January 28, 2007
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the CCU Annual Thanksgiving Dinner at Far East Café, San Francisco.
We have many tables. Each table is filled with people from the same church. For those of you at these tables up front, you must know someone important! For all of you in the back, you might need to know someone who is important!
Once a year, we come out of our different churches and gather to celebrate Christian unity and to meet old friends. I know some of you and perhaps many of you would rather be home after spending all morning and afternoon at church. If you had a choice, you probably would have chosen something else to do tonight. I think it’s pretty smart for CCU to plan this dinner between the last football playoff games and before the Super Bowl! But we are glad that you are not at home or at your own particular churches tonight. To truly become the Body of Christ, we need everyone to be here.
Many Members
The passage of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is all about body parts. You and I have heard many sermons preached on 1 Corinthians 12 before. And for you who are sitting at tables in the back of the room and feeling down and out, you would like this passage. You who are in the back of the room are saying we are not inferior or less indispensable or less respectable as the people sitting in these front tables think. In fact, Paul says that we are arranged as all members in the one body as God chooses. God arranged it that you who are sitting in the back of the room are not less indispensable than those sitting up front. And if you happen to feel less honored, we’ll clothe you with more honors and if you want more respect, we’ll give you more respect.
Paul is saying that we need to care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, we all rejoice together. So when the servers begin bringing out all of the delicious dishes, I want them to serve all of you in the back of the room first!
Two weeks ago, the CCU sponsored a one-day consultation when 51 people came. We reviewed the present health and future of Chinese churches in Chinatown. From this group, 10 CCU churches were present. Many of those at the consultation are here tonight. We were first introduced as church groups and the year that our churches were founded. The Presbyterians boasted that they were the oldest! Some complained that we had their founding year wrong and that they were started earlier!
Some of the groups sat all together—the Presbyterians were over here; the Independent Baptists back there; the one Nazarene was up here. I suspect that some people came with a little suspicion of what may be the hidden agenda—Are we competing for members? How can we convey our church to be better than it really is? What do they have that we don’t have?
Five of the churches had delegations of participants. Our church had as many as twelve people! The other five churches only had one person present. But in one of our prioritizing steps on what are the important issues facing our churches, each church was given the same number of dots to vote. While our church is the one that had 12 people, we only had 5 dots to use. While the Lutheran church only had one person; he also had 5 dots to use. It didn’t matter how many members your church might boast about or how few members you have that you are worried about, when it got to when it counts, every church had the same number of dots to use. The Body of Christ does not consist of one member but of many. We all have a say in our life together. Every one of our churches is essential to the proper working of the Chinese Christian Union!
By the end of our day, we were in inter-church groups working together over common and shared concerns. We didn’t talk specifically about True Sunshine or Chinese Methodist or Chinese Congregational or The Salvation Army. We were working together to come up with first steps on how to tackle topics such as the retention of members, outreach into our community, youth ministry, and lay leader development.
Body of Christ
The reason why Paul was writing to the Corinthians was that this was a troublesome church! There were divisions, disputes, infidelities, and a host of problems that made this congregation on Paul’s list of Worst Churches! But having said all of this and instructing them to respect and honor each other, Paul still says, “Now you are the body of Christ.”
It’s amazing that Paul would have made that sort of statement to this sort of church. For a number of chapters he has been hammering them for all their woeful inadequacies to be the church. They should be ashamed calling themselves Christians and acting the way they have acted, with their fussing and feuding and petty divisions, and cowardly disloyalty to the way of Christ. But even after all of that, Paul says to them, “Now you are the body of Christ.”
At the consultation two weeks ago, we had four working groups comprised of people from different churches strategizing on first steps for the retention of members, outreach into our community, youth ministry, and lay leader development. From each of these working groups, they came up with at least one first step that reflects the need for us to be the Body of Christ.
From the group working on the retention of members, they literally said that we “need a better understanding about the concept of church—the Body of Christ.” From the outreach to the community group, they said we need to “work together as churches and to share resources.” From the youth ministry group, they suggested “sponsoring inter-church summer camps.” And from the lay leader development working group, they asked for “collaborative and joint church training and education.” What we saw from this one-day consultation is a deep desire for us to work together as the Body of Christ.
We may know how to get to Cumberland Presbyterian on Jackson Street or to Chinese Lutheran on Balboa Street or to the Chinese Christian Reform out in the Avenues or to Chinese Grace Church on Larkin on or even to First Chinese Baptist where we always say to people, “We are across the street from the Chinatown YMCA.” But it’s when we know how to get together in a place like Far East Café or wherever we come together to serve Christ as members of the same Christian fellowship known as the CCU is when we truly become the Body of Christ.
We Are
Even after 90 years of history, I know we still have a long road ahead. And there will no doubt still be differences among our different churches. Some of you sitting in the back of the room still want to take a seat up front!
But I want to repeat what Paul said to the Corinthians. Paul does not say something like, “You ought to be the body of Christ,” or “If you work hard, someday you might be able to be the body of Christ.” He just says flat out to them, “You are the body of Christ.”
Like it or not, for all of our faults as Chinese churches in San Francisco, we are the body of Christ, the only visible form of the risen Christ that God takes on in the world. And if the world has problems and we can all see that it does, God’s answer to what’s wrong in the world is the church, the Body of Christ.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, by your grace, you have called us to be the church, your presence in the world. Teach us to set aside our differences and lead us to work together in San Francisco. Grant us your grace and give us the gifts we need to be your body, to show forth to all the world, the signs and actions of your kingdom. Bless the CCU, the Body of Christ, the church. Amen.