I started a sermon a few months ago with the question - Are you a diet coke or the real thing? This began a series of sermons exploring the three dimensions of being church - Exaltation, Edification and Evangelism. It is as we develop these three dimensions in our community of faith that we become the Church that Jesus would have us be. In this time after Easter, I would like us together to explore what it means to be the children of the resurrection.

In the last sermon, I spoke about developing the worship dimension of our corporate life, today I would like to look at the dimension of edification. In as much as we are called to look upward, to live out our lives with reference to God, giving him worth, we are also called to look to each other. We are not only called to be in a society that honours God, but we also are called to join ourselves together one with another. This is the Edification Dimension.

Describing the church as a body is more than just a catchy idea or good sermon illustration, but portrays the very essence of what it means to be the kingdom of God here on earth. Sadly, I think that we have become so familiar with the expression the Body of Christ (after all we repeat it every communion service), that we have a tendency to ignore the implications of this simple thought. Today, I would like to consider the implications if we are to take seriously this image of the church.

The expression worldview, is about how we view the world. Whether we like it or not, we are products of the world in which we have been brought up. How we understand ourselves and the world at large is a product of our environment and our experience. It is interesting in talking to people who have come from other cultures, how they may learn our language, but the fact that they grew up outside of our own culture means that they do not share the common cultural heritage such as the stories of Cinderella and Snow White. Culture is more than just language, but common experience as well. We found this when we went to Ghana. In and amongst the Akan people, there is a great tradition of Proverbs. What we found is that these proverbs were a sort of common currency and thus were never spoken in full. The hearer would always complete them in their own mind to get the meaning. It was not uncommon to hear someone say: "All fingers are not equal". Now, coming at this cold, what do you think it means? All fingers are not equal? Perhaps you might have thought that it is a corruption of the Orwellian phrase - All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others? Maybe your mind leapt in different directions. It is in fact the abridging of the proverb : "All fingers are not equal, but all are equally useful". In many ways, it is a summary what the church is about.

With the age of enlightenment in the eighteenth century, science and scientific method come to pre-eminence. Understanding things came from breaking things down into their component parts and understanding these parts, and therefore understanding the whole. Darwinian thinking was both the product and the motivating force of this movement. The world could be understood in hierarchical and evolutionary terms. The ultimate example, being the master race theories of Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s. This worldview in hierarchies culminates in empires, organisations etc.

One of the difficulties of the past few decades is that the old ways of thinking have slowly been challenged and new ways of thinking are arising. Science has lost its credibility and people seek more than just a logical explanation, but an experience and a mystery. This can be seen in the rise of not only the Pentecostal churches but also in the interest in the new age movement and the ancient nature religions.

Living in changing times is quite stressful, and we are often tempted to hang onto the way things are done, rather than to move on with change. This then leads to a division in our society between those wanting and embracing change and those who resist and reject it. This resulting division in society only adds to the strain and confusion. Thus we find that we are living in a world in which the norm is polarisation and division.

For Christians, the problem is more than just a philosophical one. Our calling as God’s people is tied up in principles of unity and stands in sharp contrast to world in which we find ourself. We need to look beyond our own cultural experience, to the new culture of the Christian faith. Our starting point is about discovering the difference between the world as we have experienced and the world that Christ would have us live in.

In our world, we look at organisations and hierarchies, and we have tended to re-invent the church in that image. Paul says no -the church is the Body of Christ, an organism and not an organisation. For us to be true to this Pauline vision of the church, then there is a radical need to redefine ourselves. We need to establish what it is that we mean where we describe ourselves as a body. Paul is kind to us, because he uses an illustration that can reach us all. Paul explains the nature of the church with an illustration that everyone can understand - the body, our body.

Now in doing this, we must resist the temptation to revert to old methods of analysis and disassembly. Our tendency is to then see the body as the description of the hierarchy. Our distance from the head measures our place. This is quite at odds with the thinking of Paul.

The word one is repeated five times in these two verses. As in Jesus prayer in John 17, the essence of the Christian faith is unity, oneness. In referring to the church as the Body, Paul is not talking about structure, but relationship. He goes on to tell us - that the diversity of body is not that which separates us, but that which gives us a unity of purpose. Our individuality is not an excuse to divide. We can not segregate ourselves from others who are different. Rather Paul says, the individual differences are part of our expression of our faith. Indeed, those whom we see as least honourable need to be treated with special honour.

Do you suffer when another member of the body suffers? More often than not the suffering is caused by the body itself? - We fail to perceive the others as part of the body and so we are quite prepared to inflict the pain. The essence of Paul’s vision of the church is those so bound to each other that their separateness is overwhelmed by their unity.

Now is this the experience of you and I? Perhaps not, but we are called to aim towards it. In all that we do as part of the church, in all that we do in becoming the body of Christ here, we are called to build relationship with each other. Thus the community of faith, becomes the place of relationship, rather like a family. Each of us is called to take and find our part in the body, but more than this. Each of us is called to assist others to find their own part as well.

Take a moment now to think of the image that our first reading portrayed about the church. How may you and I help others reach their potential.