COME BUILD A CHURCH
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Text: 1 Corinthians 12:4-18
Some of my earliest memories of my father go back to Prairie Village, Kansas, when I was no more than 5 or 6 years old. In 1950, my father left the pastorate of a substantial church in my home town, Newton, Kansas, to become the founding pastor of Prairie Baptist Church in one of the growing suburbs of Kansas City. This was a new church start, part of an American Baptist program called “Churches for New Frontiers.” The American Baptist Convention had purchased a large lot of prime real estate on which to build this new church and called on my father to come build a church, or rather work with a small group of charter members and denominational resources to build a church.
One memory that stands out to me is of my father preaching from the top of the television set in the Borel’s living room to the small group gathered there. It was an enormous leap of faith for him to leave a prestigious position with a large congregation to risk God’s call to something new with a handful people and an uncertain future. Another memory comes a little later of my father on the roof of a house, wearing his felt fedora, hammering shingles, something for which I am sure he was not cut out. But, there he was, helping to complete the house that would eventually become the parsonage for the congregation, but initially was its church building. Perhaps it is this very memory that leads me to climb up on the roof at a Habitat project, something I am clearly not cut out for in any professional sense.
Come build a church…in my father’s case, quite literally. Do all the pastoral work with limited resources and even help build the building that will house the congregation. This all came from a deep commitment to God’s call to him to spread good news to a burgeoning post-war community, to follow Christ’s example of ministering to those in need, to make a difference in the world in whatever way he could. Building a church any time and any place is a faith commitment, whether you’re starting from scratch or building on a well established legacy.
Come build a church…how might Ken Medema’s wonderful little song speak to us today? We are not a new church. We have been around for 116 years. We have history and property. We have a legacy of faith and material resources. Though we started in a railroad car, we now have fine old building that in many ways is more than we need, so why would we talk about building a church? The clues are in Ken’s song. We are not talking of towers rising skyward…we already have one of those. We are not looking for a house of wood or glass or stone…we already inhabit a lovely one.
The tools and materials for the kind of building project Ken is imagining are laid out in the song. We need no hammer or nails, no paint or brush, we are called to build with soul and spirit, and a fair share of human frailty. We are called to build a church of flesh and bone and blood. That seems a curious way to conceive of church. It doesn’t seem to offer a lot of security. What are we to do when it rains, when it’s cold and windy or the sun beats down and bakes the earth? Where will we worship, provide program, store all our stuff? Where will we plug in our computers and copiers and phones? It doesn’t sound like a church with a lot of promise.
And yet…there may be a vision here, something that is enlivening and hopeful. What if the church is essentially more about the people than it is about the resources, the building, the stuff? What if we decided to focus more on soul and spirit than we do on how many and how much? What if we offered our own human frailty to be used for God’s purposes, offered our very bodies as living sacrifices to the call of God to be the church? Not just the First Baptist Church of Palo Alto, California, but the church of Jesus Christ in this time and place? What might we have to give up or take on? If you remember, the “Words to Consider” from this week’s Midweek Message were from Leonard Sweet, who observed, "There are two kinds of courage, the courage to let go and the courage to hold on. Lord, give me both."
That speaks volumes about what we need to build the church here – the courage to keep on and the courage to let go. Or in the words of Reinhold Niehbuhr’s great serenity prayer, “O God and Heavenly Father, Grant to us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed, courage to change that which can be changed, and wisdom to know the one from the other, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.” It is in the very nature of the church to be in continual discernment. What can we do? What can we not do? How do we know the difference? How do we hear and respond to God’s call when we struggle with so many encumbrances of memory, expectation, material burden, sense of responsibility, weight of the world? How do we overcome our anxiety about the future so that we can live fully in the present?
If we are called on to come build the church today, where do we start? Well, any building must start with the foundation. Medema says, “Jesus shall be its firm foundation.” Rod Romney says “the church’s strong foundation is God’s eternal love.” There is no conflict here, for Rod goes on to say, “through mystery of creation, it entered from above.” That is, the Word became flesh and lived among us. Love came down in human form and walked this earth to show us the way. This ought to be the foundation of all we are as the First Baptist Church of Palo Alto. First and foremost we are the body of Christ. Jesus is our foundation. If we are not grounded here, there is little hope that any church we build will survive as church.
