My mother died fourteen years ago from what is medically described as multi-system organ failure.  During a twelve-hour surgical procedure intended to remove an intestinal blockage huge quantities of fluids were pumped into her body to keep her system working properly.  And, that is what also eventually proved to be too much.  Due to the overload, her kidneys began to shut down; under the strain her heart began to fail causing fluid to build up in her lungs.  Eventually, just like the proverbial domino effect, one organ failure lead to the failure of another and another until, overloaded, her whole system shut down and she died. 

I’d always known, since my first human science class in elementary school, that each organ played a vital role in the human body.  The kidneys do one thing.  The lungs another.  The heart, yet another.  But, it wasn’t until my mother died that I fully appreciated how, in God’s marvelous design of the human body, each organ is dependant to some extent on all the others.  The human body is a complex machine that functions and thrives only when each of the parts of the body does its part in cooperation with all the other parts.  If one organ fails, all the others suffer.  When each organ does its part each other organ is able to function and the whole body thrives.  Each organ is ultimately of value to the body only in cooperative working relationship with all the others.

Though the New Testament church was still in its infancy, as we read this morning, it was already facing a struggle that plagues the church to this day.  The apostle Paul was trying to answer questions someone must have been asking.  Questions about who should be in charge of what and who was more important than whom.  Can you believe that?  Church members arguing over who was in control and even someone having a dispute over what positions were more important than others?  It sounds like they were getting ready for their very first convention or something.  Here they were, with a dying world all around them, and they can’t seem to find anything better to do than argue over who gets to do what and who gets credit for what. 

Obviously, word of all this had reached the apostle who saw the real possibility of the church getting sidetracked from its primary mission by petty arguments rooted in nothing more than human pride.  He knew what happens when people get into those kinds of arguments.  Someone always gets run over.  What they have to give to the church is lost to the church because some people would rather just withdraw than fight.  And, second, someone would end up in control not because they had the interest of the church at heart but simply because they enjoyed being in control.  What do you say to a church like that?

Exactly what Paul said, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.  To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”  High and lofty words with very plain meaning.  God has given every person who comes to him in faith for salvation some spiritual gift, in turn, to be used for the purpose of benefiting everyone else for whom Christ also died.  Multiple gifts, one common purpose. 

Looking around for some way to illustrate what that looks like, Paul turned to the human body.  And, with these words, he pictured for everyone the way in which the church is at its best, “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.  Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.”  When everyone does their part in humble appreciation of their dependence on each other and a primary commitment to our common purpose, the church, the body of Christ, thrives.  But, when people get sidetracked by petty arguments over who is more important than whom and who should be in control, the body eventually suffers multiple system organ failure.

Jesus once promised Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against his church.  (Matthew 16:18)  He meant was that, ultimately, his Church, the gathering of all believers through all of time, would not be overwhelmed by evil.  But, littered throughout the pages of history are the skeletal remains of local churches that either never learned or forgot what Paul was telling the Corinthians.  That in achieving our common purpose of serving Christ and sharing his gospel with a dying world, we all need each other.  Christ has gifted each of us with something that this church needs.  And, no one of us can fully serve Christ in this place apart from humble dependence on each other.  No one should get run over. No one should “take charge.”  We should all humbly seek ways of giving our gift in a spirit of service in ways that honors what everyone else has to give.

In my way of trying to understand what the apostle has said, I have come to appreciate that there are fundamentally two kinds of people in every church.  Now, I know this is painting with a very broad brush.  It’s not a perfect analogy.  But, in every church, there are those whose greatest gift is to keep bailing water as our ship crosses uncharted waters.  And, there are those whose primary gift is to keep standing up in the middle of the boat looking for new places to sail and whose greatest gift is to keep rocking the boat.  Bailers and boat rockers.  Depending on which of those two you are, you probably have a difficult time accepting the presence of the other in the boat.

It tends to be this way in most businesses and even in most marriages.  In nearly every human institution there are those who rock the boat and those whose greatest concern is maintaining some sense of normalcy.  In most marriages there is one who is better at spending the money and one who is better at managing it.  I knew a man once who said that, in the middle of the night, he would get up to get a glass of water and nearly kill himself stumbling over the furniture.  He always went to bed early.  His wife liked to stay up late and sometimes she’d get the notion to rearrange the furniture in the middle of the night.  Those kinds of things can be a source of great pain and conflict in any relationship.  But, properly understood, they can add great depth and strength.

Bailers are those who help to maintain.  They primarily appreciate the status quo.  They are usually gifted more for service through caring.  They are the ones who get to the church first and make sure the coffee is ready for Sunday School.  They are usually the first ones to the hospital when someone is sick.  They are good at praying for people who are hurting.  They are usually exceptionally good listeners.  They are not as visible as others.  But, the church could not function without them.  And, the one thing bailers usually have in common is that the boat rockers drive them crazy.  That is because the one indispensable gift the bailers bring is the gift of stability.

