So We, Who Are Many, Are One, a sermon based on Romans 12: 1-8 preached on 8/27/2023

I had breakfast with my friend Van Pearlberg last Tuesday morning. We were eating at Sugar Cakes on the Square, and Van was telling me about a New Year’s Eve tradition he used to enjoy, in which he’d order live lobsters, have them delivered to his house, and before cooking them, he’d line them up out in the driveway. In the driveway, each member of the family would pick one, attach a number to its shell, then the lobsters would race from one side of the driveway to the other. Whoever picked the winning lobster won, which sounds like a fun activity for the humans involved. Thinking of the lobsters and their post-race trip to the kitchen and then the dinner table, Van’s friend Terry, who was eating breakfast with us, asked, “Did the winner receive a pardon or at least a stay of execution?” “No,” Van said, “the winner went first into the pot.” Winning isn’t everything. It’s not. These days, in our culture, the pressure to win can be so great that some feel like they’re in a pot of boiling water or are headed towards it. There are those among us who wake up to the pressure and can’t sleep for fear of falling behind. Like the fictional NASCAR driver Ricky Bobby, some have developed an “If you’re not first, you’re last,” mentality and have turned everything into a competition. Earlier this year when one member of the church staff went through a break-up, I wanted to be the one who offered the best advice. When I found out that Melissa Ricketts gave the best advice, I was as devastated as the one who went through the break-up because I hadn’t won the competition. That’s ridiculous. Sometimes out of a desire to win, I miss the point. In fact, psychologists are now saying that the key to a healthy, fulfilling, joy-filled life is not winning or wealth, going on fancy vacations, or working hard for big promotions, but relationships. We hear about the importance of relationships from the very beginning of the Bible. In Genesis, we learn that our Creator felt like something was missing for Adam, that he was not meant to live in the Garden alone, and so God created for him a partner. We humans were created for relationships. Husbands and wives. Mothers, fathers, and children. Friends and coworkers. Neighbors and pen pals. Sports teams, social clubs, and congregations. The Apostle Paul builds on this concept by saying that we are all like parts of a body: For as in one body, we have many members, so we who are many, are one. This is a classic teaching from the Apostle Paul. That we are like different parts of the same body is an image he uses in Romans, again in 1st Corinthians, and then twice more in Ephesians and Colossians. Four times he speaks of us as a body, as a body with many members. Each of us is different, but each one of us is dependent on the others, yet in our world today, we are not conditioned to think of ourselves as members of one body. No, in our world today, we are all fighting to be the one who gets to wear the crown. Some are so convinced that winning is the way to a fulfilling life that they’ve become notorious cheaters, abandoning decency in the hopes of getting their kids into the best colleges. There’s the actress who played Aunt Becky on the TV series Full House who served prison time for paying $500,000 to cheat her daughters into USC. Likewise, we know about Bernie Madoff who created this huge pyramid scheme to get rich by taking $65 billion from his clients. We hear of those who risk everything to win, but consider with me what happens when we lose. There’s a beautiful Disney cartoon called Inside Out. Have you seen it? It’s about a girl who’s growing up. She’s trying to come to terms with all her emotions. She wants to feel happy all the time, and a lot of the time she does feel happy. Joy is her primary emotion, but inside her head are these five cartoons representing her five emotions: There’s sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and joy. Joy is in the driver’s seat most of the time. In fact, Joy pushes Sadness out of the way because what’s the point of Sadness? That’s the basic plot of the movie. What’s the point of sadness? Who wants to feel sad? Isn’t it better to win and be happy? That’s what we often think, yet when this poor girl, the star of her hockey team, takes the shot to win the game and feels her heart break as the puck misses the goal, sadness takes over. What’s the point of sadness? She walks away from the team to be alone, tears stream down her face, and when her parents see her tears, they wrap their arms around her. My favorite TV show is one about a soccer coach named Ted Lasso. When Ted’s team loses the big game at the end of season two, he looks around at his brokenhearted locker room and says, “There’s something worse than being sad; that’s being sad and alone, and not a one of us is alone today.” My friends, we live in a culture that values winning so highly, but consider with me that there is something beautiful about losing. Constant winning leads some to think too highly of themselves, and so the Apostle Paul lifts up the value of humility, saying: By the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think. Why? It’s because when we are humble, we look outside ourselves and think with sober judgment. We accept the truth that we need each