“Body Building”

I Corinthians 12:12-31a

January 22^nd and 25^th, 2004

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

I do not know if you have seen him or not, but Mr. Goodwrench has been resurrected by the General Motors Corporation. Since the latter part of my high school days, Mr. Goodwrench has been in retirement. I do not know where Mr. Goodwrench has been. I do not know if he bought a condo in Hawaii or if he has been enjoying a relaxing life traveling in a RV for these nineteen years. What I do know is that someone in Detroit, maybe an advertising executive saw the need to bring him back to life. And so, he is on our televisions again, in a series of commercials where a man is looking for the real Mr. Goodwrench. These advertisements are set in garages, both in the front office and in the garages themselves. With a microphone in one of his hands and a clipboard in the other, the man is in search of the real Mr. Goodwrench. Almost all of the commercials begin with these words, “I have got to find this one and only car care expert!” In one of the commercials, the man searching goes up to a man, whose uniform says that he is both Mr. Goodwrench and Fred. The man with the microphone and the clipboard says, “So, Fred, you are Mr. Goodwrench?” Fred answers, “That’s right.” And the man marks something on the clipboard. Then he goes up to another man and says, “You’re Mr. Goodwrench. That guy over there says that he is Mr. Goodwrench.” The commercial ends with the man, looking for Mr. Goodwrench, with a bullhorn in his hand, barking into it, “Will the real Mr. Goodwrench please step forward!”

General Motors is not the only corporation using the idea of one guy being their spokesperson. The McDonalds Corporation began, in 1963, with one Ronald McDonald. The original Ronald was none other than Willard Scott, of weatherman fame on the Today Show. In 1963, Ronald’s costume was complete with a paper cup on his nose and a piece of cardboard as a hat. Ronald was such a hit, that three years later, the company decided to take Ronald national by using him in television commercials. With the decision came a complete make over and the Ronald McDonald that we have today. Nine years after that, the McDonald executives decided that they needed more than one Ronald. They wrote a book whose title is: Ronald and How. It is a complete guide to being the clown. In its pages are instructions for applying the make up and appropriate behavior, especially among children. Everything that you need to know about being a Ronald McDonald is in that book. Did you know, church, that the coveted Ronald McDonald clown job pays forty thousand dollars a year? Did you know that a busy Ronald can make up to one hundred thousand dollars a year by appearing in four hundred shows? And the premier Ronald, the one who appears on today’s television commercials makes an estimated three hundred thousand dollars a year. There is even a Ronald McDonald Convention held every year, in a secret place. The estimated two hundred and fifty Ronald McDonalds must attend. The conventions are not open to the public, because the McDonalds Corporation strictly forbids any two Ronald McDonalds from meeting in public, lest they give up the illusion that there is only one Ronald McDonald.

Both General Motors and the McDonalds Corporation publish books on how to be the same, how to dress the same, how to walk the same, how to smile the same and even how to wave the same. But, the apostle Paul, writing to the Christian people in Corinth, offers words not on how to be the same, but how their differences are important. It is easy to get the impression. In fact, I have given you the impression that the church in Corinth kept Paul busy most of the time. It was one of the churches that was a pastoral challenge. In what we have come to know as First and Second Corinthians, there are five different letters or parts of them contained in these biblical books. And there is a sixth one, that is referred to, but no remnants of it can be found in what we now have. That letter, we believe, was a hurtful one, written to Paul, from one of the leaders in the church. You can catch glimpses of Paul’s reaction to it. Paul himself spoke of the challenge of leading this congregation. Near the end of what we have come to call Second Corinthians, Paul lays out a long list of his sufferings as an apostle. He mentions countless floggings, a stoning, three shipwrecks, sleepless nights, danger from his own people, danger from other people, times when he was hungry and thirsty and cold. I do not mind telling you, this is not a passage you would want to preach from in hopes of recruiting young folks to be pastors!

Having mentioned all those things, he reports a last suffering. These are his words, “And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches.” As you know, although he was not physically present, living in the parsonage in places like Thessolonica, Ephesus, Galatia, Philippi, Rome, Colossae, and Corinth, still he was their pastor and sometimes it made him anxious.

There was so much going on in the city of Corinth and Christianity, of course, was not the only religion in town. If you wanted to compare the city to a city these days, you might say that it was like New Orleans. It was a port city where a lot of people came and went and where there were many temptations. The problems in Corinth, were so serious, you might say, that the apostle wondered if his work there would prove to be successful.

One of those problems takes up the entire twelfth chapter of First Corinthians. The Holy Spirit was doing a powerful thing in that church, using a variety of persons, showing itself in many ways. Perhaps this issue had become so important that someone from the church wrote to Paul to ask his opinion of it. You get the sense of it when you read the first words of this twelfth chapter, “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed.” Evidently there was some argument floating around about whose spiritual gift was more important. Was it the one who had wisdom? Was it the one who had the gift of speaking in tongues or the one who could interpret those tongues? Was it the one who had the gift of prophesy or the one who was able to heal? Or maybe it was the one whose faith was so strong that it enabled them to do and to believe just about anything. Paul is not interested in ranking these individual gifts. Instead he points to the thing that is common in all of them, namely, that it is the Spirit that gives these gifts to the Corinthians. And then he points out two other things that are held in common. First, that among their differences, what the Corinthian Christians hold in common is that they have all been baptized. They may have once been Jew or Greek, slave or free, but now they are one, and no one is more important than the other. And second, all of these gifts are to be used for the common good.