Nancy’s sister and brother-in-law live on a farm in northern Indiana.  The house and barn were built sometime before 1873, the earliest date they can find any record.  My brother-in-law took me through the barn when we were there this summer and showed me the way it was constructed.  Long before there was anything like concrete foundations, the barn raisers had used huge timbers.  Down in the bowels of this massive barn, at the foundation, are hand-hewn logs, two feet by four feet and sixty-five feet long.  The timbers that have held the barn together for over a century and a quarter aren’t visible from the outside.  But, they are indispensable.  There are people like that in every church.  Like the strong timbers of that old barn, they give stability to everything else that is visible.  They don’t get much of the credit but you couldn’t survive without them. 

Boat rockers are those who are always looking for new ways to do things.  They are the ones who always come up with crazy ideas.  They are usually gifted more for service through leadership.  They may not get to Sunday School first but, when they get there, everyone knows it.  They are good listeners if youcan get their attention.  And, with rare exception, they are very visible in what they do because they’re always standing up in the boat scanning the horizon for new shores of possibility.  And, the one thing boat rockers have in common is that the bailers drive them crazy.  The one thing bailers prize most is stability.  The one thing boat rockers prize most is the thrill of creative change.

Dan Pryor is a consultant to corporations and businesses on leadership.  He recently wrote an article about seeing an unusual stretch limousine.  This day and time seeing a limousine is not unusual.  People use limousines these days for everything from taking a date to the prom to going to football games so that seeing one on the road is no big deal.  But, recently, he saw a stretch limousine that got his attention because it was an exact replica of Interstate Batteries’ NASCAR stock car.  He happened to be having lunch that day with the Interstate’s advertising manager who told him the story behind the limo.  One of the company’s art directors was playing around one day on the computer and came up with this idea of painting a stretch limo to look like the company’s stock car.  He put the picture up in his office and one day the Chairman of the Board saw it, liked the idea and the company now has two of them and has used them successfully for some very high profile advertising.  You can’t help but wonder if one reason Interstate is the largest replacement battery company in the United States is because, within the company, there are those who keep the lights on and the floors swept but there are also those who are capable of thinking of ideas that rock the boat of traditional sales.  (Dan Pryor, You Want to Drive or Do You Want to Ride in the Back?, July 7, 2000)

The one sin of which too many were guilty in the church to which Paul addressed himself was the sin of devaluing the gift of God in each other.  Some thought themselves unworthy because their role was not as prominent.  Some thought others less valuable because their gift wasn’t as apparently significant.  What the scripture is trying to say to that church and to all churches, including ours, is that, the fact that we are gifted differently is by the design of God and the work of his Spirit.  We need those whose gift is maintaining stability.  We need those whose gift is helping us think outside the box.  Most of all, what we most need is a common commitment to a common purpose, the building up of the body of Christ, the church.  In fact, that spirit of unity is the mark of a mature church. 

That is why Paul wrote to another church these unforgettable words.  “I . . . beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you were called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.  But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.  The gifts that he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists (boat rockers), some pastors and teachers (bailers, as a rule), to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”  (Ephesians 4:1-13)

So, here is the mark of a mature relationship and a mature church.  A mature relationship and, specifically, a mature church, is a one in which everyone acknowledges the value of their own gift as well as the giftedness of each other, and, in a spirit of love, are more concerned with the common good than their own personal accomplishments, agendas or recognition.  Simply put, they know how much they need each other.  They know that no one person can be fully defined as Christian apart from the whole body of Christ of which it is a part.

We just watched a wonderful little movie, The Straight Story, about a man, Alvin Straight who learned near the end of his own life that his estranged brother had suffered a stroke.  Though they’ve not spoken for ten years after saying some “unforgivable things” to each other, Alvin decides to swallow his pride and go see his brother one last time.  He can’t drive and has little money.  So, he hooks a makeshift trailer to his riding lawnmower and drives it from his home in Iowa to his brother’s home in Wisconsin.  Camping along the road one night he meets a young woman who is running away from home because she thinks her family will hate her when they learn she is pregnant.  Caught up in the emotion of his own journey back to his long lost brother, Alvin tells her about a game he once played with his seven children.

He’d give them a stick and tell them to break it, which they easily could.  Then, he’d tell them to tie the sticks together and try to break the bundle, which they never could.  Then, he’d tell them, that’s family.  The next morning, the girl was gone but she’d left him a gift by the fire, a bundle of sticks tied together.  She’d gotten the message.  The same one Alvin told several people he met along the way who were estranged from their families for all kinds of reasons.  The message that, no matter how different we all may be, when it’s all said and done, all we have is the family God has given.  It’s just that sometimes you don’t realize that until it’s too late.