s implicit answer to that is NO!!!! Back up to verse 17—if the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be?? It wouldn’t. Can you imagine this big eye rolling around? "Hey guys! What’s happening?" And this hand comes flopping along behind him, carrying his bible for him, cause Mr Eye can’t pick one up. That would be ridiculous.

God’s design is great and perfect. We have to understand God’s plan, then figure out how we fit into that plan…what is our own individual part of the body of Christ. A lot of people don’t know what their part in the body of Christ is because they are afraid to try different things, for fear of failure. When at Moody, they made us do PCM, Practical Christian Ministry and we had a different one every semester, unless we requested to stay. I failed at a lot of things. If the church had to rely on me to evangelize the world, it would be a sad thing. Evangelism is not my gift. Does that allow me to just say, “well that’s not my gift, so I just won’t do it?” Absolutely not. I still have been given the mandate to preach the gospel and I do, just not in the conventional ways like the people who have that gift. Verse 15—If the foot says; “I don’t have the gift of evangelism, I guess I’m just not a part of the body.” Hogwash. Just because you can’t sing like someone else or preach like someone else, doesn’t mean you’re not as important in the body of Christ (see point #1). You just have different gifts and you get to use those gifts for Jesus, if just may not be out front in the spotlight like someone else.

Our maintainance man went on vacation recently for a week. Do you know that he was soooooooorely missed? By Tuesday? Do you know what the bathroom looked like by Tuesday with all these gross, nasty mail carriers coming in washing up. By Friday, it was disgusting. But either no one was willing or no one was able to do that job and Ricky was sorely missed. Cleaning bathrooms may not sound like an important thing, until it isn’t done. Trash collection isn’t noticed, until something like the strike of New York City in what, the mid 80’s?? It was important then, wasn’t it?? Your gifts may be in quieter and less obvious areas and that is just as important to the body of Christ as preaching, teaching and singing in the praise team. We all have to try stuff out, fail a few times and then get busy where the Lord has gifted us in serving Him. It took me almost 2 years of Practical Christian Ministries to find out that I could teach a little bit. I kept teaching and developed that gift he’s given me and 23 years later, people tell me that when I teach, they can understand the things of God. Bless God for that. I just try to do what God gifts me to do, when He allows me to do it. And it feels good to know you’re doing what He’s gifted you to do. The 3+ years I didn’t teach after the divorce was hard for me, but I knew I needed healing and restoration and people to minister to me for a season before I could get back up and do this again. But it stunk, not being able to do it…not being allowed to do it. It feels good to be back at it, and I pray that God will honor it and that it will make a difference in the way we all live for Christ every day.

Food Drive Update

The National Association of Letter Carriers' 15th annual food drive collected 70.7 million pounds of food to feed the needy all across America and it's territories. Thank you to all who gave to this outstanding cause. May God bless your generosity.

I hate duplicity

For a long time, I worked in the nice, cozy surroundings of the Christian media. I was an early morning DJ for 13 years and ran a Chrisitian bookstore for a year and a half. In that time, I was blessed to not have to deal so much with duplicity. The people I worked with were good for their word and normally didn't say one thing and then do another. Getting out into the real world and working with and for those who don't know Christ was a real eye opener, exposing me to the depth of the depravity of a person's heart.

I've struggled with this issue of duplicity for some time now...saying one thing and living a different life, in opposition to what your mouth proclaims. We're all capable of doing this, me being chief. But the last couple years at the Post Office has shown me how that can work to one's financial advantage but to the disadvantage of the many who live with the ramifications of those decisions and broken promises. My life has been made very inconvenient by the continuing duplicity of management at work. I've seen couples do it as well, saying they care about family and community, then turn around and rip down God's pillar of society by divoricing their spouse and breaking up the family. My life has been left in turmoil by duplicity in that area, too. Politicians have their black belts in duplicity, promising the moon before the election, but doing something completely different when in office. Even TV preachers, some do God a great service, but some talk about God, but it's really all about the cash you can send them. And the jury is still out on Paris Hilton, who claims she has changed for the better and will invest her life in others now that she's out of prison.....we'll see.

What does God think of all this? For those of us who know Him, the standard is high. He says that we should let our yes be yes and our no be no, so that we don't fall under judgment (Jas 5:12), that we should not even promise, if we're going to promise and not live up to it (Ecc 5:5). There were several times when God was not happy with His people because they made empty promises to Him that they didn't live up to. The lovely job of telling the people of God's displeasure fell onto the prophet of the time. Ananias and Sapphira tried to fit in with the others in selling their property, but inside, they hid the truth of what really happened and lied to the people and to the Holy Spirit. Their punishment was harsh and quick.

This all makes me look inside and check my own life. I try, but I fail. God reminds me of people I've told that I would pray for and have totally forgotten about. Sometimes, I look back on the past that He has wiped out and how I used to act then...and if I'm not careful, can act that way again. I try not to make promises I can't keep and aim to live a honest and transparent life. The world doesn't know what to do with that, but that's ok. Even Christians don't know what to do with that. That's a sad thought.

In the movie "A Mighty Wind," Mitch Cohen (Eugene Levy) is a folk singer 30 years removed from the fame he once knew. He also is a psychological mess, unstable in his person. In the scene where he is asked to do a reunion concert with his former partner/wife, Mickey, he explains to the concert organizer, "There's a deception here. The audience...is expecting to see a man who no longer exists." Even being in the condition he was in, even he recognized that it wasn't right to try to be someone that he isn't ...or simpler yet, to live a lie--to make it look like he's just fine but knowing that he's really not. He couldn't do duplicity. May God give us the power to live a Christ honoring life, free of wavering and duplicity, for His glory and the good of His church.