Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away. So I’d like to start out with a question that, hopefully, will prepare us for not only a great day, but hopefully give us a great way to live.  My question is this, “Are you thankful?”

I find that many of us are passive in our thankfulness. We’re thankful but we don’t spend much time in that department. That is, if I asked you if you were thankful, you’d say, “Yes.” And If I asked you what you were thankful for, you’d be able to name 10 things fairly easily, 20 things with a little difficulty, and you’d maybe struggle with a list of 30 things. Listing 50 things in 10 minutes would be very difficult for most of us, because we are passive in our thanksgiving.

How many of you have enough joy? How many of you wouldn’t want more joy? How many of you are just busting out at the seams when it comes to joy? Joy is a by-product of thanksgiving. Joy fills us when we see that we are blessed and seeing that we are blessed comes when we stop taking many of the things in life for granted and begin to see them as something that God has given us in love.

Now, it is one thing to be thankful. It is yet another to live out of a thankful heart, where I am constantly naming things in my life that I am thankful for as they come to me. What does this look like?

Someone once asked me the primary difference between this church and most other churches. I said, “That’s easy.” Most churches are primarily about programs and they have small groups as one of their programs. Small groups are secondary most churches. New Community is primarily about small groups and everything that we do feeds into and out of community and our small groups.

If you are a thankful person, then thanksgiving is secondary to living. Living is primary and occasionally you stop and give thanks. What we’re going to be talking about today is about living primarily out of a thankful heart. How thankful are you in an aggressive or forward kind of way?

In thanksgiving, we are called to not just be thankful, but to live out of a deep sense of gratitude and thanksgiving.

One of the things that I’ve noticed since I’ve become a pastor, and this is true of me as well. On a level of at least 10 to 1 people ask me to pray for something that’s going wrong in their life; that’s part of what it means to be a pastor in America is that people will as you to pray for them or someone that they love at least 10 times more than they will ask you to thank God for some good that you or someone you love has experienced. We are often times a glass is half full kind of people. We are thankful, we are often thankful in a passive way, not in a aggressive or forward sort of way.  

Do you know what the really good news is? The really good news is that God created you for something better. He created you for a way of seeing the good that he has given you, day by day, moment by moment, instead of the trudgery that we so often make of our lives.

So how do we get more joy and how do we become more thankful? How does that happen? The Apostle Paul says that it all has to do with focus!

Since you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, on heavenly things, on good things, on a life where God ultimately is in control – bad things happen, yes, but Christ will redeem even those things, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things – not on the negative, not on the hellish things that surround us, but on the good ones. Colossians 3:1-2 (NIV)

Are we to just ignore the bad things that are happening around us? Are we to just live with our head in the clouds and pretend that everything is good even when they aren’t. NO! But your attitude, your heart, your joy is deeply determined by where you tend to focus your mind and your heart. Paul said it like this:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:4-7 (NRSV)

And then just verses later he continues to tell us what we are to focus on.

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Philippians 4:8 (NRSV)

We are to focus, not on all the hellish things in our lives, but on the good things in our lives, because where ever you focus most of your time and energy is where you will go physically, emotionally and spiritually. Your focus and mine is critical to a joyful and thankful heart. Your focus and mine is critical to who we end up becoming.

Our focus in life takes us in a direction. Try driving a car without looking at the road once? How long do you go straight? We can only go where we focus, but we often times focus on the bad and not on the good. It’s no wonder why we have so little joy in our lives when we fail to focus on living out of a thankful heart. Thanksgiving equals, at some level, Joy.

When we allow ourselves to be passive about thanksgiving, then we will, every once in a while end up with joy in our lives. Joy will be as random as your thanksgiving. Being thankful is vastly different than living out of a thankful spirit. When you live in thanksgiving, focusing on whatever is good, then your spirits will soar, but if you chose like most people to allow yourself to be passively thankful, then you will find that you are also passively joyful.

In order to help us see what thanksgiving looks like for many of us, I’d like to read the story of Jesus and a group of lepers. It begins like this:

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” Luke 17:11-19 (NRSV)

Now, these are faith-filled men. , they are followers of Christ in the sense that they are following his command, and while they were on their way, they were leprosy left them and they were made clean.

