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The Body of Christ
Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor
. . . thank you, Matthias. It was nice to meet you both. But James, I will miss you. And I am so glad you have spent 10 weeks with us this summer and 10 weeks last summer. And South Bend Baptist will always have a home for you here. Renee, you literally have a home here. And we are so glad that you have been with us these 10 weeks as well. Let's begin with prayer and then we'll get into the sermon. God, thank you for these two young lives, Renee and James, who have offered us 10 weeks of their time and of their talents, the gifts that you have given them. And we thank you for the ministry that they have offered to our kids and our youth, and to the church at large. And so for them, we ask for a blessing over their lives, their future, that you continue to work in them and grow in them, that you plant your spirit deep down in, Lord. And we pray all of this in Christ's name, amen. It's good to be back. Where were we? So I will say I listened to Jim's messages and I thought they were wonderfully profound and kind of this perfect segue into where we've been and what we're doing. Jim, if you were here last week and the weeks prior was talking about, well, you tell me, what was he talking about? The deadly virtues, which is this nice symbiosis of what we were doing before and now are heading back into, which is there's a virtuous life and there's a life of vice. And sometimes, and Jim showed us the way here, these two things weave together and what is a virtue for many becomes a vice if you're not careful. Today we are on a the good path, which is to say the things that we should be doing in this life and Jesus teaching us how to live a life. And being Communion Sunday, I thought it would be a wonderful time to reflect on the practice that we have every month where we gather together and we break the bread and we share the cup. and what is happening in this moment. And so before I left for my sabbatical, I was in the series on the two ways. And the first way is this way that leads to life, and it's abundant life in the here and now, and it's eternal life in the life to come. And then there's a way that leads to destruction. And it's the ways of living that Scripture warns us about, that Jesus warns us about, that leads to death in the here and now, and it can erode your soul, and it can shrink your life down to just about nothing if you're not careful. And the premise of all of this is that I believe, and you should believe, that Jesus is trying to teach us how to live a life. It's a simple idea. It's been around for quite some time. But sometimes I think the church gets so focused on the life to come and maybe how do we punch the ticket for the next life that we often neglect? Like what is Jesus teaching us about the here and now? The premise for me is actually simple, is that life in the here and now is not all that different from life in the life to come. And that if Jesus is teaching us about eternal life in the same breath, he's teaching us about this life, because life is life. And the author of life, Jesus, the Father, they are teaching us what it means to live the life that they designed. They are the author of life, and they're showing us the good way. And if we walk that good way, well, then we have life abundant. And if we don't, then we have destruction. And Jesus does warn us that the way to life is narrow, which is to say it requires intention. It requires a purpose. It's going to bob and weave. And then the life that leads to destruction is wide and it's really easy to kind of get caught up in and to find yourself just moseying down the path of least resistance. If I could put the series into one sentence, it goes like this. If you want to be tutored on living a life by the one through whom all life was created, the one who has the user's manual to life, the author of it all, then you should follow Jesus' words and actions. Or as we said it in the 90s, WWJD. I can already hear one pushback to the whole premise though. And it's probably coming from the back row, the back row Baptists back there. And they would probably say something like, Eric, there are some things that are just Jesus. They're like his domain, and then we're not really called into doing that. And I want to say yes. this is an important critique, or it is an important line that we need to draw, that there are some things that Jesus does and that we are not called into doing, that we can't do. And as the table sits before me, it reminds me of what some of those things are. Jesus saves us from our sins. This is something we cannot do. Jesus makes the new covenant in his blood. The new covenant is not in our blood, and we cannot follow him on that road. It is Jesus who welcomes the world with his arms wide open, and we cannot do that. And so when we come to the table and we break the bread and we say, this is Christ's body, it is broken for you, and this is Christ's blood and is shed for the forgiveness of your sins, we can't do those things. But the longer I have sat with all of this, and the longer we've been walking down these roads together about the good way and the bad way and the narrow way and the wide way, it does occur to me that some of that line might need blurring. There is a line, and I don't believe at all we should cross it. There are those things that are fully