Sermon for the Induction of Revd Louise Polhill
The Grove Centre Church, Sydenham, 2pm 12th
October 2013
1 Corinthians 12:12-31 For just as the body is one and
has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body,
so it is with Christ. 13 For
in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body-- Jews or Greeks, slaves
or free-- and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. 14 Indeed, the body does not
consist of one member but of many. 15
If the foot would say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the
body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear would say,
"Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would
not make it any less a part of the body.
17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?
If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But as it is, God arranged the
members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member,
where would the body be? 20
As it is, there are many members, yet one body.
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of
you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of
you." 22 On the
contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are
indispensable, 23 and those
members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor,
and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 24 whereas our more respectable
members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater
honor to the inferior member, 25
that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the
same care for one another. 26
If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored,
all rejoice together with it.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away,
it
was a dark and stormy night, and the robbers sat round the camp fire,
so
the old men say,
and
they all lived happily ever after.
We all love a good story, don’t we?
Whether it’s the child listening with mother,
the
adult reading the latest block-buster,
or
the teenager engrossed in the latest TV series
or
role playing computer game,
a
compelling story has the capacity to hook us and enthrall us.
Liz tells me that if I’m lost in a good book,
she
can talk to me and I won’t even notice,
and I think this must be true –
when
I read, I go the places that the story takes me,
often
places I could never go in reality;
and
I meet the people who live there,
characters
who become as real in my own imagination
as
many of the people I have met in real life.
Stories matter to us,
not
just for enjoyment,
but
because they spin the narratives of our lives.
We all live by stories,
we
all tell ourselves stories about who we are,
where
we have come from,
where
we’re going,
how
we are going to live.
At a fairly basic level, we have our own
biographical stories –
so,
my name is Simon, and I was born in Sevenoaks.
My parents are Colin and Davida,
in
fact that’s my Mum sitting just over there.
I’ve lived in Sevenoaks and Sheffield and
Bristol and London,
and
I’ve also worked in Cardiff.
And now you know something about my story, if
you didn’t already.
And maybe if we get to know each other better,
I’ll
get to know something about yours too.
And whilst our biographical stories go some way
towards defining us,
there
are other narratives we use to construct who we are,
how
we think of ourselves,
and
how we will choose to live.
Are we poor or rich? Socialist or capitalist?
Married
or single? Male or female?
White
or Black? Christian or non-Christian?
Ordained
or lay? Church member or non-attender?
Each of these words conveys a narrative,
they
are short-hand for the stories we use to write our worlds.
Here today, as we gather to celebrate Louise’s
induction
to
the ministry at The Grove Centre,
we are marking the coming together of two
different stories;
and
part of our time this afternoon
is
given to hearing both the stories of Louise,
and
of the church here at Sydenham,
and
of how these stories have now coalesced
around
a call to Louise to minister in this place.
But of course it’s not just Louise’s story,
or
the story of The Grove Centre,
that are represented here today,
there’s
also my story, and your story, and your story,
and
all the many, varied and complex narratives
that
we each of us brings with us.
The story of a church can never just be the
story of a few key individuals.
I’m always a little wary of the kind of church
history
that
just tells us the names and deeds
of
the ministers who have gone before,
because
the story of the ministers isn’t the story of the church.
Rather, a true history of a church
will
recognize the contribution of all those
who
have played their part in that community down the years.
Some will have been there as ministers, or
deacons,
or
in other positions of prominence or leadership,
but as anyone who has been a minister knows,
they
are only more visible because they are standing on the shoulders
of
the giants who are supporting them,
to
paraphrase Bernard of Chartres
who
said it five hundred years before Isaac Newton.
We cannot, and shouldn’t try,
to
reduce the story of the church to the favoured few.
There is a tendency to pin it all on the
minister,
but
it is a tendency that we must resist.
This is what Paul is getting at in our Bible
reading for this afternoon.
The
church is the body of Christ,
it
is one body, but it has many members.