other. We know more fully that we who are many are one in the Body of Christ. Sometimes losing helps us to see it more clearly. Sometimes it’s confessing that we need help. Sara and I walk around our neighborhood every evening with our two dogs. They both drive me crazy with all their barking, but when you get out to walk a dog, you start to meet your neighbors. Thanks to walking our dogs in the evening, we know the people we live around a little better, and one young mother who lives down on the corner, we knew that she has a brand-new infant, a toddler, and a little girl going into kindergarten. Not only that, but her husband has been fighting cancer for months now, so when we saw her on our evening walk, Sara asked about this little girl going into kindergarten, and her mother said something that people so rarely say. She said, “I’m afraid she’s not ready.” Of course, she’s not. How could she be? Who has time for ABC’s with a new baby in the house and a father with cancer? Not only that, in front of their house is a yard that’s impossible to maintain because it’s like a canyon. I walk by it and thank God it’s not my front yard, but how many people do you walk by who dare to confess that they need help? “I’m fine,” that’s what I say. I say that all the time. This woman dared to be honest, and Sara took that information back to the central office of Marietta City Schools; next thing you know, this little girl’s kindergarten teacher is calling the house to assure her mom that everything is going to be OK, and the school superintendent is dropping off a Marietta onesie at the front door. When we feel like we’re losing and we dare to admit it, that’s when we know more fully that we are part of one body, that we who are many are one, yet in a culture obsessed with winning and terrified of showing any chink in the armor, we Christians must show the world that it’s OK to be broken. Paul writes: For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think. Why? If you think of yourself as an island, if you think of yourself as perfect, if you think that you’ll be rejected for not winning all the time, you might miss out on one of the greatest gifts that our God provides: being a part of a community. We, who are many, are one, and if you want to strengthen those bonds, dare to show someone that you need a little help. Dare to let someone know that your life isn’t perfect. Be bold enough to say out loud, “I’m not doing OK.” There’s a book that I love by Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove. This man, Ove, lost his wife. In the wake of her death, his world got smaller and smaller. Grief pushed him inside. He shut down, and rarely left the house, only going out to terrorize his neighbors for infractions of the neighborhood covenant. One morning, he looks out his window to see a new family moving in, yet the husband can’t back up the trailer properly. This infuriates Ove. He knocks on the car window and demands that this man hand over the keys. Ladies, if you didn’t know this already, being told to get out of driver’s seat is basically the most humiliating thing that can happen to a man, only the man relinquished the keys, Ove backed up the trailer, and a friendship that saved them all was born. Winning isn’t everything. Being able to back up a trailer isn’t everything. Being OK isn’t everything. For sometimes, it’s our brokenness and our losing that connects us. When Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world,” I hear him saying, “Don’t be conformed to the isolation that our culture is creating.” Don’t be sucked into the cult of perfection. Don’t be obsessed with winning. For humility builds bridges, and those bridges that we create can save us. Have you heard that 1 in 3 Americans suffer from loneliness, and that being lonely all day is as bad for your body as smoking 15 cigarettes. God didn’t create us to be alone. Neither did God create us for triumph at the top of the heap. If he did, he would have come as a king riding a white stallion rather than as a servant riding a gentle donkey. God created us in such a way that none of us is complete on our own. Instead, we are like parts of one body, so that we, who are many, are one. We have different gifts. We have different abilities. We were built for interdependence, which is one reason this place is so special. Here, at our church, it’s so easy to see it, that we are a body. We have gifts that differ. Not a one of us is perfect. In fact, Sunday after Sunday, we begin our time together by admitting that we are sinners in need of God’s grace. Our imperfection unites us. Our common need for a grace-filled Savior keeps us coming back. We who are many, are one. Last Sunday, I told you that we received a letter from a woman who worships with us from Capital, Montana. She asked me to thank the choir, the members of the church who distribute food, the people who project the words onto the screen, those who clean the church, and those in charge of the speakers because from all the way in Montana, she can see that this is a body with many members. We have different skills, yet we work together to serve the Lord. Not a one of us is perfect, yet we are learning to lean on each other, just as we lean on Christ Jesus, the source of our salvation. In your need, reach out to Him. In humility, reach out to each other, and be saved. Amen.