Colossians 1:15-23 February 8, 2009
First Place Sermon Series – Part 4
Head Start
Rev. Meagan M. Boozer
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
Last Sunday, at 36 years old, Mike Tomlin became the youngest head coach in history to lead a team to a Super Bowl win. Mr. Tomlin, in case you don’t know, is the head coach of the World Champion Pittsburgh Steelers. Tomlin graduated with a sociology degree from William & Mary in 1995, having played football there under the leadership of Jimmye Laycock. Here’s part of what Laycock said on ESPN the week before the big game: “When he (Tomlin) became a coordinator in the National Football League, I told people it's just a matter of time now before he becomes a head coach. His presence, his personality, his intelligence and the way he gets along with people are terrific. And with his leadership, he has a great way of being confident but without being overconfident in the way he does things.”
Mike Tomlin is a head coach, not a defensive coach, or an offensive coach, or a quarterback’s coach – he’s the head coach. That means that he gets to lead the team; he gets to determine practices and drills and days off. He gets to speak into the lives of his players in ways that no one else can. He gets to be the one who has a cooler full of icy Gatorade dumped on him when the victory is sure. He is the head coach. Like the Tar Heels’ Roy Williams. Like Andy Reid of the Philadelphia Eagles, like Greg Best, and Paul Coffman down here at Fannett-Metal High School. Keith Hart stepped into the assistant head coaching position of the baseball team several years ago. In other words, he has to do whatever the head coach tells him to do.
This is a 3-year-old story – but bears repeating today: Did you hear what happened the very first season that Charlie Weis was the head coach at Notre Dame? He went to visit a young boy the Wednesday before Notre Dame played Washington. The boy’s name was Montana Mazurkiewicz, and he was a huge Irish fan. In fact, the boy was named after Joe Montana, Weis' college roommate. He was dying of cancer. Weis asked Montana if there was something he could do for him. The boy asked to call the first play of the Washington game. He called "pass right." Come Saturday, the Irish found themselves backed up on their own 1-yard-line. Any football coach would tell you passing is the worst option in that situation. But Weis said, "This game is for Montana, and the play still stands." There was no "win won for the Gipper" speech. This was not about motivating the team. It was about keeping a promise to a tough young boy. Quarterback Brady Quinn completed a pass and the play gained 13 yards and a first down. The boy's mother was grateful and said about Weis, "He's a very neat man. Very compassionate." Montana died the Friday before the game. He saw his play from heaven.”
Only if you’re the head coach do you get to make bold decisions like that – and often if you’re the head coach you take the hit for the shortcomings of the team.
He (Jesus) is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
So far in this amazing passage in Colossians we have learned that Jesus Christ is the one through and for whom all things have been created – things visible and things invisible, even those angels who “went wrong” and became workers of evil were created through him and for him – for through him and for him all things are instruments of his purposes and glory. For he is the image – he shows to us – the power and majesty of God himself. In John 14:8 & 9, we read, “Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” We move now from what Jesus Christ is to all creation, to what Jesus Christ is to the Church.
First, Paul writes, “He is the head of the body, the Church.” Think about what a head coach is to a team: he (she) is the one who sets the direction for the team. As the head of the Church, Jesus is definitely the one who sets our direction. But notice that Paul doesn’t say, “He is the head of the Church.” He clearly states that Jesus is the head of the body, the Church. Paul is making an important point: he is telling us that the Church is different than a team, or a business, or an organiza-tion of any kind. The Church is a living organism created through Christ and for Christ. A living organism. Jesus is our head, and we are his body.
You’ve heard the old tale of the headless horseman? It’s not true. A headless body cannot actually ride a horse, it could of course, be thrown over a horse, but a headless body cannot sit up and ride a horse. Yes, I know the phrase, “running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” I know it. I’ve been accused of doing it from time to time. It’s true. A chicken can run around without its head, but it’ll run into things because it cannot see where it is going, and it will quickly bleed out and die. Right?