What a tremendous and marvelous experience! They had faith in the God who created them, could also heal them and in their faith they were healed of their leprosy. They must have been estatic!  Jumping up and down, giving high-fives, hugging each other and after the amazement and the wow factor wore off, some headed off to see the priests, to be pronounced clean by them, maybe others headed off for their homes to hug their wives or to see their children, but one of them turned around and walked back to Jesus.

What do you want of God? Look at this world God made—a world where trees can grow and houses can be built; a world where there’s iron and steel in the earth; a world where there is fertility in the soil so food can be produced. Within this world, there is medicine that can cure many of our sicknesses and diseases. God And this is one of the reasons for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a reminder to count our blessings. And don’t let your blessings cause you to forget to be thankful.

Because when things are good, we tend to forget that we need God, and when things are bad, the only thing that we tend to remember to bring to him are the bad things in life, but a joyous heart is one who remembers to look at every good gift that we’ve been given and bring it back to God with thanks.

Thanksgiving is made up of two words, of course, “thanks” and “giving”. Thanks for giving us that healing Jesus!

There were ten lepers. They all came. They all prayed. They all were healed. But then there’s a difference. Nine of them took the healing and went their way. One of them took the trouble to come back and say thank you. I have a feeling there were tears running down the cheeks of our Lord when he said, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?” I have a feeling it broke his heart. Why didn’t the nine come back?

If you stopped one of those lepers and asked him if he was thankful that he’d been healed, I’m thinking he’d say, “Are you crazy, I had leprosy and now I don’t, of course I’m thankful. All nine were selfish in their thankfulness. They thought it was good fortune that they were healed.

Being thankful is different than living out of your thankfulness. The prior is primarily a selfish form of thanksgiving. The latter, is a God centered form of thanksgiving.

I don’t have many happy memories of growing up in church. Most of my memories are painful, but I remember one thing we did after every worship gathering. We sang a song that went like this:

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

That song was all about focusing on what was good and thanking God for it!

Do you know that half of Pilgrims died the first year they were here? They had a hard time, and it was a cold winter. Dangers lurked everywhere, but those pilgrims didn’t allow all the hardships to obscure the blessings of God. They went together, and they thanked the Lord for the blessings they had received. Sometimes we need to put down our assets alongside our losses. Every one of us is more blessed than we are hurt.

I wish we knew the name of this one thankful leper. I wish we knew who he was, where he came from. I’m sure he had a family, too. I’m sure stuff that he wanted to attend to. But he also realized that he had been healed, that he had been blessed. And he came back to the Jesus. And he said: Lord, I came to you a while ago and said, “Have mercy upon me.” I came a while ago begging. I came a while ago asking. But now I’m coming back saying, “You did it! The miracle has happened. And it’s a glorious and wonderful thing! And he knelt down and he worshipped the Lord for his blessing. It was un awesome time of thanksgiving – of giving thanks.

Then Jesus said, “Were there not ten healed? Where are the nine?” Suppose the Lord looked down on the your town today and saw all the people who lived there. Would he look at us and say: Look at this person; look at this family; look at this business. I poured out my blessings upon them, but they don’t have time to thank me. They don’t ever remember the things I’ve given in love.

Worship is what focuses us on God. Worship reminds us that God is God and that we’re not. Worship is a reminder that we need to thank God for all the many blessings we have to be thankful for. Worship is a time in which we bring not only our prayers for the difficulties in our lives, but also to celebrate and give thanks for the good that God has given us. When you come to worship, you are in the class of that man who came back to say “thank you.” The man came and got a physical blessing the first time. In coming back the second time, he got the greatest blessing.

Jesus said to the healed leper, “Get up and go on your way; and get this, your faith has made you well.

