VBS Reflection: What Happens When We Gather?

Art installation made by VBS participants.

The following is a sermon on 1 Corinthians 12:12-26, reflecting on Good Shepherd’s Vacation Bible School experience from earlier this month. While still written for the ear, it has been edited to better fit as a blog post.
 
What happens when we gather? – That was the theme from June 27th’s VBS session. I think that’s a question many of us have asked from generation to generation. Is something happening here, as a group of people? Does something happen to me when I gather with these other Jesus followers? There has to be a reason we keep doing this time and time again. If something was not happening, would we gather? Reasons to not gather are quite visible nowadays:

• Some have said, “I can follow Jesus on my own. Who needs to gather with others?”
• Others have said, “I am strong; I don’t need to gather with anyone.”
• Still others have said, “I like Jesus, but look at that group gathered around him. Hypocrites! It’s dangerous to gather with them.”
• Yet others, in our age of divide and divide again say, “I’ll find a group that believes precisely like I do and is just like me.”

Gathering in and of itself is more of a problem nowadays: why gather at all when benefits are unclear and so much more vies for our attention, so much at many of us are exhausted? Yet, people still gather.
Take a moment to reflect as you read this: What happens to you, to us, when we gather? What have you noticed?
Yes, there is actually quite a bit that happens when we gather. Let me start with the smaller things:

• We talk with multiple generations of people. I counted and we have six generations of people who gather as Good Shepherd. Six! Where else does that happen anymore?
• We make friends across political and class lines. This part is getting harder and harder to do anymore, as people pursue same-ness and sort themselves into groups tailor-made for their economics and ideology. Where else can you sit with people so different than you? The DMV?
• We share skills and knowledge with one another, too. It’s a tremendous social resource and it’s cheap!

That’s great and all, but anyone can do these things when they gather with other groups, like the Lions Club or Kiwanis. They don’t have to be gathered by Jesus, let alone religious. And yet these groups are declining, too! Society is turning down these social benefits. There must be bigger reasons to gather!
You know what’s a good excuse to stop gathering? When you don’t get along with people. You don’t need a politically fraught and socially distraught environment for that; you just need people! Add people, expect conflicts to eventually occur. It doesn’t matter the time or the place. Go back two thousand years to meet one of the first churches: they have reasons to divide, and greater reasons to gather. Paul writes these folks who live in a city called Corinth. He teaches them these greater reasons. He teaches you and me, too.
“We’re parts of a body,” he writes. Jesus’ body. We are the body of Christ, moving about in the world. And the parts of the body are all interconnected. Something that bothers the gut is going to bother the brain. Something that bothers the hips is going to bother the back. Something that nourishes the emotions is going to nourish the body. Something that nourishes the body is going to nourish the emotions.
We are one body made of many members, and we are not just socially interdependent of one another, but spiritually interdependent. Our faith connects and supports each other. Our gifts given to us by the Holy Spirit, however big or small they may be, are all necessary and for building up one another. Even the parts of the body we think unimportant are the most important. The smallest gifts and end up being the biggest.  Without one another, we are diminished. That is why you are needed when we gather.
That’s why Paul says, “Since we are a body, it’s absurd for an eye to say to an ear, ‘you can’t see, you have no point here.’ Nor can the ear go and say the same thing!” Ears can’t see. Eyes can’t hear. Nor can hearts digest food, or lungs filter out toxins. An organ can’t be a body on its own, nor can a limb can’t be a body on its own. But together they make up the whole, and the whole is greater than all the parts together. Paul says when one of us suffers we all suffer. The opposite is true as well. When one rejoices, we all rejoice. What would happen in a church full of noses? Or, what would happen to the big toe if the big toe wandered off and decided to keep to itself?
The spiritual support, building up, and shared life together are some of the many things that happen when we gather together. Yes, I can find plenty of reasons not to gather with other Christians. But that sharing, that interdependence, and that wonder of how we are put together as the body of Christ are what keep me returning. Keep me using my gifts among us. And I don’t think I’m alone in that feeling.
 

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VBS Reflection: What Happens When We Gather? by Joshua Feala is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0