L.D. 12, I Corinthians 12:1-11 "The Same God" Scott Hoezee

A couple of weeks ago this congregation gave preliminary approval for the Council to investigate hiring an administrator for Calvin Church. Over the years I have been impressed with--even blown away by--what an organized administrator can do for an organization. Administrative skills are highly specialized such that most do not possess the requisite cluster of abilities to be good at this. But when you see such talents being thoughtfully employed, the results can be quite astonishing.

As fine an example as any is my friend Kathi who runs the organization in Princeton that sponsored my sabbatical four years ago. At any given moment, Kathi may well be juggling a long string of details for four or five major ventures. Yet she keeps everything straight, knows exactly where every folder is located that she may need to grab, and on top of that constantly has a sharp eye out to attend to new needs as they crop up.

So if there is a catered lunch one day and one person in a group of twenty is a vegetarian, you can be assured there will be a vegetarian entree available. When Kathi heard that someone working at the Center was having wrist difficulties from working on the computer, before too long UPS showed up to deliver all new keyboards and wrist-rests designed to reduce the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome. When she and I were flying back to New Jersey from a meeting in Illinois, the flights into Newark were backed up for hours due to rainy weather. Within ten minutes Kathi had us re-booked onto a flight into Philadelphia, had arranged to have a car pick us up there instead of Newark, and I was back with my family in Princeton an hour earlier than scheduled!

Some people are "big picture" folks, others are "detail-oriented." Some people inspire by presenting grand visions, others help realize visions by micromanaging the nitty-gritty. Thankfully, God is both types in one. Today as we have installed our new Elders and Deacons, we are reminded that whatever else the Church is, it is an organization that needs leadership. The Church is more than just an organization, of course. Chiefly we are to be proclaimers, in word and deed, of the gospel good news. That vital task gets accomplished in lots of spontaneous, informal ways every day. But much of the Church's work happens not on the fly but because we work together in organized ways.

When a person makes profession of faith, I always ask, "What would you say if, on the Monday after you make your profession here in church, one of your friends at school or work said to you, 'Hey, that's nice that you joined a church. I'm a Christian, too, but I don't need church. It's just me and Jesus. I don't go in for organized religion.' What would you say in reply?" There are many things to say in response to that, but I always stress that a lone ranger Christian sitting out there by himself can never do what we can do collectively when we pool our resources and so organize programs to send out mission workers, sponsor tutoring programs, provide clothing and food to the poor, and so much more.

Sometimes you hear people contrast the early church with today. Whenever someone holds up the church in the Book of Acts as superior to churches today, the emphasis usually falls on the idea that whereas they had the Spirit, all we have now are stuffy old creeds and stale church programs. They had the living Spirit. Now we have something call the Church Order. But what is striking about the Book of Acts is how quickly the disciples did as a matter of fact head in the direction of formal organization. Yes, they were full of the Holy Spirit but that Spirit led them to be very intentional about choosing a leadership structure, assigning certain tasks to people with the requisite gifts, inventing the office of deacon when the needs became more pressing than the apostles themselves could handle.

The same message comes through in I Corinthians 12. What is striking about this passage is how methodical it is. Although Paul is talking about a host of spiritual gifts and abilities, it is clear that the Lord of the Church parcels those gifts out very systematically. As you know, the balance of I Corinthians 12 uses the image of the body to make the point that even as the human body needs every single part, so also the church is organized by the Holy Spirit in such a way that all the bases are covered. If you walked into this sanctuary this morning, it wasn't just because you have feet but also because you have legs, hips, eyes, a sense of balance. Take away any one of those, and you would fall.

In the past I have mentioned some of the fascinating clinical vignettes sketched by neurologist Oliver Sacks. Sacks provides vivid reminders of how interconnected the body must be in order to function. As a neurologist, Sacks know that there are parts of our brains no larger than a pea which, if damaged, will render us unable to walk. In one of his books he tells the story of the man who received a very slight amount of damage to a very tiny part of his brain with the result that this man lost his sense of proprioception.

Proprioception is a big word that refers to your innate ability always to know where your body is located in space. Without even having directly to think about it, you always know whether you are sitting, lying down, standing, standing or sitting straight, leaning sideways, bending forward, etc. But this particular man had lost this sense and so when he walked, although he himself did not notice it, he walked bent at the waist to about a 90-degree angle. In the end, the only way they could help this man was to fit him with a pair of glasses that had a little spirit-level extending out from the bridge of the glasses. So long as he could see the bubble on the level and keep it in the middle, he knew he was standing straight. But the moment you took the glasses away, he tilted sideways again, though he could not sense this! There was nothing wrong with this man's eyes or legs or feet. But he was missing one small item that turned out to be key.

If we extend that metaphorically to the church, we can see again that we really do need the plethora of gifts, interests, talents, and abilities that our great God in Christ is so very careful to distribute. Take any one of those gifts away, and we walk crooked (and maybe not at all). But put them all into their proper place, and we walk upright once again.