Jesus. But I think sometimes we mistake what are fully Jesus and we just simply push that off to him completely and then we don't participate at all. And we need to. Because Jesus himself says things like Matthew 16, 24, pick up your cross and follow me. Or Luke 9, 23 to 24. He said to all, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. For ever would save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. And it seems Paul got the memo too. He invites us to have a relationship with the cross That is not all that different from Jesus. It's different enough and there needs to be that line. But we too are invited into the cross. And so in Galatians 2.20, Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And so yes, there are some things only Jesus can do. like dying for the sins of the world. But then he turns around and he invites us to mirror even some of that. And I think it goes one layer deeper still. But I first want to tell you a story. As I confessed earlier, I went to another church last week. That church too had a communion service They only do communion 4 * a year, and so the pastor, I guess, takes a moment every quarter to explain what it is that their communion service does. My daughter informed me that I'm a better preacher than he is, and she's an unbiased observer, so I take her at her word. But there was something he said that stuck with me. And it's funny because I actually don't remember much at all of what he said, which gives me grace for you. But he simply said this, is the body of Christ broken for you. I've said it 1000 times. I've said it multiple times today already. He said, this is the body of Christ broken for you. And something in his telling or rendering of that or statement or maybe it was just the Holy Spirit himself came into me and said, the body of Christ, the body of Christ, well, this is the body of Christ too. And Paul will talk about the body of Christ, not just as Christ's body, but as us, the church. And is there a way in which us, the body, should be broken for the world? And the answer I've come to is yes. that we too, our wounds, our hurts and our pains, specifically the ones that he has healed, those are meant for the healing of the nations. If I have one premise in this sermon, and if you're wondering like if somebody asks you, what did the preacher talk about today? It's this, it's that your lives, your wounds, the hurts, the brokenness that sits in your soul right now, that is the very thing that might heal somebody else. In the same way, that when Thomas comes to Jesus, he finds Jesus whole, but with what? With the scars in his hands and the wound on his side. And it is those scars that heal us. And it is the wounding of Jesus, as Isaiah 53 says, that heals the world. And so if we are to walk the Jesus path, It shouldn't be surprising that the very things that have wounded us over lifetime, the things that hopefully, prayerfully, you have allowed Jesus to do the work of healing within you, those are the very things you can take into the world and heal other people with. One of the joys of being on sabbatical is that I got to read some and I finished a book and I commend it to you. I don't always commend books, but this one was a good one. It's called Theo of Golden. Has anyone read this one yet? Theo of Golden. It's an absolutely beautiful book. I promise not to give away the ending. Kendall hasn't finished it yet and I'd be in real trouble if I did give away the ending. Also, I want you to read it. so that I won't say too much. But as I was reading it, felt very Christian without being explicitly Christian. The main figure is named Theo, and he becomes something of a God figure or Christ figure in the story, which shouldn't be surprising given his name is Theo, which is the Greek word for God. But it's not a Christ figure in an unrealistic kind of way. This isn't an allegory as if he is Jesus and he's going around doing Jesus things as Jesus. He's a very human figure. He's just another guy. But we've been talking about transformation all year long and being transformed. And He strikes me as a character who has spent his life being transformed and then taking the gifts of that transformation into the world that is all around him there in Golden, Georgia. And what is necessary for this sermon for you to know is that he is a man who has been deeply wounded, who has been hurt, who has pains of his own and a past. but a past that has been healed and that propels him to do the things that he does and to look people in the eyes and to speak into their souls and into their lives. And so the way the story goes is he walks into this town, Golden, Georgia, and he finds the center of town where there's a shop with art all over the walls. And there's an artist named Asher who has drawn all of these portraits of the people in the town. And Theo, who admires beauty and understands the depth of beauty and art, he sees them for what they are, which is these wonderful works of art. And then he has this idea where he begins to purchase them one by one and bestow them, that's what he calls it, bestow them to the people who are indeed portrait painted or they're drawn. And he sets up a meeting in the center of town with each person, one by one, because he wants to spend time with them. And he gets to know them and he asks them about their lives and they begin to reveal things to him about who they are and where they've come from, their own