Though she had presented a publicly brave front, she had written privately, even eloquently, about how tormented she was by schoolmates who made fun of her for being overweight.  They not only made fun of her, they even went so far as to make fun of her boyfriend for going out with someone like her.  She wrote in her diary of profound sadness, of being made to feel less and less that, because of her physical size, she fit in anywhere in this world.  Obviously, she finally agreed with all those who had so mistakenly concluded that she did not fit in.

It was impossible for me to miss the irony of the moment.  Even as I was listening to this story about a young woman who didn’t feel that she fit in, I couldn’t keep my peripheral vision off all those flat-bellies on the other treadmills, at least twenty to twenty-five years my junior and going twice as fast, wondering what they thought about me.  Surely, this is comical to them, someone at my age, still trying to fit in.  They couldn’t know, of course, that I’m far less worried about fitting in than I am finding something to fit into and that I’m trying to delay my fitting for a coffin as long as possible.  Just then, I was jerked back into reality by five high school girls being interviewed about their personal struggle with their body image in the age of the rage to “Be Brittany.”

Sad, isn’t it, how much time we spend spinning around in our own heads wondering what people think about us, even though very few people actually spend any time thinking about us, if at all, more than themselves?  Sadder, too, how much we allow our body image, our self-perception of our body, to be shaped by how it measures up to the image we fear others demand of us in order to fit into their world.  Many of us put up publicly brave fronts though we are dying on the inside, privately tormented by fears of what others think of us and whether we have a place to fit in.

In whose image will we be shaped, anyway?  Isn’t that one of life’s most fundamental questions?  Isn’t that also one of the most fundamental of life’s questions that the Christian faith answers in a uniquely hopeful way? 

This text of scripture says so very much about that issue.  It is about body image, our new body image in Christ.  We have not just been given a place in heaven in some place out there called eternity, as though eternity were a “place” out there, anyway.  This is the promise.  Defining the church in its purest sense, the apostle writes, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”  Whatever sin has done to us to ruin God’s original plan for us, the grace of God in Christ is now reshaping us, from the inside out, in the image of the one who is re-creating us.  In his letter to the Colossian church, he also wrote that, through faith in Christ, we have “put on the new self, which is being renewed in . . . the image of its Creator (Colossians 3:10).” And, giving even more hope to us treadmillers, he also once wrote, “We do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day (2 Corinthians 4:16).”

This is what we know, or say we believe as Christians.  Christ is the Lord of all creation.  Through him, we came into being.  Speaking of Jesus the Christ, John wrote, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made (John 1:1-3).”  When sin separated us from God, God moved yet again through Christ, the Lord of all creation, to re-create us.  The book of Genesis, the Old Testament, tells us that we were created in the image of God.  The New Testament tells us that we are now being re-created in his image.  Yet, what we specifically celebrate this morning is that we are not being re-created separate and apart from each other.  We are being re-created in the image of one whose body is the church, of which we all are a part. 

We are celebrating our spiritual giftedness today.  Part of what that means is that there is no way to define what it means to be Christian apart from our relationship to the church.  Our new body image, the new way in which we should see ourselves and our relationship to all of God’s creation, is as a part of Gods’ re-creation, the church.  “The body is a unit, though all its parts are many, they form one body.  So it is with Christ.  For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body – whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”  Sin separates, divides.  Grace restores, reunites.  Not just us to God, but also us to each other.  Because of Christ making us a part of his body, we have a place to fit in that has nothing to do with how we compare to what others think of us.  It has everything to do with our relationship to Christ, to each other in Christ and, therefore, how we choose to think about and relate to each other from now on.

That sense of body image must not have been at the center of how the Corinthian believers saw themselves.  Too much was apparently off-balance in that church because some saw themselves as having no significant place.  They were defining themselves by some other standard than Christ.  Others apparently saw their place as too significant.  They were also defining themselves by some other standard than Christ.  In the world in which most people earn their living or go to school, there is a very definite pecking order, often very clearly understood but rarely discussed.  Being successful means learning very quickly what unique advantages and disadvantages come with your place in that pecking order and just living with them.  In the world God is re-creating, there is a different standard.  And, if how we relate to each other is not uniquely and specifically defined by what God is doing for us in Christ, then everything in our relationships with each other will always be off-balance. 

