January 25, 2004
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
On Chinese New Year Day, I took Lauren and Dan to eat at ZAO’s Noodle Shop on Chestnut. It’s Asian fusion with many dishes prepared for vegans and vegetarians. A great place to have “jia,” the no-meat dishes one eats on New Year’s Day. Following what my parents taught me, I gave each of our children a red envelop with crisp new money to wish them a happy and fulfilling New Year. Our time together wasn’t only to practice traditions; it was to come together as a family to strengthen relationships.
The big street fair last weekend and the upcoming parade may catch all the news media, but the holiday is just as much about families coming together for mutual respect—to bind the members of a family together. Everyone is invited, no one is left out. Gathering around food, we see relatives we haven’t seen since last year’s New Year dinner. We didn’t only physically clean our houses by sweeping out the old to welcome the new, but we emotionally clean up and sweep out any bad relationships in the past year to begin afresh in the New Year. During the holiday, we think and say only good thoughts about others. No monkeying around with our relatives at New Year time.
Monkeying Around in Corinth
After Paul carried the gospel to Corinth, an explosive and thriving center of life, the church became an exciting community of converts within eighteen month. But when he heard that cliques and factions were tearing the new Christians apart, he wrote this letter. As gifted as they were, they had little sense of being a part of the whole community of faith. They were monkeying around trying to impress each other with their displays of intellect and spiritual power. The problem was that they failed miserably at working together. They were so proud of their gifts that they were tearing apart the community God created.
In this Corinthian church, there were at least four factions. The better educated were following Apollos because he knew the Old Testament inside and out. Another equally strong group was following Peter, the key apostle. A majority of the poor and freed slaves proclaimed their allegiance to Paul. And the fourth group thought they were closer to Christ than anyone else and didn’t need any one leader to show them—sounds like Baptists to me!
Last week, we heard that each one of us has been given a manifestation of the Holy Spirit for the common good. Today, with the gifts that each one of us has, we’ll look at how to work together for the common good—the church of Jesus Christ. In the Year of the Monkey when we may be as creative and resourceful as a monkey, we will see how we may work together for Christ.
Everyone is Important
In Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians, he used a familiar metaphor of his times—the human body. With great humor, he demonstrates the unity of the church by the various functions of the human body. He calls us to imagine a body that is all hands or feet, all heart or liver, all bone or blood. Not only would it look funny; it just won’t work. Feet and hands, eyes and ears all belong to the body, and the body cannot survive without all parts working together in harmony.
Because Paul was so imaginative, I started to imagine too. I wonder, what’s the value of our little toes anyway? They’re usually squished inside our tight shoes. Too small to be noticed and if you were going to lose something, why not the little toes! But Paul tells us that no part of the body is dispensable. Even the weaker members are indispensable.
Paul doesn’t quit here, he goes even further to say to us that when there are members of the body that are not as respected by the others, we are to treat them with greater respect. The little toes need to be in nice Nordstrom shoes as all the rest of the toes! We are to clothe members of the body that we think less honorable with greater honor. The more respectable members of the body are already getting respect and don’t need this attention.
When this happens, Paul said there would be no more dissension within the body. Every member will receive the care and attention it deserves because God arranged it this way in the first place. When we work together, we become the Body of Christ—baptized into the one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we are all made to drink of one Spirit.
We Work Together
As long as we can remember back into our childhood memories, we have been taught and conditioned to believe that there are some people who are smarter so they get to go to the head of the class; some people who are stronger or taller so they get to play on the varsity team; some people who are more fun to be with so they are invited into the social clubs; some people who are more superior so they receive certain privileges and rights than everyone else.
The word of God this morning is that in the Body of Christ, every member is valuable and is needed to make the whole body works. No one is left out. Everyone belongs. Everyone has a function—necessary in the body. We shatter all social, economic, racial, and physical boundaries that we humans have created. How easily we human beings sort ourselves, inside the church, as well as outside it, into reassuringly homogenous enclaves based on shared social aspirations, fashion sense, or tastes in music. Walk into any junior high school cafeteria and you will find fiercely exclusive lunch tables defined by race, status, and culture. What would God’s “lunchroom” look like?
Paul shares with us a “theology of relationships.” It means that each person has incredible worth. And each person has a task to perform, a gift to exercise, a duty to fulfill, without which the church falls apart and becomes dysfunctional. For if one suffers, all suffers; and if one receives honor, all can celebrate its benefits for the Christian community.