Here’s the physical truth: The physical body is the servant of the head and of the mind and of the brain. The body moves at the head’s command; the body itself is powerless and dead without the head. Here’s the spiritual truth: The Spirit-filled body (that’s us) is the servant of the head (that’s Jesus). Just like the physical body only moves at the head’s command and is powerless and dead without it, so the supernatural Spirit-filled body of Christ is lost, powerless, and dead without our head, who is Jesus.
Listen to these words from William Barclay’s commentary on Colossians, “So Jesus Christ is the guiding, directing, dominating spirit of the Church. Every word and action of the Church must be governed and directed by Him; it is at His bidding that the Church must live and move. Without Him the Church cannot think the truth; without Him the Church cannot act correctly; without Him cannot decide its direction. The thought and the action of the Church must be governed, guided and directed by Jesus Christ. There are two things combined here. There is the idea of privilege: it is the privilege of the Church to be the instrument through which Christ works. There is the idea of warning: if a man neglects or abuses his body, he can make it unfit to be the servant of the great schemes and purposes of his mind and brain; so by undisciplined and careless living, the Church can unfit herself to be the instrument of Christ, who is her head.”
Paul writes, “He (Jesus) is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.”
The word ‘beginning’ is the Greek word arche – which has a double meaning. It means first in time as ‘A’ is the beginning of the alphabet, but it also means first in the sense of the source from which something came; the moving power which set something in operation. Think about the beginning of a river (the head of a river): this is the source from which the river flows. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, our life-source. He is also Paul says, the firstborn from the dead. (We talked about that last week. The notion of firstborn here has to do with the one through whom God faithfully works salvation for all.) From being the firstborn over all creation – working for the restoration of all creatures great and small for God’s praise and glory – to being the firstborn from the dead – opening the way, paving the way, creating the way for the Church – all the parts of Christ’s body from California to Maine, from Africa to China, from Methodists, to Catholics, to Assemblies of God to Presbyterians – Jesus has created the way for the Church to live forevermore – the Church Triumphant!
In our Book of Confessions the following is recorded in the Second Helvetic Confession written in Switzerland in 1561, “The Church is divided into different parts or forms; not because it is divided or rent asunder in itself, but rather because it is distinguished by the diversity of the numbers that are in it. For the one is called the Church Militant, the other the Church Triumphant. The former (church militant) still wages war on earth and fights against the flesh, the world, and the prince of this world, the devil; against sin and death. But the latter (church triumphant), having been now discharged (relieved of duty), triumphs in heaven immediately after having overcome all those things and rejoices before the Lord. Notwithstanding, both have fellowship and union one with another.” (5.127)
Consider with me these verses from 1 Corinthians 15:42-49, “So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam (Jesus) became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; [those are the people who are still in circle ‘A’, still sitting on their own thrones with Jesus not even part of their lives] and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven [those who have received Jesus’ gift of salvation and invited him to be the Lord of their lives]. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust [before we were saved by faith in Christ], we will also bear the image of the man of heaven. There’s that word ‘image’ again. “He is the image of the invisible God.” “We will also bear the image of the man of heaven.” Meaning this folks: We, the Church, are supposed to keep our eyes on Jesus, getting all our direction from him. We are supposed to do what the head tells us to do – and the head is certainly NOT the pastor. I am part of the body, just like you are part of the body. The spiritual gift for pastoring that God has given to me is a supernatural gift that I could NOT do on my own abilities or strength. Trust me on this. If I ministered to all of you only out of my own abilities or strength, I would not need the direction and the power that comes from the head of the body to do what I do. But God has put this calling on my life because he knows this calling will keep me on my knees, relying only on Christ to do his supernatural work in and among us.
And this is the way it works for all of us: the gifts that God has given to each of us to use for the common good of the body are all manifestations (outward signs) of God’s character working within us in a way that we simply could not exhibit on our own. That’s why the gifts God gives to his body are called spiritual gifts – they are supernatural gifts to make visible the image of the invisible God in our lives and in the Church. (We’re going to get some more teaching on this during our 40 Days of Community during Lent – learning what WE are here, together, to do.)
