Sunday 4 August, 2024

Reflection:  "The Body of Christ"

Psalm 51:1-12

2 Samuel 11:16-12:13a

John 6:24-35

Ephesians 4:1-16

Have you ever taught a young child how to ride a bicycle?
They usually start with training wheels, or as our grand-daughters called them, “stabilisers”.

After a while, when they seem to be confident – usually OVER-confident, you take the training wheels off, but still grasp the handlebar and the seat as you walk around the driveway, or the park, with them.
When they seem to be comfortable with that, you say "I'll just let go for a second." 
"No!" they scream!

But, in what seems like no time at all, you notice that they’ve gained more confidence and are ready to fly solo.
"Let go! I can do it" they say.
Then they take off, wobble, shake, laugh and pedal off as if they’ve been doing it all their lives. 

Our instinct is to run after them, hold the seat, or the handlebars, or both, to keep them safe. 
Instead, we shout, "Keep pedalling!  Keep pedalling!"
We're often like these novices, trainees, or beginners. 
Maybe we're learning a new skill, taking-up a new practice, starting a new job, enrolling in a new school, moving to a new community, or connecting to a new church. 
We feel the awkwardness of growth and the anticipation of change. 

​Perhaps we're not so much beginning, as beginning again:  starting over after failure or disappointment, re-engaging with ordinary life after illness or grief sidelined us for a season, or exploring fresh possibilities after being mired in that swampy sameness of life. 
We feel the surprise of grace and the joy of renewal. 

Beginning, or beginning again, we're like that child learning to ride; needing someone to believe in us, to hold on to us until we're ready to go it alone, and to cheer for us even after we're on the way. 
We need, in other words, someone who’ll guide, help us and be our mentor. 
Another way to say it is that all of us need leaders - people who realise our possibilities and encourage us to claim them, who nurture our potential and help us to realize it, and people who teach and model the joy which comes from being authentically oneself and fully alive. 

Who has been that kind of leader for you? 
Your Mum or Dad, a Grandparent, perhaps?  
Your sports coach, tennis instructor, choir, or band leader?  
Maybe your 7th grade social studies teacher, English professor at university, or church Bible study leader?  
Was it a boss who took an interest in you, or a church minister who was there for you at a pivotal time in your life?

A real leader can somehow get us to do certain things that, deep down, we think are good and want to be able to do, but usually don't have the courage to do on our own. 

It's a mysterious quality, hard to define, but we always know it when we see it, even as kids.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to reach higher.
Ephesians 4 is, in part, about the real leaders which the church needs – people who can encourage followers of Jesus "to do better, harder things" than we are likely to do on our own. 
Verses 11-13 tell us about some of the people whom God has given to lead the church.
“Some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers"The text also describes the work God calls those leaders to do:  equip the saints for the work of ministry, build up the body of Christ, help people to become like Jesus.
But equipping also involves training. 

Leaders offer people experiences which help them turn their gifts into skills, their talents into practices, their passions into actions, and their concerns into disciplines. 
Equipping and training are indispensable parts of a church's ministry of Christian education and spiritual formation. 
But equipping is more than training. 

More deeply, equipping is about restoration and healing. 
The word equip in our text comes from an interesting family of Greek words which describe, among other things, the setting of broken bones during surgery, fostering healing, and working for rehabilitation. 
This same family of words makes an appearance in the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus calls some Galilean fishermen to be his followers. 

When Jesus invited James and John to the adventure of discipleship, they were "in the boat with their father mending their nets." (Matthew 4:21)Mending is from this same family of words, so mending and equipping are related, which means that to equip is to weave back together the frayed edges of life, to repair brokenness rather than to write-off the broken, and to restore rather than discard the shattered.  It is to help people trust that in spite of what life has done to them and with them they can be useful again. 
This understanding of equipping means that leadership involves a crucial dimension of healing and restoration. 

All of us have experiences which tear at us; we all have times when fatigue or failure tempts us to give up on ourselves. 

Leaders recognize that, sometimes, what people most need is not to refine their skills or to avail themselves of more training. 
Instead, what they need are grace and mercy, renewal and confidence. 
They need to know that it's always possible to begin, or to begin again.
The disciples looked to Jesus for their training and leadership and asked him how they could possibly perform the same sort of miracles as he performed.
He related it to eating bread, but not the sort of bread that just filled your tummy for a short time.

Jesus told them that he, that is, his body, was the bread of life and that they must believe in him to be spiritually filled enough to be capable of the miracles he required of them.
The body of Christ, in both physical and spiritual terms, was what they required to be able to go it alone.

They had been taught on their training wheels and now it was time for Jesus to let go of the bike seat and for them to launch off under their own power.
None of us is completely together, unflawed and whole. 
But by the gifts God has given us, his restoring grace and with one another's encouragement, we're on our way. 
Let’s have the courage to pedal off in search of the tasks that God has in mind for us during the rest of our lives.

Let's have the confidence that he has equipped us adequately and that he will be there with us, so that we’re not going to fall off our bikes.
I encourage you to spend some time in prayer with God and ask him what it is that he has in mind for you.
We're all made differently and have different skills and talents.

We all need leaders and maybe that’s one of your gifts which you can provide for others.

Use what God’s given to you and work to build up his kingdom here on earth.
The blessings that you provide for others will be nothing, when compared to the blessings you’ll receive.
So don’t be afraid to take off your training wheels are off and launch out into the world.
God will be with you and bless you in everything that you endeavour in his name.
​Blessings.....................Pastor Rick