This idea of using the metaphor of a body
to
represent the diversity of a unified institution or community
wasn’t
a new idea.
Aesop’s Fable ‘The Belly and the Members’
drew
the analogy between a body and the political state
hundreds
of years before the time of Christ,
and
it’s likely that Paul would have known this fable
and
may well have been referencing it
in
his image of the church as a body in his letter to the Corinthians.
However, Paul takes the metaphor away from
Aesop’s political meaning,
and
instead he personalizes it –
the
body that he is talking about isn’t the state,
rather
it is the body of a person –
it
is the body of Christ.
You see, for Paul, the church isn’t the same as
the state,
despite
the best efforts of many down the years since to make it such.
Neither is the church the same as a club,
or
indeed any other voluntary or involuntary association of people.
It’s not a political party,
it’s
not a special-interest group,
it’s
not a social club,
it’s
not defined on the grounds of ethnicity, gender,
social
standing, or sexuality.
Rather, the church is a body, not in a
metaphorical sense,
but
in a very tangible way.
The church is the body of Christ on earth,
and
its members are there because they have been called to be there.
Each individual member of the body of Christ
has
responded to the call of Christ to follow him.
We hear a lot about ‘calling’ at days like
today,
and
I sometimes find myself wondering what it means
to
say that someone has received a ‘call to the ministry’.
The call of Christ on our lives is to follow,
and
everything else that we do,
everything
else that we are,
flows
from our obedience to the call to follow.
Just as the fishermen beside the sea of Galilee
heard
in the call of Christ an invitation
to
enter into a new way of being,
so
those of us who hear and answer that call
in
our own time and in our own lives
find
ourselves invited to enter into in a new kind of humanity.
If we are followers of Christ, our identity is
in him, and nothing else.
No
longer are we defined by the stories of our gender,
our
ethnicity, our sexuality,
our
social standing, our interests or our self-interests.
Rather, we enter into the story of the body of
Christ,
and
our identity is now to be found
in
the one who invites us to follow him.
The alternative narratives
of
the alternative realities of being
available
to humankind
are
no longer our narratives.
We are no longer defined by the narratives of
money, sex, and power.
Rather,
we are part of a different story, a subversive story,
and
it is the story of the gospel of Christ,
whose
body is given for the salvation of the world.
And so it is within the body of Christ
that
we each find our new identity,
and it is to membership of the body of Christ
that
each of us has been called.
Each of us, mind, not just the minister,
or
the deacons, or the leaders,
or
the cooks, or the greeters, or the flower-arrangers,
but
all of us,
whoever
and whatever we may be.
We are each of us called to follow Christ,
and
to discover our new identity as members of his body.
There are a few places within Paul’s letters,
including our passage for today,
where
he offers lists of what are often called
the
gifts of the Spirit (cf. Rom 12.6-8 & Eph 4.11).
Some of these gifts we know well,
and
there are some churches and some Christians
that
have made the possession of certain specific gifts
a
touchstone of whether someone
is
genuinely a member of the body of Christ.
I tend to think it’s more complex than that,
and
indeed more gracious than that.
The gifts that Paul talks about aren’t given
so
that by exhibiting them we can tell who’s in and who’s out.
Not a bit of it.
Rather,
they are given for the building up of the body of Christ.
I put together a list of the various gifts that
Paul says the Spirit brings,
and
there’s a representation of it on your order of service.
Just take a moment to hear these,
and
to rejoice at the diversity of the gifts of the Spirit:
wisdom, knowledge, faith,
power,
discernment, apostleship,
prophecy,
teaching, miracles,
healing,
helping, organising,
languages,
interpreting, ministry,
exhortation,
giving, presiding,
mercy,
evangelising, pastoring.
Paul clearly considers as ‘spiritual gifts’
both
those gifts that mainstream churches
have
sometimes seen as central,
such
as teaching or ministry,
and
also those which are sometimes regarded as ‘charismatic’,
or
the gifts of the Spirit.
