It’s been a while now since I last went running on a regular basis. I used to start nearly every day with a run. No longer, though, sadly: time and a slightly dodgy knee have caught up with me. So a few weeks ago I decided to do a short run, just to see how the body stood up to it. I seemed to get through it all right, considering. But next morning, my body was telling me just what it thought! I was a mass of aches and pains, and every part of me seemed to be shouting in protest.
Of course, I shouldn’t have given up at that point (though I did). It was just a reminder that you do need to work at this sort of thing. And when you see someone who really is at the peak of their athletic ability, it’s an inspiring sight, but it’s also the result of an awful lot of work, a very serious commitment of time and effort.
It’s impressive when you see a body working at its peak on the running track or wherever. The combination of a strong personal commitment and good coaching is needed, to improve coordination, and to build up strength and skill in the precise way they’re needed for the chosen event, so that the balance and focus and poise are established that a successful competitor needs. Result - just maybe, a winner, a world champion, a record breaker.
In our New Testament reading this morning we find one of Paul’s remarkable images of the Church: he describes the Church as being a body, the body of Christ. And each member is like a limb or organ of that body, he says. So each member has their right place to occupy and their own task to perform. If any part of a body isn’t functioning as it should, the whole body is weakened. If things don’t work inside you then you’re ill, or disabled, or at the very least inconvenienced. And it’s also true that if some part of a body is over-functioning - working, but not working in a complementary or supportive fashion, that too will disable the body as a whole.
My wife had to have a thyroid operation a few years ago, not because the thyroid gland wasn’t working, but because it was working too darn well, and indeed it was growing and taking up more space than was really available for it. It was a very necessary operation and thankfully a successful one. Things are now back in balance.
Applying that image of the body, we can see how churches are weakened by every absence, and by every half-hearted failure to pull one’s weight. That’s obvious. To take Paul’s other great image of the Church as a spiritual temple: if a brick is missing from the wall, the whole wall is weakened, and if more bricks go missing too, the building may fall.
But what about the person who tries to do too much, who’s a power grabber perhaps? What about the person who takes on roles they’re not suited for, maybe because that makes them feel more important? Churches where that happens also become unbalanced and cease to work as they should.
And there is of course the wild card, the person whose own agenda differs from the one agreed. Perhaps the person who can’t help but bring their own personal issues and problems into church with them.
You might well say, “If you can’t bring your own personal problems and issues to church, where can you bring them?” And of course any church should be a place where help and healing and health are on offer. Where things do go wrong, and the healthy and responsive body becomes a toxic environment instead, there may well have been a failure in its own pastoral response to its members. But then again, I’ve also been uncomfortably aware of situations where a person who wouldn’t admit to their own need for help or change did a lot of damage by lashing out in ways that couldn’t help but hurt others.
All of which suggests that nothing is ever quite as simple as it seems. Where people are half-hearted or missing altogether, that may not be entirely their own fault. Maybe there’s been a failure in leadership, a failure to energise, encourage or recruit. Maybe there are people blocking the path, and refusing to let new blood come in.
Where someone’s working inappropriately, that may also be down to a failure in leadership. A former colleague of mine was brilliant at getting people involved, but hopeless at discernment, so we often had people doing things that weren’t right for them, and then getting discouraged and downhearted, or else needing so much help that my friend might just as well have done the job himself. Of course it’s also true that in a small church people are almost bound to have to do things they don’t feel suited to, because there’s just no-one else there. And clergy and other leaders may well be hopeless at delegating - it’s a job that attracts one man bands, and if I’m honest I have to recognise that in myself.
So how do we get the body of Christ working well where we are? People have written lengthy books about this, so one shortish sermon isn’t going to include all the answers. This diocese has actually been quite good at developing local ministry, and coordinating collaborative ministry both within and among churches continues to be an important dimension for our bishops and their staff. We can sometimes be too defensive about our own little patch, especially when we’re small and feel vulnerable, but we do actually need to learn to co-operate with others so as to achieve together what we won’t manage to do on our own. Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains a single grain. But if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.” We sometimes have to let go of some of what we have, in order to begin a new process of growth.
Two pointers though, that I draw from this morning’s readings. In the Gospel Jesus says, “You are Peter, and on this rock will I build my Church.” For the body to work well it needs good and firm leadership: apostolic leadership, by which I really mean leadership that’s mission minded, outward looking, and deeply connected into the mind of Christ.
Peter’s leadership was all of that; but more than that, it was also broken leadership. Read the whole story of Peter, and see how this brave and faithful man denied three times that he even knew Jesus. Peter had to admit to his own frailty, he knew his need of grace, his need of Christ; he knew what it was to be broken. The best leaders are those who know their own selves for real, and have no false sense of their own grandeur or worth.
And secondly, what use is a body without a head? Our limbs and organs only work when the head tells them to, via the messages our nerves convey. Communication failures from the brain result in serious disabilities.
So a healthy body needs to be obedient to its head, and aware of every message the head is sending. An athlete may spend ages honing every muscle, but unless the mind is also right he’s not going to win. Where there are problems within the body of Christ our first action must be to be in close and intimate touch with our head. An effective and useful Church will be constantly seeking to know the will of Christ, and so will be constant in worship and in prayer. The marks of a successful church are not so much packed pews and healthy balance sheets as good discipleship, marked by forgetfulness of self, persistence in prayer and a heart to serve. We’re called to serve our Lord, and all else must flow from this. We must be single minded, and that mind is the mind of Christ, his call to proclaim the Kingdom, and as a fellowship together to show and share and live his love.
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