Now Slater is not writing as a Christian, but as a thoughtful observer of the American condition. He is describing sinful independence, prideful self-sufficiency. But God has a different idea for us. God has a different goal for our lives. In contrast to isolation, God say that we are made blood relation by the cross of Jesus Christ. We are brothers and sisters. And, even more than that, we collectively are a body.

Several times Paul uses the analogy of a body to describe the church. One of these places is our text for this morning, Colossians 1:18 -- “Christ is also the head of the body, the church.”

This morning I want to unpack some of the meaning and implications of this powerful teaching.

First, the overall design of a body.

If you stand in front of a mirror you will notice, I hope, that there are two divisions of the body. The knob up on top, with more or less hair, we call the head. It is the control center. The rest of the body, with its appendages of arms and legs, etc., is all part of the trunk. That is a body - and head runs the body!

Whenever Christ is referred to as the Head of the church in the New Testament, it’s always in the sense of the mind, the spiritual life, the leadership, or the direction of the church. When a human body loses its mind and its spirit, it ceases to be a living body. It still has physical structure, but it doesn’t have life. It’s still physically organized, but it’s no longer a living organism. Paul says that Jesus is the head and we are His body. In fact, in Ephesians, Paul calls the church the “fullness of Him who fills all in all.” What an amazing statement about the church. Jesus isn’t just with His church. He is in His church, and His church is in Him. Jesus has chosen to function in the world through us.

Paul says that we, as a congregation, are not an organization. We are an organism. We live and breathe and grow together. We are the body of Jesus Christ. And this has a profound impact on the way we live.

For us to be parts of a body means that we need each other. And we care for one another by functioning according to God’s will, accepting where He has placed us, being led into the ministry that He determines for us. We also help one another function as God wills. We encourage one another, pray with one another, listen to one another. If one member suffers, Paul says, it affects us all; if one member is healthy, it helps the rest of us to be strong.

In the human body what happens to one part affects other parts. A tiny hole in your tooth affects the way your whole body feels. In the same way, a glass of cold lemonade entering your stomach affects the way your whole body feels on a hot, sticky day. The same is true of the Body of Christ. We affect each other. This is why we share with each other what God is doing in our lives. John Wesley correctly argued that on’s religious experience is deeply personal but it is never private. I need to hear your story -- to hear how God is dealing with you -- for how He deals with you will influence me.

In the same way, the sin of one member of the body will affect other members. This is true even of secret sin. We can hide our sin from each other but we cannot prevent it from affecting each other. If one part of a body becomes cancerous, it doesn’t threaten just that isolated part. It threatens the whole body and curing the illness becomes the whole body’s business. That is how deeply interdependent our lives are meant to be in the body of Christ.

But how is this kind of interdependence possible to express in a church community the size of our - with some five or six hundred members and children and regular attenders? It is not possible for anyone to know that many people in a meaningful, supportive way.

That is why it is so important that each of us give ourselves to a smaller group within the larger - a small group, a choir, a Bible study, a church school class, a ministry team. You need a place where you belong, where you are needed, where you are supported and encouraged and where you are held accountable.

Look at your own body. Does every part know every other part? Does your elbow know your neck? Has your foot spent time with your spinal cord? My own big toe has yet to meet my left ear. I hope they never do meet because it would almost certainly be the result of a serious accident.

What is important in our church is not that you know everyone but that you know those you are called to work and live beside very well. My knees and my eyes don’t need to work together directly. But my knees do need to work smoothly with the bones, muscle, and tendons which surround them. My eyes benefit.

We are not in this alone. We are in this together.

That’s why our church stresses that you be involved in four areas of our common life.

First, we urge you to be active in worship. It is that sacred time of coming together with other believers to sing hymns of praise, to pray, to present your tithes and offerings to the Lord, to hear the announcements of what’s going on in the life of the body, to receive teaching and exhortation from the word of God, to look around and see your brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ in their varied shapes and sizes and ages and backgrounds.

Second, we urge you to become involved in Christian education. You need to learn, to grow intellectually, to become increasingly aware of the things of God.

Third, we urge you to become involved in a small group. You need fellowship. You need a safe place where you are known and you know.

There is no way we can produce great intimacy in this sanctuary on Sunday morning. Yes, there is that supernatural connection with one another which comes through corporate worship. But there is more to life together than that.

Do you have several other fellow believers with whom you can share your deeper issues? Are they free to share their’s with you?

Right now we are in a fall emphasis on small groups. We try to have groups of ten to twelve persons. New groups are being formed right now.

Right now about a hundred adults are involved in small groups. That just leaves about two hundred of you, as you leave worship, to march right over to our small group coordinator Karen Bryan at the small group table on the patio. Do it today. Go to Karen. Go directly to Karen. Do not collect coffee first. There will be time for that afterwards.

