A couple of weeks ago a pound coin was thrown onto the pitch at Elland Road during a Leeds United match. Police are trying to determine if it was a missile or a takeover bid!
Have a look at this image. This pound coin was released in 2008 and on the reverse has an image of the Royal shield. Now have a look at the rest of the coins in the set. Notice anything? Someone at the royal mint had great fun designing this. The 50p, 20p, 10p, 5p, 2p and 1p each have a portion of that shield. Just funky designs individually, but when placed together in just the right way, you can see the whole picture.
Seeing where we fit in the big picture can be an important part of understanding our identity. What we believe about that can be central to our understanding of who we are and can shape our whole lives. That can be fantastic - when we know who we are and what our purpose is we can be fully effective in whatever role we throw ourselves into or find ourselves in. But sometimes we end up at a point where what we believe about ourselves isn’t the truth - it is not how God sees us. Those beliefs have the potential to shape our whole lives if we would let them, and they hold us back from what we could be, should be, and what God would have us be in making us more like Jesus. They are “false narratives”; things we believe about ourselves or allow others to tell us which are not true. This morning we are continuing the series we started last week called “Beautiful rhythms of life” and confronting those false narratives and replacing them with truth. So last week, Kate shared from Isaiah 55 and talked about how it was good to be thirsty and confronted the false narrative of “this is all there is”. If you haven’t heard it then it should be available on the website very soon - seek it out and have a listen.
One false narrative that I have battled with in the past goes like this. I have to prove myself to belong. I will not be accepted in any environment unless I do. Even in a church environment, I believed that I would not be accepted unless I had something specific to offer and could do that thing better than anybody else. But often, anything I could do, someone else could do it better than I could. There were better musicians. There were better house group leaders. The things that were left over seemed insignificant that anybody could do it, or required no special skills to accomplish - what could setting out chairs possibly prove? Quite a lot actually…
This morning I want to share with you one passage of scripture that helped me with that and some of what a true narrative might look like for us in Leeds Vineyard. About a year or so ago, we looked at this passage in our house group. And as you will see there is an obvious question that we asked was “which part of the body do you think you are and why?” Perhaps have a think about that as I read it.
So if you have a bible or suitably enabled electronic device with you, could you find 1 Corinthians chapter 12. If you don’t, then can I encourage you to bring one with you? The words will be on the screen in the message version, but if you have your own copy, you can check out what the preacher is saying is true! It’s quite a long passage, but, I think it’s well worth reading for a couple of reasons. Firstly, as a pathologist with my interest in anatomy and how the body works, I think the bizarre cartoon like image of the body is rather fun. And secondly, the bible is God’s word to us and when this letter was first received in the church in Corinth it would have been read aloud. Paul is writing to the church in Corinth and has just been talking about spiritual gifts and is now moving on to talk about the church. So verse 12:
12-13 You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptised.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
14-18 I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so? If Ear said, “I’m not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don’t deserve a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.
19-24 But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn’t be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, “Get lost; I don’t need you”? Or, Head telling Foot, “You’re fired; your job has been phased out”? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the “lower” the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it’s a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honour just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn’t you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?
25-26 The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.
27a You are Christ’s body—that’s who you are!
Ele Mumford and her husband John, are the national directors of Vineyard Churches in the UK and Ireland. At the National leaders conference a few weeks ago, on the Wednesday morning she gave a talk about the church - His Church. In it, she said this:
Isn’t it fascinating that when God looks for unity he ordains diversity (not uniformity). His longing is for our unity and so he makes us different. And we should never be anything but comfortable with our differences. Praise God you are not the same as me and thank God I am not the same as you! When man freezes water he produces ice cubes - uniform, regimented, identical. All the same it is to make ice cubes. When God freezes water he makes snow-flakes. No two snow flakes have every been the same. We are snowflakes for Jesus!
It is okay not to be the same as everybody else and to have different gifts and passions. It is part of who we are as a church.
When we looked at this passage in our house group, one person said they were probably an ear because they were a good listener. Someone else said they were a hand because they were very practical. And in amongst the answers, one of our members shared very eloquently about how they felt like they were the ingrown toenail. One of the dangers we can have with this passage is that we can misinterpret what it is saying - we get hung up on ourselves as being insignificant to the whole body with no real role. So we compare ourselves to, just for example the earlobe, or eyebrows or some other seemingly insignificant part of the body. Well, for those of us who have done that or still do that (and I include myself in this):
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ear lobes have a little known function to funnelling or channelling sounds in the ear better by directing it into the inner ear. Basically they enable us to hear better than we could if we didn’t have them.
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web spaces between my fingers enable us to have a greater degree of movement freedom, especially fine motor activity like grasping a tennis ball or threading a fine needle.
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eye brows are not just there to be plucked or to help us to express surprise or anger, they keep sweat or rain from entering our eyes, enabling us to see where we are going regardless of the weather.
