“A Member of the Team”

Romans 12:1-8

October 29, 2006

St. Paul United Methodist Church of Little Rock

Rev. John Andrew Fleming

Can you remember your first experience of being a part of a team? The folks at Merriam Webster, the ones who help us define things, define teams this way, “A team is a number of persons associated for a common purpose” So their definition goes way beyond sports teams, but my first experience of teams was sports teams.

My first team, at least I think that it was, was my t-ball team. I was five years old, was toe headed, had a couple of my teeth missing but I was a Warrior. I vaguely remember that we played our games in a large field just beyond the Lion’s Club on the north side of Jackson. There were no back stops to stop the balls and the bases were the kind that you threw down on the ground. They were orange so that no one would miss them. Somewhere there is a picture of the members of that team. We are standing in the field, flanked by our coaches on each side. Our shirts were red with the letters spelling out Warrior and there was a “W” printed on our caps.

That was the first team of which I was a member. There have been others. In Little League, I played for the Civitan Club. Our uniforms were gray and green. In the thirteen through fifteen year old Babe Ruth League, I was a member of Walt Mason’s team, a local construction company. When I got too old to play in that league, I played in the county league and was a member of Whilhite’s Truck Stop’s team. Our Uniforms were green and white and our socks were bright yellow. In high school, I played was a cougar and again our uniforms were green. In between those times, I played on a few church basketball teams. Since then I have played on a few church softball teams. For the past three seasons, I’ve played for St. Paul’s team. If the folks at Webster’s are right with their definition, then I would have to say that our common purpose, on all those teams, was to win.

I’ve been a part of all those teams, but the best team that I have been a part of is the church, not the softball team, but the church. You have heard me say this before, I was born and reared in the church. I was brought to her when I was only a few weeks old and for the most part, I have never left her. I was rocked by people like Verlene Humphreys in the nursery and I was taught by Miss Nancy and Virginia Burnette, seasoned veterans in their teaching of children and youth. You might say that I cut my teeth on the old hymnal, not the one that sits in our pew racks, the 1989 version, but the older one, the one first printed in 1964. There were nurseries back then, but you couldn’t go up there past the age of three. After that, I sat in our pew at my home church. On either side of my mother sat me and my sister, Emily. Some Sundays, my mother would let me put my head in her lap and rest when the sermon wore my down. Did the preacher in me just say that? My dad sat in the choir loft with the choir he led. He sat next to the organist and kept an eye on the youth, of which one was his older son, sitting in the balcony.

In those early years, it may have been the songs that spoke as sermons to me. Do any of these ring true in you? “Amazing grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.” Or maybe this one, “O for a thousand tongues to sing, my great redeemers praise, the glories of my God and King, the triumphs of his grace.”

Here is something else I remember. When something happened with one of the members of the church, when someone’s house burned down or when someone was in the hospital or when someone died, the church surrounded them with love and help.

You did that for me. I will never forget you, St. Paul, for doing that for me when my sister died. Your faces at the service and your cards still mean the world to me. I will never forget what you did. I recently read a clip in the newsletter of my home church. It told of the

death of a young girl, a teenager in that congregation. Her family wrote, “We want to thank you for the love and support from the church and the Upper Room Class. We are overwhelmed by all the generous acts of kindness shown to our family, with it, we will find the strength that we need.”

Now back to my growing up years. When there were happy occasions like graduations, a bulletin board went up with picture of the child as a baby and as a high school senior. There were weddings. There were confirmations. There were baptisms. The church, the team, the body of Christ, was there for all of those things. One of the lessons the church taught me early on was that we are all in this together, no matter what happens. A greater lesson that I learned, from an early age, is that I wanted to be a part of it.

In those years, the Pony Express came to our house. I don’t know if this church ever used the gimmick of the Pony Express for it’s stewardship time. The information came in what looked like a sack that would fit over the saddle of a horse. Inside the sack were letters to the members of our family and, of course, a pledge card. Or as we now call it, an estimate of giving card. That year I filled out my first pledge to the church. Now mind you, it wasn’t very much. My allowance was only a quarter, and my gift to the church was a dime a week, forty cents a month, but for me, it was a beginning of a life of giving.