I attend a clergy support group in Carlisle once each month for 4 hours at a time. There are 7 clergy from various churches throughout the presbytery that are part of my group. We have a retired pastor who facilitates our time together. Each time we get together there is a sign-up sheet on the wall. There is a place for our names, and then a place for 3 different numbers from 1 to 10 that we choose to represent how we are doing personally, professionally, and spiritually. The last space on the sign-in sheet is for us to write an issue with which we are struggling. We spend the first several hours going around the table to talk about why we chose the numbers we chose and what’s happening regarding the issue we revealed. It’s always a great celebration if someone comes in and doesn’t have an issue or has numbers to post that are all pretty high. Most often, for the majority of us, the number in the ‘professional’ column is lower than all the others – because working as a pastor of a church, standing up under constant scrutiny, constantly failing to measure up to what people want you to do for them and how they want you to do it, can wear you down after a while. I feel pretty healthy most months compared to many of my colleagues. But some months I’m down too. At the end of our meeting this past week, our facilitator read this paragraph from The God Who Comes by Carlo Carretto:
How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you!
How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you!
I should like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence.
You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made me understand sanctity.
I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false, and I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful. How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.
No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, although not completely.
And, where should I go?
Oh yes. There it is. There is the tension of being part of a body that is made up of sinners such as you and me – yet a body of which Christ is the head. We come, hoping. We come, hoping that we will find in here a place of refuge. Yet we come knowing that that person over there doesn’t even talk to that person over here. We come knowing that the smiles people have on their faces are often cover-ups for deep, dark secrets because we find it too difficult to trust each other with the truth. We come knowing that we ourselves are far from sanctified, carrying with us stuff that Jesus has told us over and over again to lay down at the foot of the cross. We know all this. We know there are people all over this valley whose families used to be connected to the body, but who have given up and turned away because the Church failed to meet their expectations. They’ve given up, instead of allowing the supernatural gifts God has given to them to be used to make the body better for their neighbors. And we judge them. Even though many of us have given up, choosing not to use our gifts for the body for many of the same reasons.
Jesus is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
I don’t think any of us came here this morning hoping that we could be the best headless church ever, just doing things on our own strength, according to our will, using our talents, and sharing our personal opinions and practiced abilities as well as we can so that we will get some glory. I mean, let’s face it, the body of the headless horseman could have been thrown over that horse and gone places on that horse’s power and strength. We too can go places apart from our head, who is Christ. And we do. But when we do, let us acknowledge this painful truth: The head himself, Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Friend, our Brother, he takes the hit for the shortcomings of the Body.
When we do not allow Jesus Christ, who is our source of life, to guide our actions, inspire our words, and light the path we are to take - Jesus Christ himself is diminished in the eyes of the world (he is not actually diminished, for he cannot be less than who he is: but when we fail, he fades in the eyes of those outside the Church). The Church then becomes nothing more in people’s vocabulary than a broken organization, an object of slander – not a vibrant, attractive, living organism through which Christ is revealed through the peace, unity, and purity of his people.
Hebrews 1:1-3 proclaims this: 1Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. 2But now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he made the universe and everything in it. 3The Son reflects God’s own glory, and everything about him represents God exactly. He sustains the universe by the mighty power of his command. After he died to cleanse us from the stain of sin, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God of heaven.
We must ask Jesus to help us remember that we are the Church, (those who have received the gift of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ are the Church) – whether we are working or worshipping in this building together or whether we are spread over a 100 mile radius throughout the week. We are the body of Christ, the Church, and like the team members stepped aside last Sunday as Mike Tomlin stepped forward to receive the trophy and the praise of the fans in the center of that field, we must step aside to give Jesus his rightful place in our lives, allowing him to be the one and only who stands in the center of the universe accepting the applause and the honor and the glory and the praise for who he is and for all he has done:
For apart from him, we are nothing.
Apart from him, we are powerless.
Apart from him, we are purposeless.
Apart from him, we are mere perishable bodies made of dust, dead in our sin forever.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
Amen.