hurts, their own pain, the places in life where they've been wounded. And then Theo takes time to simply be with them and to help them in the ways that he can, to not worry about the ways that he can't. And then at the end of the meeting, he usually does two things. The one is he bestows this portrait to them. He gives them the portrait of themselves, mind you. And they perhaps see themselves for the very first time in a way that Theo can see them. And the way that he sees them is the second part, which is that just about every single time he says to them, in you I see sainthood. I see something in you that can grow into something great. And often the person will say, not me, I'm no St. and none of them are. But that's not the point. He is able to see into them that they are a child of God, and that they were made to be something more, and that God has good things for them, and he is speaking life into them. It's a beautiful book. As I said, I won't give away too much more. I promise what I've given away already is just simply the premise of the book. But it's worth knowing that all of that can only happen because Theo has some wounds in his life that have been healed for the most part at least, and that he then ministers to those people of Golden out of. There's a prayer from Saint Teresa of Avila that I quite like. It almost feels heretical, but I assure you it's not. She's writing in the 1500s, and she says this. She says, Christ has no body but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which his compassion looks out upon the world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours the hands with which he blesses the world. Christ has no body but yours. What I take her to be saying is nothing less than what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 12. When he looks around the room in Corinth and he says, You're an I. and you're a hand and you're a foot and you're an ear and every part of the body has a purpose here. And Paul finishes up and he says, now you, are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it. This is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12. But if you were to turn back just one page to 1 Corinthians 11, what you would find is Paul's version of the Lord's Supper, in which he reads the same thing that we're reading in Matthew 26. And it's Jesus saying, this is the body of Christ, and he hands them the bread, right? And this is the blood of Christ shed for the forgiveness of sins, and he hands them the cup. And then just one chapter later, Paul is saying that we're the body of Christ. And so my assumption, and I think it's a good one, is that something in our brokenness, in the ways that we get broken, are then meant to go out and to feed the world, that Christ has no body but ours. We are the hands We are the feet of Christ for a world who needs Christ. Every time we take communion, I tear the bread in half and I say the same words, the body of Christ is broken for you. And so, of course, this is a reference to Christ's body himself. It is the giving of his life, the shedding of his blood for the forgiveness of sins There are certain things that only Jesus can do. The salvation of the world, the restoration of humanity, the making of the new covenant in his blood. These are things that only Jesus can do. But the older I get and the more we've talked about following Jesus on this narrow way, living like Jesus, going left when he says go left, jumping when he says jump, and stopping when he says stop, the more I believe that Jesus is calling us into something far more radical than we've allowed for so that we become like Christ in every way. And when we say the body of Christ broken for you, I think Jesus is calling us, the church, his body, to be broken open for the people who are around us. In conclusion, I do have just a few pieces of advice on how to live this way. The first is, like Jesus, you should not go out of your way to seek the brokenness. Even Jesus was not wishing for it or wanting it. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he stood there saying, take this cup away from me. He didn't want it, but when it came, he submitted to it. The second thing is that because we don't seek it is one thing, but it will come at some point whether you want it to or not. The world will break you in a variety of ways. Sometimes the wounds are from the outside, and sometimes they are self-inflicted. But a wound is a wound. It might look like a spouse who died way too early. or an addiction that ate up years of your life, or the loss of a career that you loved and worked hard for, or a friend who left you when times got tough, or a dad who abused you when you were a child. There are lots of different kinds of wounds in life. But there are two responses to these wounds. One is to make yourself into a victim, which might be the most reasonable thing because it's possible you were a literal victim to a literal crime. Some wounds are of that nature. But just because it's reasonable is not the same as being good. And at some point, you must decide that remaining a victim and letting this wound fester and eat you up from the inside out, well, this is the way that leads to destruction. It is not the Jesus way that leads to life. The power of Christ in you is that healing is possible. The scars may remain just like Jesus' scars, which were touched by Thomas, and then it is out of the wounded place that you, like