Each of the nine other lepers received physical healing. The healed leper who came back received inner healing. The nine lepers were thankful. The 10^th lived out of his thankfulness. The 9 lepers, if you had asked them would have said, “Oh yes, I’m thankful.” The 10^th leper actually went and kneeled at the feet of Jesus and told him he was thankful. The nine lepers were passively thankful. The 10^th leper lived out of his thankfulness. The 9 lepers were healed on the outside. The 10^th leper was healed physically, emotionally and spiritually. The 9 lepers were temporarily joyful, because they were temporarily thankful. The 10^th leper lived a life of thanksgiving, and therefore he was filled with joy.

I would suggest that as Americans we have very little joy. Joy cannot happen apart from thanksgiving. Joy is founded in aggressive Thanks – giving.

Thanksgiving is not necessarily looking back on the blessings you’ve received. Thanksgiving is the ability to look at your world and your life, moment by moment and be thankful for the blessings that God is showering you as they come.

We are often times the most outwardly spoken about somebody’s goodness after they die. What would it be like to go up to everyone in your life and look them right in the eye and tell them, “I’m thankful for you . . ..” and then tell them in what ways you’re thankful for them.

When we are thankful to God for the blessings that he brings to us each day, we give to him our gift of love and worship. When we tell others what we’re thankful for in their lives, then we give our love to them. When we give thanks regularly to God and to others, it brings a bit more of heaven to earth.

We’ve been asking the question, “Who am I?” What identifies who I am? Am I identified by what others say about me? Do I find my value and my worth my purpose or my identity, my sense of belonging from others, by what they say or do to me. Am I emotionally healthy when people are patting me on the back and saying, “Atta boy” and does my world fall apart when I mess up or somehow don’t live up to somebody’s will for me? Do I take my report card to my husband or my wife and receive my value and my sense of self worth from them or do I get it from somewhere else. Do I go to my husband or my wife, my parents or my friends and at some basic level ask the question, “Am I worthwhile? Am I valuable? Do I belong?” Or do I go to my husband or my wife, my parents or my friend knowing who I am, knowing that I’m worthwhile, knowing that I’m valuable, knowing who I am when I go to them? Depending on which way you approach people in your life, it makes a huge difference on the level of confidence and maturity that you display. The former will always lead to times of deep anxiety, the later towards much peace.

We said that just as a building inspector requires a firm foundation for your house, so that your house will weather all the storms Mother Nature throws at it, so it is that your Creator created you to have a firm foundation, which is Christ. As long as you and I build our identity on anything that moves, on anything that can be taken away, on anything that is dependent upon sinful people, your foundation, and therefore your value and worth will always be unstable and you will always have a shifting foundation, which will cause anxiety, fear, and stress at the very core of your being. God created you to know who you are and you can only know who you are when you understand at the heart level whose you are. We can only answer the question “Who am I?” when we come to know the Great I AM.

We said that we cannot find our identity from anything on the outside. We cannot allow anything or anyone else to define us. We cannot be defined, we cannot find our value, we cannot know our worth apart from our Creator and our Lord Jesus Christ. You are so valuable to him that he was willing to die in order that you might have life, life abundant. We must find our value and our worth in him, because in him our world no longer shakes, but becomes firm. The storms in life the value and worth and sense of belonging that he gives us, but our house, our identity stands firm.

This morning I’d like to continue probing the question, “Who am I?”

There is a spectrum of human adult maturity. You’ve seen it. At one end of the spectrum, are those who are very unhealthy emotionally. They are people who are very individualistic. They are at the core selfish. They love, but it is a selfish love only to fill their own need. They live life quoting familiar American sayings like, “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself,” or “when you get down you have to pull yourself up by your boot straps.” These people have often times been hurt deeply by others, often while they were growing up, so they tend to build walls around their heart and not let anyone in. They do this because they fear being hurt again.

On the other end of the spectrum and equally unhealthy are people who are fused with others emotionally. They find their identity, their worth, their sense of belonging, really, their sense of identity from other people. Because of this, they are very reactive to who others think about them. They feel very good when others praise them, and they feel very low when others don’t agree with them or cut them down. These people are fused to the emotions and the sinfulness and are reactive toward those they have relationships with.

God tells us “I, the Lord your God, am holy. Leviticus 19:2 (NIV)

To be Holy is to be set apart – to be set apart from evil – to be separate from evil. God displays his character in creating the world, where he creates one thing after another and then steps back and looks at it and says, “It’s good.” In the creation story, God creates and speaks only goodness and life and a world that is filled with blessing. God is good, and he is set apart from all evil. God knows who he is and he says, “I don’t want anything to do with evil, it’s not in my nature.”

But then he does something polar. He does something that creates a lot of tension, because he tells us that he is completely against evil and is not evil, but then he steps down out of heaven in the person of Jesus and steps right into your neighborhood filled with evil. In fact, his whole ministry is talking to people who are not perfect, who have evil thoughts and evil desires, and he gets right in the middle of all these evil folks, just like you and me, and we’re told he loves them.

So we have two polar statements by God. One is I am holy. I am set apart from all evil. I know who I am, and I am good. And then he steps down into our world and rolls up his sleeves and goes to work on loving people who are completely twisted and messed up, evil, not good. How do we understand what is going on here?

First, God is an individual in the sense that he knows who he is. He did not step down into our world wondering who he is. He did not step down into our world and allow other broken, messed up, twisted, imperfect people to tell me whether I’m worthwhile, valueable, and good. I already know who I am. Second, God’s signature is community, is taking two or more and uniting them together in his goodness. God loves people. He designed them. He Created them, and he died for them. God is an individual in the sense that he knows who he is. He doesn’t come to you and I for his report card. Then, God loves community and so he steps down into community, but he does not allow himself to get fused with others.

Let me give you an example of this. I have a can of Coke (I’m shaking the can vigorously). What happens if I open it right now (pointing it toward the front row)? Yeah, it gets all fizzy and it goes everywhere. That’s what happens when we enter community, relationships, not knowing who we are in Christ. We get all reactive, fizzy, when they get all fizzy. When we don’t know who we are we get anxious when others don’t affirm us and value us, and when we feel like we don’t belong. Fizziness happens when we don’t know who we are. It happens when we don’t know who’s we are.

On the flip side, when we know who we are, we can enter into relationships with others, knowing that there will probably be fizziness, but we don’t have to react to it. When we know who we are in Christ, we don’t need to react to other people’s anxiety and anger and put downs because we are fused with Christ. Our identity is dependent upon him and he is non-anxious. He is only love. We become what we worship. We become what we focus on. We become what we build the foundation of our lives on. When we build our foundation on anything other than Christ, it will always be shifting. It will always be unstable when we base our identity on anything other than Christ, and like earthquakes in our physical world, our identity will tremble and shake every time any time others think of us as less than what we were created to be, which is priceless.

Ok, I wanted to give you a basic, though very deep, understanding of what it means to be emotionally mature. Emotional maturity only comes when our identity, our value, our worth, our purpose, our security, and our sense of belonging is secure, and it can never be secure as long as it is based on something that is not stable, on something that is always moving. Our identity must be based on Jesus Christ we are told, “Is the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”

This thought sets us up for what we want to talk about today. The Apostle Paul said this to the church in Rome:

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought (don’t think of yourself as better than others – as an individual who doesn’t need anyone), but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. 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. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully. Romans 12:3-8 (NIV)

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 1 Corinthians 12:27 (NIV)

Paul comes right out and answers the question, Who am I? Who are we? In these verses the apostle Paul tells you and I that we are the body of Christ. What does that mean? A couple of things.

The first thing that this the Church is necessary for your, and for my, spiritual survival. Just like the hand or the foot can’t say to the rest of the body, “I don’t need you”, because a hand that is cut off from the body will die. In the same way, Christians can’t have any spiritual growth if they are not connected to the body of Christ, the church. You are created to be interconnected.

It is fashionable these days to say things like: I am spiritual but I don’t go to church. Or I believe in God, but I don’t go to church, I worship him in when I go into the woods. These are okay statements,  but by themselves they are not authentic Christianity. Christianity always was and always will be a communal experience, a team experience. Jesus says,

Wherever two or three come together in my name, there am I with them. (Matthew 18:20)

Now that doesn’t mean that Jesus can’t meet us individually, he does. But what it does mean is that we are called to be together as a community. As Hebrews 10:25 says,

Let us not give up meeting together, as some of us are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another.

You see Christianity is personal but not private (project). We need Christian community to survive and to grow. Take a look at this clip

Video Clip: lion pride attack herd of water buffalo – youtube

I find it very interesting that the youngest calf in that herd of buffalo didn’t get eaten. Why? I find it very interesting that the weaker, small female didn’t get eaten. Why? I find it very interesting that the big, strong male got eaten. Why? Listen.

There is a strong theme that runs through the Bible: Alone we die; together we live (Project).

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith . . .. 1 Peter 5:8-9 (NIV)

When we are alone, independent, autonomous – when we act as though we don’t need anyone else – when we think we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, we are in trouble? You are the Body of Christ! This church thing is not something that’s just between me and God. That is a twisted, distorted truth. You and I, as individuals, control the paths that we choose. All the choices in our life are ours, but we are always called as Christians to link arms with one another, because we are weak alone, but powerful together.

Now, the body of Christ is like a football team. To be the body of Christ means that every one of us is vital and every one of us has a vital role that we play. Can a good football team exist without one of it’s players – a quarterback, a tackle, a free safety, a punter, you name a position and the team needs that spot filled with someone who has gifts in that area. Without a tackle or a guard or a center, the enemy rushes right in. Without a defensive line, or line backers or a free safety, the enemy runs right through – you are vulnerable when you try to go it alone. The answer to the question, “Who am I?” is impart answer by this statement:

Project: We were created to live interdependent not independent lives, because alone we die, but together we live

God created you with a gift. He wired you in a certain way. There is not a single person here who is the same as you. There is not a person here who has the same gift. What God calls the Body of Christ, is when each person in the church joins their gift together with others, so that we, together, become stronger, better, more complete, more good.

When my wife was pregnant, she was told that she needed to take a certain test to find out if the baby she was carrying was ok. When pressed, the doctor told us that the test was to determine if the child was without birth defects, so we could determine if we wanted the child or to abort it. In other words, they were telling us that if the child was not “Normal” then we might want to abort the child. In no uncertain terms, we told them we did not want the test, because we were keeping the child no matter what.

When I was in my early 30’s I met a single woman who had adopted an autistic child. The woman knew the little girl was autistic when she adopted her. As I’ve talked with her and with others who have either raised or grown up around a child who was “not whole” or “not normal” in the world’s eyes, I have found something remarkable. The families of these “different” children all became attached to these children and loved them just like normal children. Not only that, but these children often taught people in their families and in their churches important, valuable, life lessons that made each family member and each church member better because of that child’s existence. Different people are just as much a part of the body of Christ. Do you know why? Because God created them and he puts his Spirit inside of them and when we get close to them, engages us through them. The Holy Spirit is not just for normal people, but God’s Spirit lives in different people too. If get close enough to any human being, we can see the goodness of God inside of them and they teach us things about God and ourselves that we could never have learned apart from them.

We were not created to be independent; we were created to be interdependent. Each person was created by God and each person has a gift or an attribute or a special, unique way of seeing the world that helps each one of us grow and better understand who God is and who we are in him.

Jim Trestle, the coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes wrote this:

During my second month of college, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions, until I read the last one: “What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?” Surely, this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired, and in her fifties, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Just before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade.

“Absolutely,” said the professor, “In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say, “Hello.” I’ve never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy.

We all need each other. And nobody is left out. Every part of the body is vital, and while some parts may be less visible, all parts are essential. A human body without a hand or an eye is a body that cannot function as well as it otherwise could. It’s the same in the church – every person and every role is necessary.

Do you believe that? Do you believe that you are vital to the functioning of this church? Or do you come here sometimes and think, they don’t need me, or I don’t belong, or I don’t have anything to offer. After all, what do I have to offer? I am not necessary.

One woman stated this idea humorously. She said, “In the body of Christ, I think I am the appendix”. No one knows my purpose, but occasionally I flare up and have to be removed.”

Is that how you sometimes feel? I am the appendix. Or is that how you feel about other people? Everyone is vital even if they aren’t known to many.

Can a flower grow without any air? Can it grow without dirt? Water? Sunlight? Growing a flower happens when things work together for good. A flower cannot exist without all the necessary parts. God says to you, “You are a necessary part of this church. I created you unique. There is only one you, but I did not create you to live independent from others. I created you to live interdependent. I did not create you to run the race of life alone, but rather to work with others on a team.

Now, I don’t like hockey much. I didn’t watch much hockey while I was growing up, so I don’t know a lot about hockey. I don’t’ know many of the rules, but there is one rule that I understand about hockey. When there is a penalty and a player has to go off the ice into the penalty box, it creates what’s called a “Power play” for the other team. The team with the player in the penalty box is at a disadvantage, because they have to play with one player less. Their opponent, their enemy has an advantage over them during that time.

A vital answer to the question, “Who am I?” is that God created you and I to be interconnected with you using your gifts and me using my gifts and together we make a deeply connected team that is powerful against the enemy. When people in the church operate as though they are not interconnected and when they don’t use their gifts and when they don’t become a part of the body of Christ, then it’s as though the church is in the penalty box and Satan and his team has a power play advantage against us.

It’s like a football team having only 10 players on the field. It’s like a baseball team having only 8 players on the field with centerfield wide open. It is like a water buffalo getting singled out by a pride of lions.

The church is the place where we practice for eternity. It is the place where we practice connecting and interacting and working together for the common good. Does it always work perfectly? Ha!!! No, it doesn’t work perfectly! In fact, sometimes it works very imperfectly, but we are called to practice, and work through our problems and continue to share our gifts and talents in ways that make the whole body better.

 We have people who come in early every Sunday morning and pull trailers

• Who put out signs
• Who set up this room
• Who set up and lead Kid’s Community and our nursery
• We have people who are praying during the week and on Sunday mornings here
• We have people that make coffee and treats to share with others

For the most part, these people are unseen, but are they important? Yeaaahhhhhh!

• We have people who lead life groups
• People who lead community supers
• Who lead through our Creative Crew
• We have people who share their gift of music through singing or playing an instrument
• We have people who are encouragers
• Others who have the gift of making money and they are generous with the money they make
• We have people who have gifts with computers who take care of our website or technical problems
• We have people who love photography so they take pictures of all of our events so we can share them with others.

I’m sure that I haven’t gotten all the ways that people serve, but the point I’m trying to make is God gave you a special, unique gift, but it is not intended to only serve you for your own self interests. We were created to use our gifts for the greater good of not only our church, but our schools and our community and the people at work and our families. We were created not to live independent, but interdependent. At the core, this is what it means in the greatest commandments, that we are to love our neighbor as our self. We are a team, and if you don’t see the importance that God has put in someone else, that just means that you haven’t gotten close enough to them to see it, because it’s there.

Every gift, every practical way that God has created us is to be shared with the rest of the body of believers and by all of us working together, sharing, serving, loving, caring, the load is light and the blessings are real.

We have not been created to be independent as our culture tells us. We were created to live inter-dependent. We were created to work as a team, just as those water buffalo did to save that young calf.

This is in contrast to our culture which says some people are more important because they are rich or they are celebrities or because they are good looking, Jesus says that in his church and in his body no one person or role is more important than another and all are needed for the whole body to function properly.

People often times put me and my role on a pedestal. But the truth of the matter is that I could not function without all of you supporting me. My gift is not any more important that the gift that God has given you. New Community will fall flat on its face if people don’t give, serve, and share what it is that God has given them. My gifts are not the most important to this church, because if I did not have all of you working right beside me and using your gifts to support mine and me using my gifts to support yours, this church wouldn’t function or if it did, there would be a lot of dis-function.

If you are hearing my voice this morning you are a vital part of not only this church but of God’s mission to the world – of bringing bits of heaven to earth through the gifts and goodness that you share and that I share with others. Now, God is going to get his will done with or without you, but it will be a lot better for you and a lot better for all of us if he can do it with you. You are vital.