And the point he is making in our passage today
from 1 Cornithians
is
that one should not look down on the other.
All gifts, including gifts like helping, and
administration,
are
gifts given by the Spirit for the building up of the church.
They aren’t given for people to just enjoy the
experience
of
receiving or exercising them,
however
much joy might be found
in
being fully who God has called us to be.
But the point is that the each gift God gives
is
given to the whole church,
through
the individual who has received it.
Paul also assumes that none of these gifts are
given to everybody;
it
is only in church as a community of diverse individuals
who
bring diverse gifts for the mutual building up of all
that
anyone can witness and experience
the
full richness of the many gifts of the Holy Spirit.
And so Paul says, in verse 27,
‘Now
you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.’[1]
Tom Wright suggests that these words
should
be engraved on the mind and heart of all church members,
but perhaps especially they need to be taken to
heart
by
those called to more high profile office,
or
those who have been given some special gift that,
by
thrusting them into the public eye,
brings
on them the temptation to arrogance
that
was affecting some of those in Corinth.
The realisation that we are the body of Christ
and
individually members of it
is the basis of all true understandings of the
church,
and
of all humble service within it.
This challenges any self-styled leader
who
may imagine that he or she is the church’s ‘answer’
without
reference to the complementarity
and
needed gifts of others.
But it also challenges the members of our
churches
not
to select or expect their leaders
to
embody the fullness of the gifts given to the whole body.
No-one
can do it all, no-one has it all,
and
thank God for that!
Those of us who have been called to the body of
Christ
need
all the resources of God’s gifts
that
are spread throughout the church,
and
are encountered through different individuals in different forms.
And so, here we are, to mark the induction of
Louise
to
the office of minister at The Grove Centre, Sydenham.
Louise is a gifted woman,
who
has been called to follow Christ wherever that leads,
and
it seems that it has led us here, today.
This is the beginning of the next chapter in
this particular story.
Louise has many gifts, but she doesn’t have all
of them.
She
needs us, and we need her,
just
as we also need one another.
None of us gets off the hook here.
Not
all of us preach, or pastor,
or
administer the sacraments,
but
each of us is called, and each of us is gifted,
and
it is together that we are the body of Christ,
given
for the salvation of the world.
And so the
page turns, and the story continues.
And when the Lamb’s book of life is
eventually read out,
each of us will be found to have
played our part in the narrative.
Not for our
own sakes, of course,
or because of any goodness of our
own.
But rather,
because we have been called to the body of Christ,
which is given for the salvation of
the world.
The gospel of
Christ cannot be reduced to four books in the Bible,
written and completed two thousand
years ago.
Rather, the
gospel is the living story
of Christ’s ongoing commitment to
the world
exercised through his body; that is
through you, and me, together.
The gospel
story is proclaimed
as we bear witness in our lives
to the alternative way
of being
that has come into the
world in Christ.
The Liberal
MP Sarah Tether came to speak
at the 'Churches Refugee Conference'
at Bloomsbury a few months ago.
She said
that when faced with faceless systems,
that dehumanise and disempower the
poor and the vulnerable,
one of the
most powerful things Christians can do
is tell a different story of
what it means to be human.
We who are
in Christ are those who live by a different story,
not for our own sake, but for the
sake of the world.
We who are
in Christ are no longer enslaved to those narratives of power
which so often seem to dominate the
world as we encounter it.
We who are
in Christ believe that all are equal in the sight of God,
that it is never right for systems,
or people of power, to dehumanise another,
and so we cannot, and we
must not,
accept the narratives so
seductively spun
by society, the media,
and vested-interest politicians.
We who are
in Christ will find ourselves speaking up for the poor,
advocating for the vulnerable,
holding the world to
account for its actions,
and bringing people back to a different
way of understanding the world.
We who are
in Christ tell a different story,
and we are called to tell it and to
faithfully live by it.
It won't
change the world overnight, but it will change the world.
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