This image leads us back to Lord's Day 12 from the Catechism. Those of us familiar with the jargon of the Christian faith often forget that the word "Christ" is not part of Jesus' name but is really a title. Saying "Christ Jesus" is like saying "President Reagan" or "Justice Rehnquist." "Christ" is a title meaning "anointed" and is the Greek version of the Hebrew "messiah." In the ancient world to be anointed was what today we might describe as ordained, set aside for a specific task. An anointing was like an inauguration, a swearing in, or a commissioning in which someone is vested with a certain amount of authority to carry out some very specific assignments.

In the case of Jesus as God's anointed Christ, the traditional triple designation that goes along with this are the duties associated with the offices of prophet, priest, and king. All three of those offices were the ones that required an anointing in ancient Israel. But back then a given person was either a prophet or a priest or a king, but no one was ever all three. Similarly in our own governmental structure, no one person may be the president, a Supreme Court justice, and a senator all at the same time. But because Jesus is God's own Son, the Christian tradition claims that in Christ all three anointed offices combine perfectly.

And so Jesus is anointed as prophet. A prophet is a teacher and so Jesus is the perfect instructor to teach us about God's nature, purpose, and truth. Jesus is anointed as priest. A priest is like a go-between who brings God and people back together. In Israel the priest did that by sacrificing animals to symbolize that forgiveness is always costly. But as priest, Jesus does something more marvelous than offer sacrifices outside of himself: Jesus is the sacrifice. And because he laid down himself, we know that our sins will always be forgiven. And finally Jesus is anointed as king. A king is the one who guides his people, sets policy for how life should go, protects the people, and secures true freedom, a space where joy can happen. In short, with Jesus as prophet, priest, and king, we have all that we need to be saved and to live joyfully.

But before Lord's Day 12 is finished, we are told a stunning thing: we now have been anointed, too. By way of extension, all the features of Jesus as Christ apply to our lives. We become mini-Christs, which is what the word Christian means in the first place. So we are mini-prophets who likewise teach the truth of the gospel. We are mini-priests who live sacrificially for the benefit of our neighbors. We are mini-kings who try to expand the borders of the kingdom already in this world.

Today we have been reminded not only of the church's need for organized leadership but also of God's gracious provision in raising up just such leaders. To all of you new Elders and Deacons, we have this morning already stressed the great privilege of serving this church as well as of the solemn obligations of the offices for which you were anointed earlier. But then, each one of us is anointed. It's easy to focus on the more visible leaders. Out of Calvin Church's 700+ members, only two names appear on the church sign. Only thirteen people stood up this morning to take ordination vows. On any given Sunday only a half-dozen or so names appear under the orders of worship as people who did a certain visible function in the service. But none of that may distract us from knowing that every one of us is a mini-Christ. Each and every one of us has the chance to say things and do things that echo the work of no one less than Christ Jesus himself.

Every time one of you offers a prayer for a fellow member of this church, you show your anointing. Every time you pray for a neighbor or for God to comfort someone on the other side of the country--someone you don't even know but who has suffered a loss that made the news--you are being a mini-priest interceding for God's world. Every time you drop a sympathy card in the mail, send an encouraging note or email, or pat someone on the shoulder even as you quietly say, "I've been thinking about you," you show your anointing. As a mini-Christ, you like Jesus throw yourself into the midst of a needy world in order to help that same world. When you spend time sitting legs akimbo on a cold tile floor playing dominoes with a child in the IHN program; when you wipe glue off your fingertips from helping make a craft for Neighbors Night, you show your anointing as a mini-Christ.

Being a mini-Christ who shares our Lord's anointing is not just about things like standing up to preach or being ordained to Council. Being Christ to one another and to our wider world is about gluey fingers and handwritten sympathy cards; it's about stiff knees when you get up off that floor after dominoes; it's about au gratin potatoes in a meal you bring to a family reeling in grief; it's about the tear that suddenly falls from your eye when you are overwhelmed with compassion for the single mother who is barely making it.

And the real wonder of wonders is that through it all--the visible deeds in front of the congregation and the behind-the-scenes deeds that almost no one sees--through it all the cause of Christ Jesus moves forward in this world. God is carefully administering his holy Church, parceling out gifts of every shape, size, and variety. He has all the bases covered and not one of us escapes his anointing.

You may sometimes feel like you don't do much, don't count for much. But I stand before you this day to tell you that this is not so. When Paul opened this chapter, he said, "I don't want you to be ignorant about gifts." I say the same thing. Listen: If you are in Christ, you have been anointed and your work, your words, your every prayer counts. It is not exaggeration to say that through you God's kingdom is advancing, the forces of darkness are retreating. All this is happening through you, every one of you, my friends. How could it not? For you are a member of Christ, sharing his anointing and his sacred work. The same God works in every one of us. We expect great things because we are filled with a great God. Praise him! Amen.