Crossroads: Contender or Couch Potato?

A Message by Rob Sack

Crossroads International Fellowship, 7 September, 2003

Text: 1 Corinthians 12:4-6, 12-13

Some time ago, Horyon bought us a scale, so we can weigh ourselves and see how healthy

we are. Now, I won't say that I'm afraid of the scale, but it is one of the few things in our house that I avoid more than the vacuum cleaner. We don't like to look too closely at our own bodies. I don't, anyway. I see something far less than perfect, and so I avoid it.

We also don't like to examine our lives too closely. If we hate to see week muscles and

big stomachs, it's even worse to see weak spirituality and big egos. One reason we come to

Church, read the Bible and pray is to remind ourselves of spiritual weakness and exercise a little. In fact, prayer is a kind of spiritual exercise. A good way to pump up your spiritual life. Usually my sermons address the issue of building your own spiritual body, but today I want to draw your attention to another Spiritual Body that needs some attention

The Church is another body in our lives that doesn't get enough attention. Some of us

expect it to be there for us when we have problems. We expect it to be a kind, accepting place. We expect it to be more like a family than a group of coworkers. We want the Church to always be ready for us. And after all, we show up every Sunday. We sing the songs and pray the prayers, so we should expect that attention in return, right?

Or perhaps it's worse than that: Maybe you don't expect any of these things. Maybe

you've never found them in a church. Maybe you think of Church as a place where everyone is in

good shape except you, and you had better keep quiet so they don't realize that you are screwing up your life.

Or maybe you just got here. You'd love to do something for the Church, but you don't

really know everyone that well, and surely "They" won't trust someone who has only been here

for a couple of weeks. Or a month. Or two or three months.

Or maybe you just want to rest on Sunday. After all, God rested on Sunday, right? Why

shouldn't you?

If you are using any of these excuses to not be involved in Church, then you are doing

something wrong. You are not helping to build the body of Christ, and you are turning away

from what God has planned for you.

I'm going to say that again: If you are not involved in Church, then you are doing

SOMETHING WRONG. You are NOT HELPING to build the BODY OF CHRIST, and you are TURNING AWAY from what GOD HAS PLANNED FOR YOU!!!

Let me make something very clear right here and now: I am not going to apologize for

this sermon, even though some of you might feel hurt or offended at what I just said. And let me put it this way, if your doctor tells you that you need to change your diet and exercise more or you will have a heart attack and die, do you feel offended? Of course not. If your boss tells you that you need to change the way you are doing your job or you will be fired, do you feel offended? No. You might disagree with his ideas, but you need honesty from someone who decides whether you will be fired or not.

I'm not your doctor or your boss, but I've just come from visiting them. They are right

here, in this Book. And as we will see today, I'm not making this up. As my sermon title

suggests, we are going to take a look at Crossroads Church today. But first I want to take a look at a different church. A church far away from here, in space and time, but which still has a lot in common with Crossroads.

The church at Corinth was incredibly diverse. Sounds like us. Paul mentions that they

come from different religious backgrounds, both Jews and non-Jews. We at Crossroads also

come from many church backgrounds and traditions. The Corinthians came from all levels of

society, from slaves to slave owners. We don't have any slaves here, but some of us are working hard to make enough money to live while others have enough. There were both men and women involved, just like here. There were many talents in the church, and undoubtedly many different personality types. Once again, sounds like us. I don't know whether they had different languages to deal with, too, but I'm guessing that they did. After all, Corinth was a port city, like Pusan, and a commercial center for that region. The fact that Paul is writing about this suggests that there were many problems, and it's hardly surprising with such a variety of people.

Of course, Paul isn't just writing to the people there at that time, Paul is writing to us, here and now! And just as Paul saw the Body of Christ in Corinth becoming weak, he saw it

happening to many churches through the ages, down to us. And the solution to the problems they

had is the same as the solution for us today: a reminder of what we are.

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. 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.

What is a unit? A unit is one thing, by itself. Crossroads is a unit. That is a difficult thing to imagine sometimes, because it does not make sense to our eyes. When I look around, I don't see one thing here. I see people. Individual people. Each of you has a name, you are not physically joined together. But still, we are one. Just as Jeff and Susan and Elisabeth and Isaac and Caleb are one. Just as Horyon and I are one. Families are different, though. You are born into most families, and spend a lot of time together, and do many things together. But now you are a part of something new. You have been baptized into one body.

