Disposable Body Parts

            The conversation went something like this:  

“Something’s wrong.”

“What do you mean, something’s wrong?”

“I’ve got too many feet.”

“You can’t have too many feet.”

“I’m telling you, I have too many feet.  It can’t be right.”

“There are lots of feet…there are lots of people.”

“You don’t understand.  I do have too many feet… and they’re all left feet!”

“You can’t have too many feet.”

“Yes, you can.  People have left feet and right feet.  All I have are left feet.  I have lots and lots

     of left feet.”

“It depends on what we need.  Look at the picture.  You’re supposed to have lots of left feet.”

“Oh.”

            We were putting together a jigsaw puzzle.  In the picture on the cover of the box, there were lots of people.  All the people were facing a building, which was the focus of the picture.  The building was on the left side of the picture.  Because all the people in the picture were facing in that direction, all you could see were their left feet… lots and lots of left feet… no right feet.  It made perfect sense… once you knew what was going on. 

            Jigsaw puzzles are amazing things.  They come in cardboard boxes with pictures on the outside… pictures of the finished product.  And they tell you how many pieces are inside the box.  The number of pieces is one indication of how complex the puzzle is… how hard you will have to work to arrive at the picture on the cover.  100 pieces is easy.  500 pieces is enough to get your attention.  1000 pieces is a challenge… especially if the picture on the cover is a picture of a forest of evergreen trees or, perhaps, a pile of yellow pencils. 

I was never into jigsaw puzzles until the summer of the year I turned twelve.  That year, my parents were due to return to the United States from the mission field on furlough.  They decided to take a leisurely trip back to the United States through Europe.  We started the trip in Bangkok on a freighter that was bound for Genoa, Italy.  The six members of the Bryant family represented half of the twelve passengers aboard the ship.  It took more than a month for the ship to make the voyage.  We had lots of time on our hands. 

By the end of the third day, we had seen everything there was to see on the ship and had spent hours staring at the ocean or the wake behind the ship.  There wasn’t much in the way of reading material in the ship’s library that would appeal to a twelve-year-old, but there were lots of jigsaw puzzles.  My mother turned one out onto the table in the lounge and began working on it.  My first attempts to help her were frustrating for me.  I would pick up one piece to put it into the puzzle, but I could never figure out where it went.  But then, I watched my mother closely and saw that she had a system.  She first separated the pieces by color.  Then she found all the pieces with straight edges.  Then, she put the outside edge of the puzzle together, using all those pieces with straight edges.  Then she worked on smaller groups of pieces that were all the same color, until she got something recognizable.  Then she put that item into the puzzle in its approximate location in the picture and tried to find the pieces that would hold it to the outside edges.  One month… and many, many puzzles later… I was a jigsaw puzzle expert! 

So, what does this story have to do with our text from 1 Corinthians today?    To answer that question, let me ask another one:  What do you believe that it takes to build the body of Christ in the world?    Let’s try that again.  If we are, collectively, the body of Christ, what do you think that it takes to build the body of Christ in this world?    My answer, coming from my experience with complex jigsaw puzzles, is that it takes two things:  a clear picture of what the body of Christ should look like in the world today… and the second is: lots and lots of little pieces.  In fact, every single little piece that God has given to us. 

            Let’s tackle the first one first…a clear picture of what the body of Christ should look like.  How do we arrive at a clear picture of what the body of Christ should look like?    First, I think we need to understand that there is only One who knows what the picture of the body of Christ in the world should look like… and that is God.    God is the artist who painted that picture… and God is the only One who knows all the details.  It is incumbent on us to try to discern what that picture should look like through the revelations that God has given to us in history.  The first revelation is the Word of God revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.    This is the Word of God that John said was there in the beginning.  This is the Word of God that was with God and was God.  This is the Word of God that became flesh and lived among us…God Incarnate… God with us… Immanuel.   From the Word of God, Jesus, we have two large chunks of information:  We have all the things that Jesus said that were recorded for us.  And we have all the things that Jesus did that were recorded for us.  This record of what Jesus said and did lives for us, of course, in the four gospels. 

