Time for a little TV trivia! Name the TV show from which this theme song is taken (music from “Adams Family” is played). Did you ever watch that show? Right—it’s The Addams Family! Gomez, Morticia, Lurch . . . Cousin Itt . . . and there was one character in particular that was always good for a laugh, Thing.
What was Thing, do you remember? ____________ Yeah . . . a disembodied hand. He’d show up out of nowhere, popping up out of the mailbox or on a table, handing Gomez an envelope or something like that.
The funny thing about Thing was that he was just a hand. No arm, no elbow . . . just a hand. I always thought it would be cool to have Thing around. He could take dictation for you when you wrote a letter, he could dial the phone for you. You could ask him how many scoops of ice cream you should get (“one or two? Two? Okay!”). I’m sure the backrubs would be great.
But see, the problem with that is that it could never really happen. There is no way a hand that was separated from the body could live on its own. It couldn’t think or communicate. It would have no way of getting bloodflow. It couldn’t perform any action that would benefit anybody. The fact of the matter is that when a hand is severed from the body it dies . . . and the rest of the body suffers.
Last week we emphasized the unity of the church, which Scripture calls the Body of Christ. With Christ as her head, the Body lives, acts, find purpose and direction. The Body acts as one complete organism.
And though we’re not going to leave behind that teaching, this week we’re need to emphasize something a bit different. This week we’re emphasizing the diversity of the Body. Paul rounds off his emphasis on the unity of the Body in our epistle reading from 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, saying this, “12 The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body-- whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free-- and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.” But then he takes that metaphor of the body and says, “14 Now the body is not made up of one part but of many.”
God designed our physical bodies to be an intricate working of divergent parts. I think its safe to say that no one individual body part completely duplicates the purpose or functions of another. God has given us unique body parts that perform specific functions: the heart, the lungs, the digestive system. Some parts serve multiple functions: the mouth serves us for communication as well as a place to take in food. Where would we be without our hands, our feet, even our reproductive organs? They all serve a purpose in the body, and they are all unique.
Where would we be without each member of the Body? We couldn’t function! Each part performs a much-needed function, each part relies upon each other. And yet isn’t it weird that when it comes to church we try to act like we’re Thing? As though we could live on our own, detached from the rest of the Body of Christ, and no one would be any the wiser. But that’s not what Paul says. Paul says that each member of the Body of Christ also performs unique, specific functions. In this very church we have hands that do work, we have feet that carry us along, we have a mouth that speaks the words of God. You are the Body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
And there’s still this problem of the Lone Ranger Christian—the Christian who wants to go it alone, to be self-sufficient, to be detached from the Body. Gregory Lockwood, in his commentary on 1 Corinthians, shows that Paul suggests two reasons why we think we should be on our own: feeling inferior and feeling superior.
Sometimes we feel inferior to other church members. Sometimes we see someone else getting all the glory and get jealous, feeling like we’re nothing compared to them. Sometimes we look at how well someone else does a particular job in the church and we think, “I could never do that. I guess there’s just not a place for me here.” Maybe you even have thought, “I’m too old/I’m too young.”
Let’s expose that for the lie it is. You are the Body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. You don’t have to be at the forefront of visible ministry to make a significant impact on the life of the church. Okay, so maybe you’re not the best public speaker in the congregation . . . but can you bake cookies? Maybe you’re not the best singer in the world . . . but can you pick up the phone and call somebody who’s hurting? You say you can’t teach a Bible class, but could you open up your home and let a small group meet there?
I see this all the time, and I tell you I am sick of it! All the time I see people believing they’re inferior, “I can’t speak, I can’t teach, I can’t give . . .” It’s as though somehow Satan has so deceived us into believing that if we’re not exactly like another part of the Body, if we don’t have the exact same talents and gifts and abilities then we’re somehow second-class church citizens.
Now to show how destructive this line of thinking is, just imagine what would happen if Paul’s words were reality. What if your feet had an inferiority complex and said, 1 Corinthians 12:15, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body”? That would be ridiculous, right? Your feet woke up one day and decided they wanted to peel a banana! “Here, have a little toejam with your fruit today!” What would happen if my feet decided they wanted to gently stroke my wife’s hair? I’d get kicked out of bed real quick, I can tell you that!
1 Corinthians 12:17, “17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?” Imagine that! Just one big ol’ eye, rolling around. Can’t do anything but see—can’t breathe, can’t hear . . . nothing. Just . . . see. Or one HUUUUGE ear . . . oh yeah, that’d be attractive. The chicks would just flock to you in school, wouldn’t they? It’s ridiculous! But not only is it ridiculous, it’s also harmful, because of what the body would be missing out on by everyone being exactly alike. If we all performed the same exact functions in the body, we’d accomplish absolutely nothing as a church.
1 Corinthians 12:18, “8 But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.” You are the Body of Christ, and God has placed each of you exactly where He wants you to be. To serve. To support. To enable others in their ministry. The Body cannot live without your unique, special contribution. Your role—no matter how big or how seemingly small—your role is vital to the whole Body. The Body cannot function without each and every one of you.
Separating yourself from the Body because you feel inferior is bad. It’s bad for you, and it’s bad for the rest of the Body. But the other end of the spectrum is just as harmful. Separating yourself from the Body because you feel superior to others also damages both you and the Body.
Now I’ll tell you straight out, I haven’t seen this a lot around here, and for that I’m thankful. But I have seen it in other churches. What’s more, I know that where people are, there is always the potential for something like this. So we’re going to talk about it a bit.
1 Corinthians 12:21, “21 The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!"” Now that should be fairly obvious. It’s just ludicrous to think that the head feels itself SO important that it would no longer need feet to carry it—and the rest of the body—around.
I remember a story another pastor told me some time ago. It seems that one person in this pastor’s congregation got his nose bent out of shape by something in the church. Really what happened was is that he got his pride hurt. And so he told the pastor that if he couldn’t have his way, he was going to take himself, his family, and his offerings to some other church.
Now, there was no doubt that this man was a high-dollar giver. But what had happened is that he had allowed himself to believe that he and his money were so important to the church that he could call the shots. He had allowed himself to believe that he—alone among all the other members of the congregation—was so important to the life of the church that he could dictate what happened in that church.
Now obviously that’s dead wrong—there is only One person whom the church cannot live without, and none of us are Him. When I begin to believe that I’m the most important one in the church, when I have to be the one that calls the shots, when I’m the one who should decide what’s going on, I am telling Christ, “Lord, the church doesn’t need you . . . it needs me. Thanks a lot, but I’ll handle it from here.”
When we pull the church’s focus off of Christ and try to put it on ourselves, we are in effect telling everybody else, “I’m important, you’re expendable.” But Paul says, “22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.” No matter how important you think you are, you still need the contribution of every other one of us to function as the Body of Christ. We all need each other, the Body must have every member functioning and treated with proper respect if it is to accomplish anything at all.
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. Christ’s death grants us each the forgiveness of sin. His resurrection causes us each to live in a new life. Every single one of us, from the youngest to the oldest, from the weakest to the strongest, is so important to Jesus Christ that He was willing to die so that we may be part of His Body. We’re that important to Him.
But just as important to Him as our individual salvation is our life together as the Body of Christ. He didn’t save us so that we could try to run things on our own, but He saved us from sin and death and placed us into the community of believers so that we can support one another, comfort one another, and love one another even as we receive His love, comfort and support. This is what we are saved to. You are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
I suppose that Thing is going to continue to be funny. There is something amusing about a disembodied hand running around everywhere. But that’s no way to run a church. Christ loved us so much that He made us part of His Body
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