Jesus, are able to help heal others. It is what Henri Nouwen calls the wounded healer. This person has been healed by the great physician, has the scars to prove it, and then walks out into the world healing others through the very thing that God has healed in them. Perhaps like Theo of Golden. Or perhaps in real life, like the alcoholic who brings others to a place of recovery. Or the widow who helps other widows find healing in a grief share program. Or perhaps in one of the most powerful examples I've seen, there's a woman named, and I'm going to mess this up, Immaculee Ilabagiza. She was a young woman during the Rwandan genocide who watched her entire family and most of her village be killed by Hutu soldiers. But out of that deep dark brokenness. She learned to teach others about forgiveness of all things. Forgiveness. Now the last thing is that there are those in the room who have not been broken in at least any big way. And this is a good and beautiful thing. You do not need to feel ashamed or worry about this. You are likely young or have had a charmed life to this point. And this message is not yet for you, but someday you might need it. And when you do, remember that you too have a choice to make. You can live as someone who is a victim, allowing the world to eat you up from the inside out. Or you can live as a victor through Jesus Christ who heals all things. As I reflected on this message, in the drive over to the church today, I felt like there was one last thing I wanted to say. And I discovered it as I pulled in, and it goes like this. I think this might be the most hopeful message that I've ever preached, and here's why. Whatever darkness has beset you, and I mean whatever, Christ has been there in the darkest night of his soul. That Good Friday, when it seemed like the light of the world was snuffed out, the author of life was snuffed out, and we were left in utter darkness. We know that three days later, he was raised from the dead. And though the scars remain, he is victorious. And he becomes the greatest of the wounded healers who then goes about healing all the world of yes, our sin, yes, our darkness. But it is also a hope that whatever you are going through in this present moment, that God knows, and that God cares, and that God sees, and that there is a light waiting at some point at the end of this tunnel. This is the great Christian message. It is the great hope of the Christian faith. That death does not have the last word, that sin does not have the last word, that evil does not have the last word, but God does. that life wins, that love wins, that God will have the final say. Let's pray together. Jesus, we thank you. We thank you for doing what only you could do, for dying on a cross, for the forgiveness of the sins of the world, for undoing all the curses of this world, for making all the wrong things right, and for setting this world back on a path toward you. We thank you for making a way where there was no way. We thank you for opening up a door of a promise that we can now walk through and find relationship with you. We thank you for your body that was broken. We thank you for the blood that was shed, for the forgiveness of our sins. But none of this is deserved by us. All of it is gift. And so we say thank you this morning. Pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen. Friends, we will take communion now. If you've not taken communion with us, this is how we proceed. We, in just a moment, I'll call the servers up front and there will be one on left and one on the right. And You will come and you will put your hands out and someone will look you in the eye and they will grab the piece of bread and they will say to you, this is Christ's body, the body of Christ. It is broken for you. And then you will grab a cup and this is the blood of Christ. It was shed for your forgiveness. It is the new covenant in his blood. You will then take both of those around to the sides and you'll find your way back to your seat. At which point I encourage you to sit with the body and the blood of Christ in your hands and to think about it and to ponder it and to pray and to take this moment with deadly seriousness and to reflect on your life and perhaps where you've fallen short and where you need that forgiveness once again. Spend some time with God. Open yourself up to his word. Open yourself up to what he might be doing in your heart right now. And then when the time comes, we will all gather back together and we will take the elements at the same time. Let us pray one more time. God, on the night in which your son was betrayed, Jesus took the loaf and broke it. He said, this is my body and it's for you. It is for the world. And he took the cup, the new covenant in his blood, and it was shed for the forgiveness of our sins, God. Lord, we proclaim this today, this morning, and we say thank you. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen. My servers, will you come forward, please? Let's pray together. Father in heaven, Christ our Lord who sits on high on the throne and Holy Spirit. God, three in one, we give you thanks and praise for opening up the way to salvation, for offering new life in your body and blood. God, we give you thanks for the gift that is Jesus Christ, in whom we live, in whom we walk, in whom we have our being. Lord, we are so grateful to be here in this moment with you. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen.