January 25, 2004 - Third Sunday after Epiphany
I Corinthians 12:12-31a
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Luke 4:14-21
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"Church: Mission Impossible"

“‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’  And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.  The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.  Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’”

When I was growing up my dad and I would watch certain television shows together down in “the hole.”  That’s what my mom called our basement hideaway, “the hole” – though it was far nice than that.  We watched ‘Gunsmoke’ and other westerns for dad and comedies and “Mission Impossible” for me.  Remember “Mission Impossible’ – the pre-Tom Cruise, Mr. Phelps ‘Mission Impossible”?  Vintage stuff that: “Your mission should you decide to accept it ...” which, of course, they always did and always made the impossible look rather handily possible – even in those decidedly low-tech special effects days!

I can almost hear the “Mission Impossible” theme playing as Jesus picks up the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and begins to read.  No, I don’t think the scroll self-destructed, but when Jesus declares the presence of a year of favor from the Lord – a Jubilee – and says that Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled, he accepts a mission.  What is more, that mission Jesus takes on – to bring good news to the poor, liberate the oppressed, proclaim release to captives, and give sight to the blind – that becomes the mission for everyone who declares herself or himself to be “a follower of Jesus Christ,” a member of the church.  Jesus declared the mission and we’ve been trying to make it come together for almost two thousand years.  The church – mission impossible?

First, why does the church have to accept this mission?  Isn’t it Jesus’ mission?  And, if it was his, hasn’t it already been accomplished?  We’ll find the answers, or at least clues, in Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church.  He tells them, “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.”  In short, when we identify ourselves as “followers” we are joined to the Body.  There is a living, organic unity of the believer with God in Jesus the Christ – that is the promise and the hope of authentic humanity.

The Irish Biblical scholar, Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, has explained it this way:

“What the physical body suggested to Paul was the idea of coexistence in the strict sense of that much abused term because this conveyed perfectly his understanding of authenticity.

The limbs of the human body all share a common existence because they are related integral parts of a single whole.  Their very reality as limbs is conditional on their being parts of the body.”  [Becoming Human Together, p. 194]

The point is, just as Paul makes it, that you can’t have a body that is just one thing.  It can’t be all eye, or ear, or nose, or arm, or heart, or leg, or even brain.  Important as those limbs or organs are, they’re important because they are a part of a whole.  So it is with the church – we’re important because we’re together.

All of us together – and this means Christians all across the world and space and time, too, for that matter – make up the Body of Christ.  Christ’s mission to declare good news, open blind eyes, free those bound by oppression, release the captives and announce the ongoing year of favor is ours.  The mission is not yet fully accomplished and it is now up to us to continue the work.  Again, we can’t do this by ourselves – we need one another to make it happen.  As Murphy-O’Connor says:

“Authentic existence is the existence of a part within a whole.  The reciprocal creativity of love creates a ‘life’ in which the members share.  They do not possess.  They participate.  They need each other in the same way that the arm needs the body.  Without each other they cannot be themselves....  The wholeness of authenticity demands that we belong to one another.” [p. 195]

The church, to answer my first question, has to accept this mission because we are – all together – the living presence of Christ in the world.

So, there it is; our mission, should we decide to accept it, to continue what God began in Jesus.  Is being church an impossible mission?  The church has existed for almost two millennia – what have we accomplished?  The historical record would have a long list of crimes and accomplishments alike.  However, is that the work of the church as a human institution or as the living Body of Christ?  I think it is well past the time for us to acknowledge that the institutional church is a by-product, though perhaps a very necessary one, but still a by-product of the Body of Christ.  God calls people into relationship – people form institutional structures.

Part of our mission, I believe, is to preach and to live the mission Jesus described TO the church as institution.  We need to proclaim the good news of God’s wealth of love to those who have become obsessed with the poverty of the institutional church’s message.  We must proclaim release to those who have been made captive to the rules and regulations of institutions and open the doors of loving relationship to them so they might be free.  We must open the eyes of those blinded by power, authority, control, and dogmas that limit the mind and stunt the heart.  Remember Pastor Robinson’s good words to the Pilgrims, “The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth out of His holy Word.”  God is still speaking to us and we still ought to listen.  We need to free those oppressed by guilt and by the limitations we place on one another, especially as to who truly is a child of God and who is not.  The year of the Lord’s favor – the year of Jubilee when all debts are off, grudges forgotten and freedom for all restored – is here, right now.

Our mission is far from impossible – it begins by the way we “do” church right here together.  Our church covenant certainly reflects the mission we’re called to undertake.  If we live as Christ’s Body what we say is ours to do as “followers of Jesus Christ” the mission is possible, and ongoing, and will be successful.  Our mission is far from impossible because of our stance toward ‘sister churches’ – Congregational or otherwise.  On this Sunday we pray for the unity of Christians, we acknowledge that unity need not mean uniformity – whether in this gathered people or in the ‘wider’ church.  As our great forebear Richard Baxter said:

“For one sect then to say, Ours is the true Church, and another to say, Nay, but ours is the true Church, is as mad as to dispute whether your hall, or kitchen, or parlour, or coal-house is your house; and or one to say, This is the house, and another, Nay, but it is that; when a child can tell them, that the best is but a part, and the house containeth them all.”

“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

The mission possible of being church is to preach, too, the liberation of the church from limiting itself, limiting God’s love, and making institutions where God desires relationships.

            On a practical, day-to-day, basis this means that the mission possible of being church involves valuing each part and each gift equally.  We move beyond looking at people or contributions in a hierarchy of value and see the truth that we do belong together and that we do need each other.  Paul reminds us, “But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members have the same care for one another.  If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” In other words, we don’t just go with the flow – we look to those who need support and then we give it.  Those who are stronger then lend their strength.  All together we grow and prosper.  And, just like the work involved in toning and building our physical bodies

 -- not that I’m an expert in physical fitness, mind you -- this building of the spiritual body takes intentionality, effort and work.  Oh – and lest I forget – “no pain, no gain.” Sometimes our exercise toward growth in the body will hurt and we live through it; we just live through it.

I want to close with something pointedly humorous that I found.  It comes from a sermon by a minister named Lorain Giles and I can’t resist using this little story here.  Oh, and any similarity between any of the characters and real people is purely coincidental.

“Pastor Gander waddled up to the pulpit one Sunday and began a fiery sermon.  ‘What kind of birds are we? The pastor thundered.  ‘Geese! Amen!’ thundered back the congregation.  ‘And what are these things that God has given us, these majestic appendages?’ ‘Wings!’ shouted the congregation.  ‘And why did God give us these fine wings?’ ‘To fly, Pastor!’ ‘That’s right!’ The pastor really started to roll now.  ‘God wants us to fly! We are God’s flying children! The moles can dig, the lions can hunt, but we can fly! We can catch the winds beneath our wings and thrill to the sensation of the breeze through out feathers.  We can reach the mighty mountaintops.’ ‘Amen! We can fly!’ the congregation honked back.  ‘If God wants us to fly, then what shall we do?’ ‘We’ll fly, we’ll fly.  We’ll fly!’ shouted the congregation.  After the worship service, during coffee hour, the congregation honked quietly to each other about how inspiring the pastor’s sermon had been.  Then they waddled out of the fellowship hall and walked home.

This story raises the question: So when do we start to fly? When do we start to live by the truth of Luke’s mandate or by the scriptures, that we, by virtue of our baptism, claim as truth?”