There’s a story, The Eighteenth Camel by Leo Hartshorn that demonstrates mathematically Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 12 that everyone counts. Upon the death of a father, three sons were to divide seventeen camels as follows: one-half to the eldest son, one-third to the middle son; and one-ninth to the youngest son. Unfortunately, the sons could not collect their inheritance, because seventeen cannot be divided by two, three, or nine. Caught in a dilemma, a neighbor volunteered to give them his only camel so that they could divide their inheritance without spilling blood—the camels’ or their own. With eighteen, then the oldest took nine, the middle took six, and the youngest took two. Nine plus six plus two equals seventeen, so the neighbor collected his camel, and everyone was happy.
Hartshorn calls the 18th camel an “unessential necessity”—something that may not seem significant but in actuality is required. The Bible is full of 18th camels. Noah, Sarah, Jacob, Joseph, Rahab, Ruth, David, Mary, the Samaritan woman, and many others are all 18th camels in some way. They are people who do not appear to add a whole lot, if anything, to the lives of others, but in reality they are very necessary and needed. They are the little toes. Are you the eighteenth camel at our church?
We Love Others
At the close of this passage, Paul once again speaks of the diversity of gifts in the church. Remember, it’s one of the four lists of gifts in the New Testament. He says some are apostles, prophets, teachers, and others have the gifts of healing, leadership or speaking in tongues. The church is blessed with all these gifts, but their single purpose is to live out God’s purpose of love in the world.
Who cares if you have the gift of faith or the gift of tongues, if you don’t know how to love your neighbor? This is precisely the point Paul is about to make in 1 Corinthians 13. At the very end of chapter 12, he said, “Strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.” It is no accident that the famous love chapter comes immediately after this passage. The gifts without love are nothing.
The way we use our spiritual gifts is to love our neighbors. The members of the Corinthian church were all gifted in their own right, but they were working as individual Christians. Each one focused on his own project; each one had her own ideas of how the church should work; each one pushed his own agenda. They may be gifted but they were nothing close to being the Body of Christ. They had missed the main point—loving each other and their neighbor.
Jesus said the same thing in Matthew when he was asked what the first commandment was. He replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (22: 37-39)
We may go to church and participate in all of the activities there, but without love it is all a charade. It is only monkeying around.
When we stand before God at that judgment day, I do not believe God is going to ask specific questions like: “Were you right on the abortion issue or the capital punishment issue? How many times were you recognized for your own accomplishments? Did you get your agenda passed in church?” I believe the question will be: “Did you really love?” If our differences destroy our love, we are no longer Christians.
When we celebrate Chinese New Year, I like to think about it as a time for us to renew our love for each other. Inasmuch as we all gather in our different homes and meet as families at restaurants, we come to church with a similar focus to reconnect and celebrate the abundance that we have when all of our gifts are brought out to be used for God’s glory and praise. At church we don’t have to wait to renew our relationships only once a year. We come to church every week to bind all members of God’s family together—functioning together to love others.
The Year of the Monkey in this year that the Lord has made means that we are called to be as clever and creative as monkeys are. We have opportunities to use our God given spiritual gifts to work together, valuing every member in our church for the purpose of loving our neighbors.
FCBC Couplets
If I were to write spring couplets to hang outside the front doors of our church, I would say, “All members of the body, though many, are one body.” On the other side of the doorway, “It is with Christ.”
The blessings for me in being a member of FCBC are seeing the relationships we have. When one member is suffering, we all take time out of our busy schedules to suffer with the one. When there is a joy or happiness, we all set aside our chores to celebrate as if the happiness is our own. There is no place on earth that is like the church of Jesus Christ where all members regardless of how weak or how strong, how small or how large we might think we are—are still welcomed, respected, and even given more respect in order to make sure that Body of Christ is all functioning together.
We have a gift and duty to do what no one else can do or say, and that is to proclaim and demonstrate the transforming grace and love of God in the world. This is what the Body of Christ has been gifted to do and no one else has been called or ordained in God’s name to do this.
It may be the Year of the Monkey but in the life of the church of Jesus Christ, there’s no monkeying around when it comes to God’s spiritual gifts given to each one of us. We are to value everyone, work together, and to use our gifts to love others.
Let us pray.
O God, lead us to value and appreciate all members of our church as essential and vital members of the Body of Christ. Teach us to work together by making sure that all ideas and viewpoints are heard and considered when we serve you at this church. And as your gifted people, Lord, we dedicate ourselves to love our neighbor as you love the world in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Redeemer. Amen.