Over and over again through the past 18 months, Lionel has asked the Council to consider how what we decide, what we propose, what we do derives from and fulfills our stated objectives. This is a good practice I think. It really is the work of discernment. If God’s love, as manifest in the person of Jesus Christ, is our firm and sure and strong foundation, then everything we propose, decide, do must be built on that foundation, must emerge from that source. We must constantly ask ourselves how does the church we are building relate to its foundation? How are we linked to Christ? How does this idea, action, structure, relationship live out the love of God? This is really a discipline, a spiritual discipline, a challenge to be courageous in hanging on and letting go.
Beyond that foundation, our most precious resource is us. That’s right, you and me. That’s what Ken is trying to teach us. The church is built of flesh and blood and bone, it exists always as human frailty – yours and mine. Paul understood this when he was writing to the church in Corinth. It was his “new church start,” but they had gotten so caught up in competing for individual attention, that they’d drifted off the foundation. He calls them back. “Come build a church, but not that way, not picking at one another, undercutting one another, competing for power and prestige. Yes, there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Do you hear that? It’s crucial to Paul’s argument. The reason the Spirit comes to dwell in us is to build up the common good, not our individual egos. What the Spirit gives are gifts, not qualities we earn or create on our own, what we have are gifts and they are to be shared for the benefit of all.
That’s right “many gifts [but] one spirit, one love known in many ways. In our difference is blessing, from diversity we praise one Giver, one Word, one Spirit, one God known in many ways.” So look around for a moment. See who is here. Imagine who is missing. What are our gifts? How are we different from one another? What do we have in common? What blessings do you see in this very room this morning encompassed in both our diversity and our strong foundation? How do we build a church using these resources?
Wait a minute, before you start telling me that these resources aren’t sufficient, aren’t good enough, are too old or too young, worn out, burned out, used up - stop, look, listen, think. “If the foot would say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?” Now, look again, not so much with a perspective of how it used to be or ought to be or even how you want it to be. Try to see with the eyes of Jesus the Christ, try to consider from the mind of God, try to flow with the power of the Spirit. Look for possibilities, hold hope, open yourself to something new. Even if we are the tip of the fingernail on the pinkie of the left hand, we are still part of the body of Christ. We are needed. We have a role, a part to play and it is important. Remember, “God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as [God] chose.” God had a purpose in making us who we are; it is our responsibility to discern what that purpose is and to live into it. Come build a church with that vision, with these resources, a church built by and with the hand of God.
Many of those “Churches for New Frontiers” from the 50s did not survive. Some never even really got off the ground. Prairie Baptist Church has become one of the premier churches in our denomination, often leading in mission giving, creatively pastored by Heather Entrekin and her able staff. My father stayed for 3 years. I remember him saying he helped that congregation through its first big crisis – the seemingly inevitable tension that rises when newcomers join and challenge the privileged position of the charter members. Will there be room for outsiders, new folk with different ideas and different ways? He lived to see that church grow to prominence and I know he took some pride that the risk he took to leave a secure position to come build a church succeeded. But I also believe he understood deeply how he held the hand of God and God held his hand in whatever part he had in building that church.
And, friends, that church is struggling with some of the same challenges we are facing in terms of shrinking resources. We are not alone in worrying about the future. Like us they are looking for the right way to come build the church, the church of Jesus Christ for their time and place. Maybe we can take heart that we are not alone. There are other people like us. There are other congregations like ours. We share common challenges, yes, but we also share something else. We share the sure, strong foundation of the living love of God in Christ Jesus and we share the wonderful possibilities of human frailty, flesh, bone and blood – inherently vulnerable, incredibly powerful in the hands of God. Shall we then join hands once more with God and one another? Shall we come build a church? Shall we yet offer hope, compassion, possibility, healing, love to one another and to a broken and needy world? I believe we can. Come, let us, together, build the church of Jesus Christ.
4Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.
12For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. 14Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.