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toe and finger nails protect our extremities from nerve damage and really help for separating those small flat lego bricks which have been pressed tightly together…
Don’t ever think that you are not important to God’s family. You are integral, and the likelihood is that you have a gifting or passion or ability that nobody else has.
The false narrative I shared says: I have to prove myself to be accepted. To belong. If I don’t, then I won’t be accepted. Maybe some of that rings a bell with you too.
The true narrative that gives lie to the false one probably goes something like this: I am a child of God and an integral part of the church of Jesus Christ. I can be - and have been - forgiven of my sins through Jesus death on the cross, and I have been brought into the family of God and relationship with God, one day to inherit eternal life.
That is God’s over arching message to mankind. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came through Jesus. (Romans 3 v23-24 if you are taking notes). God then adopts us as his sons and daughters - children of God and heirs of glory. And for the time left on earth, he doesn’t leave us on our own - he brings us into his family - the church - and in the church, I believe each and every one of us has a role to play. Or as we say in the Vineyard - Everybody gets to play.
But Paul didn’t just leave it there - he goes on (from verse 19) to exhort us not to think of ourselves too highly either! Not to get too big for our boots! Just as you are not less important than anybody else, you are not more important either - your significance comes from being part of Gods family.
I started with the image of the coins. Now clearly, all coins have a value, and if you want to cross the road to Sainsbury’s or Costa Coffee then some are worth more than others. But when it comes to the image embedded on the reverse, the coins are all part of the same image. Going back to the passage we have just read, no matter what the value of any one of those coins initially appears to be, it still only has part of the picture. However large or small the monetary value appears to be if any one were missing then the image would be incomplete.
And so it is with the church. Each of us has a roles and specific giftings, some of which may be more common than others, but there is no heirarchy of importance. I am not more important than a Michael or less important than a Terry. When it comes to the big picture, we are each no more or less vital to the overall image and expression of the church than the person sitting next to us, or in front of us, or behind us, or leading in Vineyard kids, or who is one of the vineyard kids, or a part of T4:12. Or isn’t here today. Hmmm. That last one. Gods plan is for us to be in community because we are stronger and more effective that way than on our own and when we choose not to engage in that, a part of the image is missing.
So what does that mean in practice? Well these are just a few questions we could ask ourselves.
How good are we at hurting with someone who is suffering and rejoicing with someone who is being honoured? Turn it around - If you are suffering or celebrating, who do you do it with? I love the connectedness of social media - I have twit face (as one friend calls it) on my phone and ipad, but I wonder sometimes about some of the tweets and status updates I see. Sometimes they just seem to be fishing for sympathy for illness or because life has taken a turn for the worse. Maybe I’m being unfair - for some maybe they are actually crying out for community - for someone to share their life with. But is telling 700 “friends” on Facebook really an effective way of being supported? Would it be better to be in a group of 6-10 other people with whom you share your life with on a weekly basis? In my experience, and as Garry shared last week, that is exactly the support and welcome that is on offer in house groups - a place where we can know others and be known by them and do life together. And carrying on the body illustration one step further, we would describe our house groups in Leeds Vineyard as being at the very heart of the church.
House group was one of the key ways that I felt accepted, when we started coming along to follow Jesus with the Leeds Vineyard. The house group that I attended then (and some of you were a part of) was somewhere where there was acceptance and nobody had to prove themselves. But it was also somewhere that I had a role. Everybody gets to play. And the place we learn to do that is in house groups.
The more I have learned, understood and accepted that I am just a part of the body and that I don’t have to prove myself, the more important it has become that I consciously stay connected to that body. We can share the highs and lows together in a smaller group in ways that it is just not possible to do in a larger gathering on a Sunday morning. So how often do you join in and when you do join in, how often do you really connect and share what is going on? With the picture of the coins - How often does your part of the image get shown together with all the others to complete the big picture? On a Sunday morning? In house group? In reach out activities?
What could you do to help the body function better? How do you (or could you) use your gifts and abilities within Leeds Vineyard? What is your contribution? Maybe this morning you realised for the first time which part of the body you are meant to be - where you fit into the big picture. If so, I would encourage you that may be God prompting you. We’d love to pray for you if that is the case, and then talk to your house group leader about how you can take that forwards. If you’re not in a house group, then find one to join.
We are calling this series “Beautiful Rhythms of Life”. Living in community is part of that rhythm. Weekly worship could be likened to the Bass drum. On it's own the rhythm is very simple, but once you add the other beats from House group (a snare drum), reading the bible and prayer (toms and cymbals) it quickly builds into a rhythm.
We are one body. We belong together. Everyone gets to play but more than that the church is only seen as all that it is when everybody does play. We are a community of faith, united for the purpose of becoming more like Jesus and together we are heirs of his promise of eternal life. And that is something wonderful to celebrate together as part of the big picture, in a beautiful Rhythm of life.