Lititz United Methodist Church Sermon Archive

During the four weeks of Advent we are focusing our attention on the Incarnation – God taking on human flesh. I said in the first sermon in this series that God was physically present in this world in the person of Jesus, and in so doing God came for our salvation, and to make plain His will and purposes. Today, let’s ponder more fully the meaning and mystery of the Incarnation.

Let me ask you a question: Is God still present in a physical, fleshly way in the world today? You will probably answer by saying, “No, of course not! Jesus went back to the Father, and at that point the Incarnation ceased.”

But the New Testament claims that Jesus is still physically present in this world, embodied in a community called the church! In Ephesians, chapter 1, it talks about God’s immeasurable power at work in believers. Then it goes on: “God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:20-23). Notice, it says, “the church, which is his body”!

The “church” here does not mean a building, or everybody whose names are on the roll book of a congregation. The church is constituted of true followers of Jesus, those who trust Christ to save them, people born again and adopted into God’s family as sons and daughters. If we are followers of Jesus, we are Christ’s body in the world today. We are Jesus’ presence, therefore God’s presence, in the world. What an astounding thought! God has created a community, a people, who are meant to incarnate Him and embody Him in the world.

Let me say some things about the church, Christ’ body. To be Christian means to be part of the body of Christ. Our American culture is highly individualistic; we do not have much of a sense of community. This past week our local ministerium group met at the Warwick Township building. One of the officials, Dan Zimmerman, updated us on some things happening in the borough and township. He emphasized how dependent they are on each person giving something back to the community, and he talked about the ongoing need for volunteers. He also related how frustrating it is that many today are so busy, wrapped up in our own lives, that we lack a sense of responsibility to the community at large. This is very much unlike previous generations who were more prone to feel the need to give something back to their communities.

People of the Bible were so different than us modern Americans; they had much more of a sense of being an integral part of a community. In the Bible, having a relationship to God is never an individualistic matter. One is always part of a faith community! In other words, in the Body of Christ we need each other!

Romans 12:4-5 in the New International Version reads, “Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” Notice: “each member belongs to all the others”.

1 Corinthians 12:12-14 says, “For 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; for 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.” It goes on to point out that 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, or if an 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. “As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” (verses 20-21).

The church is the body and presence of Christ in the world, and if I am a Christian I cannot exist in isolation from that Body. Isolating ourselves from others in the Body of Christ takes at least two forms. One is when a person maintains, “I can be a good Christian but I don’t need the church.” This is a common idea in our American culture. This is not a Biblical teaching, as I’ve already stressed. It is like my kneecap kissing good-bye to the rest of my body and saying, “I can go it alone!” Every believer needs a fellowship where she or he can be nurtured by others in Lord.

I have met people not connected to a church, or who do not attend a church, who are interested in spiritual things. I’m thinking of a particular lady I knew from another church, who seemed to be a very loving, sincere, religious person, but I couldn’t get her to come to church. I can’t help but wonder, however, how much more mature in Christ she could have been if she had been part of the Christian fellowship, where she could hear the Word taught and preached, join others in discussions, and receive the encouragement of sisters and brothers in Christ.

Another way we isolate ourselves from the Body of Christ is when we actually participate in a church, but assume that we don’t need anyone but God. Years ago I had a friend who went to a Christian college. One time when she was home from college she raved about a song she had learned on campus, a song containing the refrain, “If you know the Lord, you need nobody else, He’ll see you through….”. Now the song had a pretty tune that made you feel kind of warm and fuzzy. But what it says is a distortion of Biblical truth! We need more than God! That may sound irreverent, but I mean it!

Perhaps nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the recovery movement. One of the key elements in the recovery movement is that we need to share with someone else our struggle to overcome our destructive habits, hurts, and hang-ups. Our Celebrate Recovery ministry is a model for the whole church, because we all are addicted to sin and in need of recovery. We all have destructive habits, hang-ups and hurts. So, God created the church as a practical, tangible, flesh-and-blood presence where we can help one another grow in relationship to God, others and ourselves.