Paul even used some rather simplistic arguments to make his point.  In the human body, our body parts can’t argue with each other about status.  Feet can’t say that, because they aren’t hands, they don’t count.  Ears can’t say that because they aren’t eyes they don’t count and visa versa.  Just as each of our body parts fulfills a unique and essential bodily function, each of us has been gifted differently to fulfill unique bodily functions in the church interdependent on each other.  Our sense of significance should never again have anything to do with how others do or don’t perceive our significance.  Our significance is the gift of God to us through Christ.  If that is not solidly at the center of what we believe about ourselves and each other, we will function out of a poor body image and everything else will always be off balance.

The Wilson Company, the one that made “Wilson,” Tom Hanks’ only friend on the deserted island, also makes golf balls, among other things.  They have recently invented a new golf ball that is perfectly balanced.  Perhaps you didn’t know that not all golf balls were not perfectly balanced.  As it turns out, fully one-fourth of all golf balls, even the most expensive ones, are off balance because, until now, it has been impossible to build a golf ball with a perfectly centered rubber core.  The result being that the flawed balls tend to have a heavy side and a light side that throw off a putt or a drive, no matter who hits it.  Not a problem, I might add, that kept me from getting my first true birdie a week ago Friday on a 5-par 467-yard hole.  Now, the Wilson Company has designed a new ball with a core that actually compensates for being off-center when hit, so that the ball is always evenly balanced in flight.  Only if what is at the core is perfectly centered, can the ball’s flight be straight and true. 

God is at work rebuilding us, gifting us, at the core of our being.  If we let our sense of who we are be shaped, from the outside in by what others think we should be, our image of ourselves will always be off-balance.  We will always sell ourselves short or sell others short.  We will relate in anger, jealously and in competitive ways that lead to division instead of Christ-like and loving ways that lead to unity.  No matter how well we strike out to accomplish anything, that sense of insignificance will throw us off balance and off course. 

When we live out of the center, the place from which God is remaking us in his image, we will relate differently to each other and the world around us.  The most telling thing about us will be the way in which we relate to each other in compassionate, rather than competitive ways.  “God has combined the members of the body . . . so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.  If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”  Compassion means being able to cry and applaud, depending on what is happening to others whether it happens to us or not.

One of the most significant things I have learned, in relationship to this great truth and on a very practical level, is that we cannot say about ourselves that, because we are not, for example, Prestonwood Baptist Church, we are less a part of Christ’s body.  Neither can we say to Prestonwood, because you are not a Cliff Temple, you are less a part of Christ’s body.  It is a very humbling thing, is it not, to watch God bring people into his kingdom through churches and preachers and ministries who don’t do one thing they way we’d do it.  It’s humbling because it reminds us that us that we have a place in God’s new body that has room for lots of parts that don’t look or act like us.  I’m also coming to appreciate more all the time that, just as a body needs ears and eyes and feet and hands, it needs Cliff Temples and Prestonwoods, too. 

The Cliff Temple classroom has done more to bring that truth of scripture to life for me than any other I’ve ever known.  Honestly, after I’d been here for a year or two, I thought I was going to have to go back to school and earn a degree from either Baylor or A&M if I was going to fit in around here.  Yet, the more I’ve watched, I’ve realized that I have never been a part of a church in which a person’s social, economic, sexual or any other status mattered as much as the fact that you were simply here.  Kind of like, “Jews or Greeks, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”  This isn’t a club, it is, truly, a church.  A place where we what God is re-creating us to be, from the inside out, is taking shape before our eyes.

Word came just this past week that a man I’d gone to high school with, who was a couple of years older than me, was found dead in his barn in west Texas.  The preliminary word is that he was poisoned.  Like many farmers, he worked every day with extremely toxic chemicals.  Somehow or another, though at 50 he appeared healthy, he was being daily exposed to something that was killing him from the inside out.  So are we.  We live every day exposed to the toxic thinking of a world trying to remake us in its image.  An image shaped by what we look like, dress like, drive like, and live like on the outside.  An image born out of being more concerned with what’s on the outside than what is on the inside, at the core, where all of our true living and dying happens.  Christ has come to give us the gift of living from the inside out.  That’s what it means to be spiritually gifted.  To be a part of his body that never will die even though our bodies will die.  To have the gift of hope.  The gift of being made new every day.  And, new again the next.  And, the next. 

I’m going to keep treadmilling, not because I have any illusions of ever fitting in Brittany’s world.  But, because I know that someday, even the Brittany’s of this world will sag and wrinkle and look in the mirror and realize they’re fighting a battle they can’t win.  I just want to be here as long as I can to tell the story about the battle Jesus has already fought and won to make me new from the inside out. 

Amen.