Paul then looks at the body parts as a way to look at us, here today in Crossroads. I'm

going to read from verse 14 to 20.

Paul is looking at another excuse for not getting involved in the church: a low self-esteem. He's imagining the foot grumbling to itself:

"Oh, man, I wish I was a hand. Look, the hand is holding a cold drink! That looks so

nice, but here I am stuck in this hot, smelly shoe. Oh no, do we have to stand up again? Hey up there! You guys are heavy! Why don't you carry this body around! Oh no, an itch! My toe

itches! I can't see anything down here! I hate being a foot. I quit!"

When the foot says "I quit," does it stop being a part of the body? Of course not! And

then Paul imagines the ear, comparing itself to the eye:

" Well, another boring day for the ear. Just holding the glasses up. Yep, that's me.

Holding the glasses on. Oh! Did someone say something? There. Finished. Dude, that lucky

eye gets to look at stuff all the time, and what do I do? Hold his stupid glasses. I don't need these glasses, so why should I have to hold them? I want to be an eye. That's where the fun is. I just don't belong here."

Can the ear leave the body? Not unless the body is Van Gogh. Which brings up an

important point: What happened to Van Gogh after he cut his own ear off? That's right. He

continued to paint, and more importantly, to live. Now, what happened to his ear after he cut it off? For all we know it got flushed down the toilet or fed to the dog. It didn't survive. It couldn't survive by itself.

God has designed us to be part of this body, this unit. Just like Van Gogh's ear needed

Van Gogh to survive, we need the body of Christ to survive, whatever part we are. And so

sometimes we have to do work that we don't like, like the poor foot, sweating away in a dark

shoe while the whole body leans on him.

To us, this sounds crazy: of course the foot does its job. Of course the ear does its job. But then we turn around and do the same thing the crazy foot and eye just did. Have you ever said to yourself, "I can't really help at Crossroads because I feel shy getting up in front of people. I'm just not a public speaker. Sorry, I guess I can't help." If you've thought that, then you are taking the foot's way out, denying the importance of what you can do to wish for what someone else can do.

Paul illustrates this with a shocking image that should remind all of us of how silly this

idea is: He says, "What if the entire body were an eye? Or an ear? How could it survive?"

Imagine yourself as one giant eye. How would you move around? How would you listen? In the

same way, what if all of us only felt called to give sermons? Who would play the piano? Who

would pray? Who would lead the songs? Who would talk to new visitors? Who would do those

jobs that need to be done?

Another problem we see sometimes is in verse 21: "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I

don't need you!'" This is a kind of warning to those of us who are doing visible work. It's a

warning against pride. If I start to think that because I give sermons I am more useful than Song-in playing the piano, then I have a problem. Paul tells us that the parts of the body we look down on are indispensable, and the parts we're ashamed of receive a special modesty.

Think of a car. A car is one thing, even though it is made up of a lot of little things. If it is missing one of its pieces, it doesn't work as well, or it stops functioning all together. A spark plug is about the size of my finger. Cars have more than one spark plug, and they are essential for a car to run. If one spark plug is missing or damaged, the car doesn't run smoothly. It jumps and starts and it makes a lot of noises. You don't have to understand cars to know when a spark-plug is missing. And if more than one spark plug is missing, the car may not even start, much less run. And you can't even see the spark plugs! They are deep in the heart of the car, where it's dark, and hot, and noisy.

Compare the spark plugs to the stereo. The radio is right there in the center of the cabin, where everyone can see it. Some people spend hundreds of dollars on their car stereo, making sure that it is loud and clear, so you can hear the car coming from a mile away. Boom, boom-boom-boom, boom! But how important is the stereo to the operation of the car? It can help to keep you from falling asleep on a long drive, but the car will still work without it.

Sometimes I wonder whether I am more like a spark plug or a radio. I think we all need

to ask ourselves that from time to time. Do we make a lot of noise, or do we make the car go?

But a body is even more interdependent than a car. A friend of mine back in America

recently gave her kidney to her aunt. You see, her aunt had suffered catastrophic kidney failure. Both kidneys had completely stopped working. The kidneys' job is to remove wastes from the blood. You might call the kidneys the garbage collectors of the body. And what happens when no one collects the garbage? The body gets sick. Long enough without the kidneys, and the body will die, poisoned by its own garbage. And so she had to go to a hospital and be hooked up to a machine three or four times a week. The dialysis machine is about the size of a school desk, and it does the job of two kidneys about the size of your fists.