We need each other! There’s a hymn of the church that expresses this truth:

“Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love; the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.
Before our Father’s throne we pour our ardent prayers; our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, our comforts and our cares.
We share each others’ woes, our mutual burdens bear; and often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.”

Jesus has incarnated Himself in a community, a fellowship called the church. We are to be His body, His flesh-and-blood presence in the world. Now some of us may be snickering, “Boy, that’s a stretch! The churches I know often seem to be anything but an embodiment of Christ and His Spirit. Harry, you had better get real!”

I know what you mean. The way God’s people in the church act is often a far cry from the way Jesus lived. If we are meant to be a visible extension of the life of Jesus in the world, we fall far short.

Here we come face to face with the imperfection of the church, and of every local congregation. Dorothy Sayres has remarked that God has suffered three humiliations: the incarnation, the crucifixion, and the church!

The reality is that the living Christ is embodied in flesh-and-blood, ordinary, human, flawed people like you and me. In our idealism, we would love the church to be different – to be somehow beyond people fighting, people saying unkind things to one another, people having moral failures – but so often we are not above that.

Just as Jesus was a mix of the divine and human, the church is a mix of the divine and the human. The church is more than a mere human institution or organization. There is a divine nature to the church and God is at work through His people. But no matter how much God may be divinely inspiring what goes on in a congregation, it is still made up of very human sinners.

Of course we have those people who flit from one church to another looking for the “perfect church”. Something happens in the congregation they attend - they get angry at somebody, they have a disagreement with someone, they oppose a decision that has been made – and off they go, hunting for another church where people aren’t so bad. The old joke is, if you’re seeking the perfect church, don’t – because as soon as you go there it won’t be perfect anymore!

Then, I have heard people say, “I’ll just come to church and worship, but I don’t want to go beyond that, because I don’t want to get involved in ‘church politics’”. My question to them is, “What do you mean by church politics?” Do you mean people trying to organize for ministry? People on a team or committee trying their best to arrive at godly decisions? People trying to work through their differences? So you want to avoid the hard, but necessary work and just sit in church one hour a week worshiping God from the sidelines?

You see, God’s holy work is carried out and incarnated through a very imperfect church filled with very imperfect people, not in some spirit realm disconnected from the physical world and real life.

That’s the way it was in the first century church too! We tend to look at the New Testament church in an idealized fashion. Take the church at Corinth. The supernatural gifts of the Spirit were operating there in abundance and in a spectacular way. Yet, that church was splintered by factions, believers were taking each other to law court, there was sexual immorality (a man was having sexual relations with his stepmother), they disgraced communion by staying in little cliques and not sharing their food with the poor at their common meal, worship was noisy and disorderly, and some already were denying the resurrection! And you thought your church had problems!

Yet, the Apostle Paul can begin his letter to the Corinthian church by addressing them in this way: “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints” (1 Corinthians 1:2).

Please do not misunderstand me. This is no excuse for us to be content in our sins and to rationalize unChristlike behavior by just lamely saying, “But we’re just human!” We should strive to grow in godliness, in Christian love for one another, in mature faith, because we are the body of Christ in the world and we represent Him.

But the glory of it all is this – in spite of our being very human, God still uses the church, the Body of Christ, to accomplish His purposes. This week I was thinking again of my early years growing up in a church in Lancaster. It was not a large church, and most of the people were very ordinary people. I remember that individuals had disagreements. There was tension at times because some were more liberal than others. Gossip and nit-picking was part of the scene. But you know what? In spite of that, I came to Christ through that church. I was nurtured on the gospel in that congregation. And I was not the only one who experienced that. And in spite of our very humanness, that church was able to do many good things for God and help many people.

We are the body of Christ, the incarnation and extension of Jesus in the world. We are flesh and blood people of this earth, sinners. But there is something holy about the church, because the holy Jesus dwells here among us. God uses the church to carry out His divine purposes.

“The Incarnation”

“An Incarnational Body: We Need More Than God”