First Place Sermon Series – Part 4
Head Start
Rev. Meagan M. Boozer
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
Last Sunday, at 36 years old, Mike Tomlin became the youngest head coach in history to lead a team to a Super Bowl win. Mr. Tomlin, in case you don’t know, is the head coach of the World Champion Pittsburgh Steelers. Tomlin graduated with a sociology degree from William & Mary in 1995, having played football there under the leadership of Jimmye Laycock. Here’s part of what Laycock said on ESPN the week before the big game: “When he (Tomlin) became a coordinator in the National Football League, I told people it's just a matter of time now before he becomes a head coach. His presence, his personality, his intelligence and the way he gets along with people are terrific. And with his leadership, he has a great way of being confident but without being overconfident in the way he does things.”
Mike Tomlin is a head coach, not a defensive coach, or an offensive coach, or a quarterback’s coach – he’s the head coach. That means that he gets to lead the team; he gets to determine practices and drills and days off. He gets to speak into the lives of his players in ways that no one else can. He gets to be the one who has a cooler full of icy Gatorade dumped on him when the victory is sure. He is the head coach. Like the Tar Heels’ Roy Williams. Like Andy Reid of the Philadelphia Eagles, like Greg Best, and Paul Coffman down here at Fannett-Metal High School. Keith Hart stepped into the assistant head coaching position of the baseball team several years ago. In other words, he has to do whatever the head coach tells him to do.
This is a 3-year-old story – but bears repeating today: Did you hear what happened the very first season that Charlie Weis was the head coach at Notre Dame? He went to visit a young boy the Wednesday before Notre Dame played Washington. The boy’s name was Montana Mazurkiewicz, and he was a huge Irish fan. In fact, the boy was named after Joe Montana, Weis' college roommate. He was dying of cancer. Weis asked Montana if there was something he could do for him. The boy asked to call the first play of the Washington game. He called "pass right." Come Saturday, the Irish found themselves backed up on their own 1-yard-line. Any football coach would tell you passing is the worst option in that situation. But Weis said, "This game is for Montana, and the play still stands." There was no "win won for the Gipper" speech. This was not about motivating the team. It was about keeping a promise to a tough young boy. Quarterback Brady Quinn completed a pass and the play gained 13 yards and a first down. The boy's mother was grateful and said about Weis, "He's a very neat man. Very compassionate." Montana died the Friday before the game. He saw his play from heaven.”
Only if you’re the head coach do you get to make bold decisions like that – and often if you’re the head coach you take the hit for the shortcomings of the team.
He (Jesus) is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
So far in this amazing passage in Colossians we have learned that Jesus Christ is the one through and for whom all things have been created – things visible and things invisible, even those angels who “went wrong” and became workers of evil were created through him and for him – for through him and for him all things are instruments of his purposes and glory. For he is the image – he shows to us – the power and majesty of God himself. In John 14:8 & 9, we read, “Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” We move now from what Jesus Christ is to all creation, to what Jesus Christ is to the Church.
First, Paul writes, “He is the head of the body, the Church.” Think about what a head coach is to a team: he (she) is the one who sets the direction for the team. As the head of the Church, Jesus is definitely the one who sets our direction. But notice that Paul doesn’t say, “He is the head of the Church.” He clearly states that Jesus is the head of the body, the Church. Paul is making an important point: he is telling us that the Church is different than a team, or a business, or an organiza-tion of any kind. The Church is a living organism created through Christ and for Christ. A living organism. Jesus is our head, and we are his body.
You’ve heard the old tale of the headless horseman? It’s not true. A headless body cannot actually ride a horse, it could of course, be thrown over a horse, but a headless body cannot sit up and ride a horse. Yes, I know the phrase, “running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” I know it. I’ve been accused of doing it from time to time. It’s true. A chicken can run around without its head, but it’ll run into things because it cannot see where it is going, and it will quickly bleed out and die. Right?