I can remember another pledge I made, some years later. This time I was in seminary and the pledge I made was to another church. It was the Aldersgate United Methodist Church. The pastor was my mentor as I entered the ministry. To the church, I pledge a thousand dollars. In December I had not paid a penny on that promise, and so with check in hand I went to see the pastor. The gift was a lot and Jim gave me an out. He said that he understood how hard it was to make a pledge while in school. He told me to forget about it. But I didn’t want to do that. You see, for me, it wasn’t just a promise, it was the fact that I wanted to be a part of the greatest thing in my world, the church. You see the church is the best thing, the best team I have ever been a part of.

The Apostle, Paul, of course knew that. He also knew that it took more than us as individuals for the church to be what she was supposed to be. In fact, the day he came up with comparing our own bodies to the church, was one of our finest days. Now normally when we think of Paul’s bringing up the subject of the church as the body of Christ and about spiritual gifts, we turn to his first letter to the Corinthian Christians. There was a dilemma there; there was a problem in Corinth. The people in that city were fighting about their spiritual gifts and saying that because they had a particular gift, God liked them more. Paul wouldn’t participate in the argument. Instead he said that all of the gifts are needed and necessary. His letter to the Corinthians was particular, sent to a specific church, dealing with a precise problem.

That is not the case for the folks in Rome. You will remember that Paul didn’t know the folks in Rome at all. He wrote them in hopes of coming to them and propelling his case to move Christianity toward Spain. We don’t think Paul ever made it to Rome. His letter made it, though. The letter did what it intended to do. It’s purpose was to go to several house churches and to help unity happens between those who were Jewish and those who were Gentile.

Chapter twelve begins what we have come to call the practical portion of Paul’s letter to the Romans. He first appeal to them is to present their bodies as holy and living testimonies. He says that it is our spiritual worship. Next he says that we should not let the world shape us. Instead, he says we ought to use our minds to shape the world that we live in. We ought not, says Paul, to think more highly of ourselves than we should. Talk about practical. There’s one for you. Instead, says, Paul we ought to think about the measure of faith that God has given us, the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Then there is the measure of faith that we have been given. This is where Paul turns to his discussion of the gifts that we all have now I want you to notice this. The list Paul gives in Romans is different than the ones he gives to the Corinthians, which is different from the one that he gives to the Ephesians. Which seems to say to me that the list is not exhaustive and not thorough. There are more gifts that the ones Paul mentions.

Listen to Paul’s words, “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of another.” Then there is his list. There is the gift of prophesy. There is the gift of ministry, in ministering. There is the gift of teaching. There is the gift of exhortation. There is the gift of generosity. There is the gift of being a diligent leader, a persevering leader. And then there is the gift of being compassionate.

Now I don’t mind telling you that for most of my ministry, people have come up to me and exclaimed, “John, I don’t have any spiritual gifts. I’m not good at anything.” To which I ask, “Really?” There are as many spiritual gifts as there are people. Just think about it this way. What are the things, in the church, you enjoy being a part of? What do you find pleasure in? What makes you want to come back and be a part? What energizes you? If that doesn’t work, try this. Listen. Listen to the things, to the list of things that people admire about you, that they see in you, the things they have noticed you have some compassion in. That is important. When you can’t see it in yourself, quite often, others can see it in you. Listen to them!

Let me close with a couple of stories. I think you’ll see the thread in them. The first one has to do with the gift of compassion. It comes from a story written by Alexander Irvine, a novel, whose title is My Lady of the Chimney Corner. The heroine of the novel goes to a mourning neighbor to comfort her. She puts her hands on her head and says, “God takes a hand wherever he can find it and just does what he likes with it. Sometimes he takes a bishop’s hand and lays it on a child’s head for a benediction. And then he takes the hand of a doctor to relieve the pain, the hand of a mother to guide a child. And sometimes he takes the hand of a poor old creature like me to give comfort to a neighbor. But they’re all hands touched by his Spirit and his Spirit is everywhere looking for hands to use.” Did you notice that one of the gift mentioned by Paul was the gift of compassion? How will God use your hands these days?

Then there is the second story. It is a story about being a part of something great. Some years ago, when Christopher Wren, the great architect, was designing cathedrals in some of the greatest places in the world, he designed one named St. Paul’s in London. While it was being built, Christopher Wren, toured the work site and asked the artisans about their labors. One day he saw a man mixing cement in a mortar box. It was obvious that the artisan didn’t know who he was talking to. The great architect asked, “What are you doing, sir?” The man answered proudly, “Why, sir, I am building a great cathedral” We are building something great here at Saint Paul and it is a team effort. My question for you this morning is simply this. Don’t you want to be a part of the greatest team ever? Let us pray.