            The second source of information about the body of Christ in the world comes from the work of the Holy Spirit in the early church… for it was the Holy Spirit that guided the actions of the disciples after Jesus ascended to heaven.  So, the second great source of information is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul… all of which were inspired by the Holy Spirit after the miracle of Pentecost. 

            So, if these are the two sources of information that we have, there is no way that we can come to an understanding of the picture of the body of Christ in the world without burying ourselves in the Bible.  And that is where I suggest that we begin.    But, a word of caution here is in order here.  It is true that God reveals the truth to us in the Word of God, Jesus, and in the words of God, the Bible.  However, it is also true that the four writers of the gospels each recorded a different story of the life of Jesus… each with a slightly different emphasis.    We know from our own experience that four people who witness the same event will tell four different stories about what happened… just as four people who read the same book or four people who see the same movie will give a slightly different report of what they have read or seen.  We can all read the Bible… the same words… the same translation… and come up with different pictures of what the truth might be. 

            So, if the four gospel writers give us slightly different pictures of God’s plan and we all interpret those pictures in a slightly different way, how are we to come to a collective understanding of what God intended for us?    I am going to suggest that we deal with it in much the same way that our legal system deals with multiple witnesses to the same event.  We get all the witnesses together… we share our stories… and those among us who are chosen from the whole to represent us prayerfully consider all that they have heard… and, guided by God, come to a decision about what the truth might be.    This is what I truly believe is the glory of the Presbyterian Church.  It is our commitment to work together to discern the will of God.   After all, it is not your truth… or my truth… that we seek.  We come together to seek the will of God. 

Yes, I know that many of you become frustrated that the first step in our process is always to form a committee.  But, when you stop to think about the true purpose of having those committees, you begin to realize that it is not a human being who is in charge of this process.  It is God.    We are all members of the body of Christ coming together to seek the will of the head…the head of the body… the church… and that head is Jesus Christ, our Lord, God Incarnate.    Yes, it is more difficult this way… and, yes, it does take longer.  But I truly believe that when the community of the faithful works together, the outcome is a closer approximation of the picture that God has painted than what any one individual could arrive at alone.    That is why the members of the Session of this church spent six hours together in this building yesterday… so that they could collectively seek the will of God for our church in this place at this time.  And we began with the Word of God. 

Now, let me share with you a couple characteristics of the picture that I believe that God has painted for us.  First of all, I know from my experience working on jigsaw puzzles that the most interesting jigsaw puzzles to work on are those that have a panoramic view of the world.  One that comes easily to mind is a picture of Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria.  Built by the Mad King Ludwig II, it looks like a fairyland castle set in the beautiful Bavarian mountains.  In the picture, it looks too beautiful to be real… with high walls and lots of turrets and towers.  And the mountains around it show hints of winding roads to little villages hidden in the forest.    This castle was the dream of the king.  It was built to be a setting for the operas of the great composer Richard Wagner.  In fact, Cinderella’s Castle in Disneyland is patterned after this castle.  The panoramic view shows us what exists… what is possible… and also teases us… and challenges us… with what might lie just beyond the horizon that we can see… just around the corner… just over the mountain. 

You know, I have worked on puzzles that just show a close-up detail of a single item… like a pile of yellow pencils, for example, or a forest full of evergreen trees.  But the narrow focus of that picture made working on the puzzle itself tedious and boring.  That focus sharply defined the boundaries of my view and limited my involvement and excitement in the whole.  A panoramic view, on the other hand, shows some things close up… and some things far away… and hints of things that cannot truly be seen.  That is fascinating to me.    Jesus has said that we are to be his witnesses in Jerusalem… Samaria… and the rest of the world.  If that is true, then we cannot limit our vision to just our congregation… or even our community.  We have to have a panoramic view of God’s will for us.    It is our Steering Committee for our Long Range Plan, now a standing committee of the Session, that pushes us to keep the panoramic perspective in front of us.