Here’s the physical truth: The physical body is the servant of the head and of the mind and of the brain. The body moves at the head’s command; the body itself is powerless and dead without the head. Here’s the spiritual truth: The Spirit-filled body (that’s us) is the servant of the head (that’s Jesus). Just like the physical body only moves at the head’s command and is powerless and dead without it, so the supernatural Spirit-filled body of Christ is lost, powerless, and dead without our head, who is Jesus.
Listen to these words from William Barclay’s commentary on Colossians, “So Jesus Christ is the guiding, directing, dominating spirit of the Church. Every word and action of the Church must be governed and directed by Him; it is at His bidding that the Church must live and move. Without Him the Church cannot think the truth; without Him the Church cannot act correctly; without Him cannot decide its direction. The thought and the action of the Church must be governed, guided and directed by Jesus Christ. There are two things combined here. There is the idea of privilege: it is the privilege of the Church to be the instrument through which Christ works. There is the idea of warning: if a man neglects or abuses his body, he can make it unfit to be the servant of the great schemes and purposes of his mind and brain; so by undisciplined and careless living, the Church can unfit herself to be the instrument of Christ, who is her head.”
Paul writes, “He (Jesus) is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.”
The word ‘beginning’ is the Greek word arche – which has a double meaning. It means first in time as ‘A’ is the beginning of the alphabet, but it also means first in the sense of the source from which something came; the moving power which set something in operation. Think about the beginning of a river (the head of a river): this is the source from which the river flows. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, our life-source. He is also Paul says, the firstborn from the dead. (We talked about that last week. The notion of firstborn here has to do with the one through whom God faithfully works salvation for all.) From being the firstborn over all creation – working for the restoration of all creatures great and small for God’s praise and glory – to being the firstborn from the dead – opening the way, paving the way, creating the way for the Church – all the parts of Christ’s body from California to Maine, from Africa to China, from Methodists, to Catholics, to Assemblies of God to Presbyterians – Jesus has created the way for the Church to live forevermore – the Church Triumphant!
In our Book of Confessions the following is recorded in the Second Helvetic Confession written in Switzerland in 1561, “The Church is divided into different parts or forms; not because it is divided or rent asunder in itself, but rather because it is distinguished by the diversity of the numbers that are in it. For the one is called the Church Militant, the other the Church Triumphant. The former (church militant) still wages war on earth and fights against the flesh, the world, and the prince of this world, the devil; against sin and death. But the latter (church triumphant), having been now discharged (relieved of duty), triumphs in heaven immediately after having overcome all those things and rejoices before the Lord. Notwithstanding, both have fellowship and union one with another.” (5.127)
Consider with me these verses from 1 Corinthians 15:42-49, “So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam (Jesus) became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; [those are the people who are still in circle ‘A’, still sitting on their own thrones with Jesus not even part of their lives] and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven [those who have received Jesus’ gift of salvation and invited him to be the Lord of their lives]. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust [before we were saved by faith in Christ], we will also bear the image of the man of heaven. There’s that word ‘image’ again. “He is the image of the invisible God.” “We will also bear the image of the man of heaven.” Meaning this folks: We, the Church, are supposed to keep our eyes on Jesus, getting all our direction from him. We are supposed to do what the head tells us to do – and the head is certainly NOT the pastor. I am part of the body, just like you are part of the body. The spiritual gift for pastoring that God has given to me is a supernatural gift that I could NOT do on my own abilities or strength. Trust me on this. If I ministered to all of you only out of my own abilities or strength, I would not need the direction and the power that comes from the head of the body to do what I do. But God has put this calling on my life because he knows this calling will keep me on my knees, relying only on Christ to do his supernatural work in and among us.
And this is the way it works for all of us: the gifts that God has given to each of us to use for the common good of the body are all manifestations (outward signs) of God’s character working within us in a way that we simply could not exhibit on our own. That’s why the gifts God gives to his body are called spiritual gifts – they are supernatural gifts to make visible the image of the invisible God in our lives and in the Church. (We’re going to get some more teaching on this during our 40 Days of Community during Lent – learning what WE are here, together, to do.)