It is easy, I guess to reprimand these folks in Corinth. In fact, I have done that on numerous occasions, in several sermons. It is easy to skirt past the fact that the spirit was doing some pretty powerful things in that church. I am still looking for a couple of you to come into my office and argue over which of your spiritual gifts makes you more important in God’s eyes. I would love to settle that argument!

So Paul, I think, wants not to focus not on their need to know which gift was better, but to concentrate on the fact that it takes all of these gifts for the church to be what it is supposed to be. You need to know that Paul was not the first one to use the body image to talk about the importance of the whole. By his day, it was a common metaphor and one that just about everyone would have heard before. What I want you to see here is that Paul is not focusing on what is wrong in this church. No, here, Paul is focusing and celebrating on what is right and good in this church. And among the things that he says, and I know that you have heard this in a hundred sermons, is that it takes everyone from the chair of the most powerful committee in the church to the one who just picked up the phone to let someone know that they care, for the church to be what it is supposed to be. And this, the one who picked up the phone is just as important as the one whose leadership was so evident that they were tapped to lead that committee.

So what should we do with these words this morning? Just this week, I heard the story of a Duke who lived a long time ago, in a small village. It probably was just one of the places that this man lived. His house, most likely, was one of the many that he owned. But for some reason, this particular village was important to him. He loved it when he was there. He met and knew so many people when he was in the village’s market. This village was his favorite place. And because it was, he wanted to somehow make a difference in the village and in the people in the village. The town had a lot of things, but something that it did not have was a church, a cathedral, a place where the village could worship. It is not as if they did not want such a place, they did. It is just that no one had been able to afford to build such a place of worship. And since the Duke was looking to make a difference, he decided that he would build such a place, a cathedral, a place of worship, for everyone. The construction took some time and the village members were not allowed to go inside of it until it was a finished product. Finally it was completed and anyone who wanted to see it was invited for a tour. Of course it was fabulous and breathtaking. The large stones were impressive. The pulpit was magnificent. There was wood all around and the pews were even comfortable. But there was something missing. It was obvious from that first tour that this something was missing. There were no lights in the church. It was in the days before electricity, but there were no lanterns. Someone got up the nerve to ask, “Sir, what about the lights? Where are the lights?” The Duke pointed to the large hooks that were placed in two or three spots on every pew. He said this, “I will give every family a lantern to place on the hook in these pews. When it is lit, there will be plenty of light for them. It will shine all around them. They will take these lights home with them and then bring them back again when we worship. The people nodded their heads and then they heard him say this, “And when someone is not here, it will leave an awfully dark and empty place.”

I think that I know what the Duke is talking about. It does my heart good to see the chairs and the pews of this church filled. After all, we are in this thing together. I think that that is what Paul is really after in his words to the church of any age. Look at the end of the passage and you will understand this. Paul says that we care for one another. He says that when there is one among us who suffers, we all suffer. When we hear of it, we do something about it. We pray. We send cards. We make phone calls. We make hospital calls and knock on the doors of their homes. If their experience has been our experience, we say, “This has happened to me.” When there is good news, we rejoice, we congratulate, and we celebrate. You have seen it in our worship services, haven’t you? Sometimes this rejoicing means that smiles and laughter pop out all over the place. Sometimes we even clap! Do you remember the Sunday when the Normans renewed their vows, here, near the end of a worship service? Paul writes, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

I guess one of the pains of my ministry in these now ten years is that I have not been especially great at empowering people to do what God has called them to do. I am better at it now that I used to be. In my first appointment, the church thought that doing all of the church things was my job. They said that I was paid to do those things. I did not know better. I even operated under the assumption that it is easier to do something myself than to ask someone else to do it. And the church survived, but not at first. Being the church is everyone’s job.

And because it is, I just wanted to say thank you this morning. I want to thank you for being Christ’s hands these past few months. For being the ones who put up and take down chairs and move tables. For being the ones who change light bulbs or locks or who run errands for the staff. For being the ones who bake cakes and meals and deliver them to those who are dealing with something or who have a new baby that keeps them from the kitchen. I want to thank you for being Christ’s feet these past few months. For those of you who have been to the Rice Depot and places like it to help others to help others. You have used your feet to get to the place where Jesus’ favorite people are. I want to thank those of you who have been Christ’s heart these past few months. Those of you who care for other people. Those of you who hurt when someone else hurts and rejoice when someone else rejoices. Those of you who feel the pain of your brothers and sisters enough for it to tingle in your own soul. As one great man once said, “Your heart is Jesus’ heart, those of you who can touch hearts like Jesus could, for one another and for those who do not know any Jesus but the one that you show them. Thank you, church, I appreciate you. Now get busy. Let us pray.

(Special thanks to the writers of Homiletics magazine for the information about Mr. Goodwrench and Ronald McDonald. It was very helpful. Thank you to members of my weekly Bible study who told me the story of the Duke and his gift to his village. Thank you, Bryan Gray, for the last line of this sermon. And thank you, St. Paul, for your willingness to be hands, feet, and hearts).