            Secondly, some of the most beautiful jigsaw puzzles are those that include many different colors… shapes… and items of interest… whether those colors and shapes come from flowers… or houses… or people… or clothing…or a variety of items represented in the picture.  The greater the diversity of flowers… or houses… or people… or clothing… or items… the more interesting the picture is… and the more it captures the interest and involvement of a greater number of people.    I have seen a table full of people work on a puzzle that is panoramic and colorful… while a puzzle that is comprised of a picture of a pile yellow pencils, for example, quickly becomes boring for all, but the most dedicated of jigsaw puzzlers.   Our Congregational Care Committee helps us to keep track of the diversity of people within our church, while our Outreach Committee is continually seeking different people to add to the mix.

            Now, you would think that a picture with great diversity in colors… shapes… or objects of interest would be more complex and, therefore, more difficult to assemble.  In reality, the greater the variety of flowers… houses… people… clothing… or items represented in the picture, the easier the puzzle is to put together.  And, it is easier for two reasons:  First, because of the complexity, it is easier to find the specific niche for each piece of the puzzle… that unique place where each piece fits.    Secondly, because there are more people working on the puzzle, the puzzle itself comes together much more quickly. 

            Interestingly enough, there is research that shows that the involvement of many people in the crafting of a solution or a plan not only builds increased commitment on behalf of those involved, but results in a higher quality outcome.    And, research also shows that, the greater the diversity of the group of people… and the greater the variety of ideas that are considered … the stronger the ultimate result will be.    It is called synergy… the effect we have on each other when we work together to build a plan or to find a solution.  We draw the best out of each other… each of us seeing different solutions… different directions… different paths… to the same ultimate goal. 

            Now, we have spent a lot of time talking about the picture on the cover of the box… the picture that God has painted of the body of Christ in the world.   Let’s spend a little time talking about the pieces to the puzzle that are inside the box.    First of all, we need every single piece that is in that box to put that puzzle together.    There are no extra pieces in the box.   God, in God’s infinite wisdom, brings us together at particular points in time because God knows that, at that particular point in time, these are the pieces that are needed to complete the picture that God has painted for us.    Each piece will contribute something unique to the picture.  Each piece brings something that is not present in any other piece of the puzzle.  All the pieces are needed. 

Going back to our first illustration, you might think that, if the puzzle indeed had too many left feet, that we should get rid of some of them.  Extra left feet are disposable… don’t you think?    Well, I am here to tell you today that no body parts are disposable.  Every part of the body of Christ in this particular church is needed to complete the picture that God has painted for this particular church.    As you could see from the picture on the cover of the box in that first illustration, all of those left feet were needed… were necessary… to complete the picture.    If one left foot were missing, the picture would have a hole in it… would be incomplete. 

The same is true with the body of Christ in the world.  Some of you might believe that you are an extra left foot…and you find yourself thinking of that old saying that a person is can’t dance because they have two left feet.  You think that you are disposable.  Well, that is not true when we are putting together the picture of the body of Christ in the world.  There is no such thing as too many left feet.  No part of the body is disposable.  There are no extra pieces in the box.  All of the pieces are needed… are necessary… to complete the whole. 

So, when we gather… as a church… or as a committee… wherever we gather and for whatever reason we gather… we need to remember that God has brought us together for a purpose.  God has selected particular parts of the body of Christ to be at a particular place… at a particular time… for a particular reason.    It is God who has painted the picture on the cover of the box … and no one else has seen that picture.  We have to work together to complete that puzzle.    And, as we work together to complete that puzzle, we need to remember that every piece is needed to complete that picture.  If you are not involved in the church in some way, there is a hole in our puzzle.  And God has not put any extra pieces in the box.  There are no disposable parts of the body of Christ.  All are needed… all are necessary… to complete the picture that God has painted for us.  And, as we move forward as a church, we need you to complete the puzzle that God has given to us.  Amen.

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21