When I became a father for the first time, I thought to myself, “I love this precious little girl with all that I am. She is a miracle and I was deeply drawn to her. I thought to myself. We can’t have any more kids because I could never love anyone as much as I loved my firstborn. How could I share my love? But miracle of miracles, when the second child came, I realized that my love did not have to be split, instead my love grew, so that I had enough to love each of them equally. Now, as many of you know, Corban has come into our family and I find once again that I do not love any one of them less than the other, I love them all equally. Love is a funny thing. It does not have to split, because God gives us the gift of growing our love. Every person is just as important as the next. Are they different? As different as night is to day!

Part of belonging is sharing. Sharing the fun, the work, and blessings and the sorrows. Being part of a body is like being part of a family, like being part of a team, where the health of the team is directly related to the health of each member of the team. Being part of the body is like being part of a herd. Each buffalo is needed to protect the herd. Each one is needed, so it is with the church. We are the body of Christ. We only represent God when we are using our gifts together. When some are being independent, then the whole body suffers.

In the body of Christ every member is vital to fulfill the church’s mission to the world, which brings me to my question

What is our mission to the world? What is our purpose in the world? It is this:

(Project) To be the “body of Christ” means that we are Christ’s physical presence in the world.

This is not a metaphor. He means it literally. We are literally Christ’s arms, legs,

hands, and his voice in the world, when we work together as a body.

Generally speaking, many churches in North America are made up of a group of people who show up on Sunday morning for an event, at a building called “The Church”, but the church in the Bible is never understood as an event that people show up to. In the Bible, the church is never understood as a building that you go to. In the Bible, the church is always understood as a group of people who are doing life together, going in the same direction, sharing their gifts with one another in such a way that life for all gets better. We are called to be the body of Christ.

One of the questions about Christianity is why did Jesus leave? I believe in the resurrection. That is a historical fact. But why did Jesus leave?

It would have been a whole lot easier for me if Jesus had just stuck around. . . .But according to the New Testament he didn’t leave. That’s right, he’s never left.  What this passage says is if we have a relationship with Jesus then his Spirit lives inside of us and when we come together and work together in love and really become one in heart soul, mind, and strength, then we collectively become his body, his physical presence on earth. He left so that we, the church, could do that. So that we, the church could fight against evil, love well, heal those who are broken, and find freedom for those who are enslaved or oppressed.

Do we do it perfectly, no! But we are called to practice for eternity. We are called to practice for heaven. This side of heaven is a training ground. It’s to find out whether you and I will seek to bring glory to ourselves by creating a world that is all about me, or whether we would work together to create a world that is all about God our Creator, Redeemer, and Savior.

Christianity is not something that you can do alone. It is not just between you and God. That is part of it to be sure, but the greatest commandments make this clear. There are two commandments. It is not just about loving God with all that we are and being nice to those around us. Instead we are commanded to love not only God, but others? Why, because we are God’s family. We are sons and daughters of God. We are God’s army who fights against evil with love. The church is God’s team. Jesus prayed that just as he and the Father were one, so it is that he prayer for his disciples to be one. Why? So that they could be his body, reflecting his love, his grace, his forgiveness, his mercy, and his truth to a world that so desparately needs it. When we work together in love; when we don’t live independent, autonomous lives, and when we instead live interconnected, dynamic lives as a team, the Spirit of Christ – the Holy Spirit lives in us and works through us to bring up there down here.

Alone we die; together we live. Alone, it’s all about me; Alone, I become my greatest focus and my greatest obsession. Together, with Christ living in us, we become his body, doing his mission in the world together – person by person bringing heaven to earth.

There is one body and one Spirit– just as you were called to one hope when you were called– one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:4-6 (NIV)

Who am I? the answer to that question is always found not in independence, but in interdependence. Alone we die, but together with God and together with the Body of
Christ, together with God’s family we live, we experience life in Christ, and as we journey together toward Chrsit, we find out who we are.