Karen will direct you to the different small group facilitators. They will have a copy of the material for the group they will lead. You will also be able to talk to them about when the group meets, where it meets and the goals of the group. Our hope is that you become involved in a group where you can grow in Christ and make strong new friendships.

Fourth, we urge you to live a life of service for others. Have you plugged your life into the lives of others, giving of yourself to those who would not fit naturally into your normal frame of reference? Use your gifts! Don’t rob the church.

Here in our church there are many yet undiscovered gifts. There are also unused ones. There are people who have been coming here for years, who have been sitting and listening to these great transforming truths, but have never begun to operate for Jesus Christ, have never stepped out and acted in His resurrection power, utilizing the gift that God has given them. To that degree the body of Christ in this place is weak and unable to touch the world around us.

There is nothing more important than what our living Lord has given you as a special gift of His grace. No one else can exercise that gift in your place. No one else can do in the body of Christ what you alone can do. I think there are some who are afraid to look for their gift for fear that they may find it. We do not care to ask ourselves what God had given us because, if we find it, we know we must do something about it and that may interfere with the plans we have made. But, let us come with this one question before us: Am I building my life around the gift the Lord has given me by His cross and His resurrection?

That’s a crucial question. For the Bible says that each and every one of us will one day stand before Jesus Christ to “account for what we have done in the body.” The question He will ask us will not be, how high did we get in our company, or how much money did we make, or how well-known did we become, or how extensive our holdings were. The question will be, “What did you do with the gift that was given to you?” Were you concerned about the development of the gift that cost our Lord the incarnation, His death, and the resurrection to obtain for you? Have you used it? If you feel that you need help knowing how God has gifted you, go talk to Janet Loughry. She has some cool surveys that might help you get started. If you’ve taken the survey and you still don’t know, it’s time for personal gift counseling. Talk to me or Janet.

In Ephesians 4 Paul says that we know that all of the joints are doing their proper job when something is happening -- when the church is building itself up in love.

Imagine an infant who is born at a healthy eight pounds. He is a nice, healthy, handsome baby with positive vital signs. But if he reaches his twenty-first birthday and still only weighs eight pounds, and still acts like a baby, obviously there would be a problem with his body. In fact, he would not be alive if he had not grown. Living bodies must grow. Growth is one of the signs of life.

And this growth must come in three ways. First and foremost it must be growth in love. Cancer, too, is growth. But it is growth which is hostile to the body. Things in the body of Christ which are not resulting in love - not sloppy sentimentality but genuine love - are cancers.

Second, this growth must be in maturity - it must be solid.

There is a Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown and Linus are walking together. Linus is saying, “I believe the answer is maturity. Our goal in life should be to become mature in all things.” They walk by Snoopy who is lying on his dog house with his stomach sticking up in the air. Linus turns and announces to an awakened Snoopy, “Fat is not mature.”

So how are we to know that we have become genuinely mature in all things and not just fat in all things? Paul tells us the answer in Ephesians 4:13 where he says that our goal and our measure is the “unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature person, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ.”

Third, this growth is to be numerical. “We are called to make disciples of all nations - baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” It is God’s will that more of His creation be reconciled to its Creator and, as Paul writes, we have been named agents of that reconciliation.

Love, maturity, reconciliation. It sounds like a whole lot is expected of us if we are to be responsible functioning parts of the body of Christ. But all of this is very much for our own benefit because of what we can become and because of what we can receive in a mature functioning congregation of believers.

Pastor Doug Goins of Peninsula Bible Church in the Bay Area wrote: “Last week I was involved in a memorial service. It was for an elderly lady who had died in her eighties. She had spent the last ten years of her life in a wheelchair, a victim of diabetes and a series of strokes that had affected her hearing and vision. Her name was Emma Williams.

“If Emma were here among us, it would be very easy to undervalue her, to assume she had very little to contribute. She was an elderly black lady in a predominantly white church. She wasn’t totally “plugged in” during service. As a matter of fact, Dan Griffith, one of the pastors who officiated at the memorial service, said that if Emma were here today, she’d be dozing off every so often, chatting with the people o either side of her, sort of oblivious at times.

“But she was also a lady who, after the service, would tug on Dan’s sleeve and either encourage him or correct something in his preaching. She was always very aware. Many people came to the microphone to give testimony to her faithfulness in exercising her spiritual gifts in their lives. They called her a prayer warrior, a woman of vision. She could see things in people that they couldn’t see in themselves. A tremendous encourager, she helped young mothers learn how to mother, and loved to hold babies. She would light up the room with her presence. One of the health care workers who cared for her in the rest home the last three years of her life said, “You know, Emma came to a place where old people come to die. But she didn’t come to die, she came to serve and share her life and encourage people, and she was serving clear to the end.” Again, on the surface, she had very little to offer physically, and yet she was convinced of her giftedness, in love with the Lord Jesus, and expressing those gifts clear to the end.”

May we be as connected. May we be as convinced. May we be as faithful.