I attend a clergy support group in Carlisle once each month for 4 hours at a time. There are 7 clergy from various churches throughout the presbytery that are part of my group. We have a retired pastor who facilitates our time together. Each time we get together there is a sign-up sheet on the wall. There is a place for our names, and then a place for 3 different numbers from 1 to 10 that we choose to represent how we are doing personally, professionally, and spiritually. The last space on the sign-in sheet is for us to write an issue with which we are struggling. We spend the first several hours going around the table to talk about why we chose the numbers we chose and what’s happening regarding the issue we revealed. It’s always a great celebration if someone comes in and doesn’t have an issue or has numbers to post that are all pretty high. Most often, for the majority of us, the number in the ‘professional’ column is lower than all the others – because working as a pastor of a church, standing up under constant scrutiny, constantly failing to measure up to what people want you to do for them and how they want you to do it, can wear you down after a while. I feel pretty healthy most months compared to many of my colleagues. But some months I’m down too. At the end of our meeting this past week, our facilitator read this paragraph from The God Who Comes by Carlo Carretto:
How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you!
How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you!
I should like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence.
You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made me understand sanctity.
I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false, and I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful. How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.
No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, although not completely.
And, where should I go?
Oh yes. There it is. There is the tension of being part of a body that is made up of sinners such as you and me – yet a body of which Christ is the head. We come, hoping. We come, hoping that we will find in here a place of refuge. Yet we come knowing that that person over there doesn’t even talk to that person over here. We come knowing that the smiles people have on their faces are often cover-ups for deep, dark secrets because we find it too difficult to trust each other with the truth. We come knowing that we ourselves are far from sanctified, carrying with us stuff that Jesus has told us over and over again to lay down at the foot of the cross. We know all this. We know there are people all over this valley whose families used to be connected to the body, but who have given up and turned away because the Church failed to meet their expectations. They’ve given up, instead of allowing the supernatural gifts God has given to them to be used to make the body better for their neighbors. And we judge them. Even though many of us have given up, choosing not to use our gifts for the body for many of the same reasons.
Jesus is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
I don’t think any of us came here this morning hoping that we could be the best headless church ever, just doing things on our own strength, according to our will, using our talents, and sharing our personal opinions and practiced abilities as well as we can so that we will get some glory. I mean, let’s face it, the body of the headless horseman could have been thrown over that horse and gone places on that horse’s power and strength. We too can go places apart from our head, who is Christ. And we do. But when we do, let us acknowledge this painful truth: The head himself, Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Friend, our Brother, he takes the hit for the shortcomings of the Body.
When we do not allow Jesus Christ, who is our source of life, to guide our actions, inspire our words, and light the path we are to take - Jesus Christ himself is diminished in the eyes of the world (he is not actually diminished, for he cannot be less than who he is: but when we fail, he fades in the eyes of those outside the Church). The Church then becomes nothing more in people’s vocabulary than a broken organization, an object of slander – not a vibrant, attractive, living organism through which Christ is revealed through the peace, unity, and purity of his people.
Hebrews 1:1-3 proclaims this: 1Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. 2But now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he made the universe and everything in it. 3The Son reflects God’s own glory, and everything about him represents God exactly. He sustains the universe by the mighty power of his command. After he died to cleanse us from the stain of sin, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God of heaven.
We must ask Jesus to help us remember that we are the Church, (those who have received the gift of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ are the Church) – whether we are working or worshipping in this building together or whether we are spread over a 100 mile radius throughout the week. We are the body of Christ, the Church, and like the team members stepped aside last Sunday as Mike Tomlin stepped forward to receive the trophy and the praise of the fans in the center of that field, we must step aside to give Jesus his rightful place in our lives, allowing him to be the one and only who stands in the center of the universe accepting the applause and the honor and the glory and the praise for who he is and for all he has done:
For apart from him, we are nothing.
Apart from him, we are powerless.
Apart from him, we are purposeless.
Apart from him, we are mere perishable bodies made of dust, dead in our sin forever.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
Amen.