My friend Letha gave one of her kidneys to her aunt. Now they are both recovering well.

It looks like Letha is the same as she was with two kidneys, but she isn't. She is more vulnerable to kidney disease and injury. If she has a kidney problem in the future, she doesn't have a spare. Sometimes having just enough to get by is a little bit dangerous.

Let's take a look at Crossroads using Paul's body analogy. Is Crossroads a healthy body?

Your first thought is probably about how big we are, how many people come. I don't believe that is very important. A healthy mouse is in better shape than an elephant with cancer. Instead of size, we should be looking at what we are doing here, and how we are using our gifts. So if I ask you, "Do you have some talent or gift that can make Crossroads a stronger body? And are you using it?" What is your answer?

Paul says in verse 7: "Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the

common good." Wow! Can you believe that? To EACH ONE of us, the SPIRIT has been GIVEN! That means that your answer is "YES". All of you. Not just Kwangshin, Anthony, Jeff, Jeong-hi, Song-in and the other people you see in front of you on Sundays. ALL of YOU.

So let's look at Crossroads again, knowing that we all have so much potential, and see

how strong we are. Let's stand Crossroads in front of the mirror and take a look. First of all, I see some good things. I see a lot of people serving. I see a lot of people praying. I see a Church that is reaching out financially to India and the Middle East and making a difference. I see members who have grown over time, and become more active. I'm sorry. I don't just see some good things, I see a lot of good things.

But I also see some things that need work. I see the same few people doing most of the

jobs. I see a lot of people settled into something comfortable, just enjoying the ride. I see many gifts laying there, unopened. Unused. I see the servant with one gold piece going out into the back yard and burying it in the ground.

Well, this month we are going to go out together and dig up that gold, and we are going

to use it. Because when Paul says the Spirit has been given to each of us, he doesn't mean for us to do what we please with it! He means for us to use it. That's not your gold. It's not even Crossroads' gold. It's GOD'S GOLD!!!

Those words can be a little disturbing, I know. If something I have belongs to someone

else, that usually means that I won't get anything out of it. When I say that your gift actually belongs to God, and that you should use it in God's service, your first question might be "What's in it for me? What can I get out of it?" Don't be embarrassed. That is human nature, it's part of who and what we are to ask that question. And it is God's nature to have the answer: by taking care of others, you take care of yourself.

Someone told me once that Heaven and Hell are very similar places at meal times. In both

places, the residents sit at tables with bowls of soup. They all have spoons, but the spoons are tied to their hands so that they can't let go. And the spoons are very strange, because they are about 120 cm long. In hell, the people all sit with their spoons tied to their hands and try to feed themselves. They get soup all over the table, all over their clothes, and all over the floor, but they never get any into their mouths. And so after every meal they are still hungry. In Heaven, when the people sit down with long spoons tied to their hands, they don't even try to feed themselves. Instead they feed each other. When their meal times are finished, their stomachs are full, and so are their hearts.

When my feet spend hours standing while I teach, they don't have any idea what's going

on up there. But they do know that they are working for the body. The teaching makes money.

The money buys food, and the food feeds the body. By serving the body, my feet are, in turn,

served.

That's how it is in the Body of Christ. When we serve the body, and each other, our

needs are met. This is more than just a nice idea, this is a necessity. The Body of Christ does not exist to meet your needs. In fact, the opposite is true: You exist to serve the Body of Christ. But in doing so, your needs will be met. Your needs for love, security and identity, will all be met when you give of your gifts.

Today, after the service, we will be mourning the death of a member of our congregation.

I know this is shocking news for you. I'm sure most of you knew Mr. Else. After all, Someone

Else did a lot of work at Crossroads. Someone Else worked hard to make sure that Crossroads

was a good place to be. We thought that Someone Else would always be there to do the important work, but now Mr. Else is gone. And I know just the person to take Someone Else's place: YOU.

I hope that you can stick around after the service today. We're going to take a little test to see what sort of gifts we have, what treasures we have been given. And maybe you will start thinking of how you can help with the work that Someone Else has done until now.

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