Sermon for Sunday,  October 2, 2005  

IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT YOU!!

by

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture:                 I Corinthians 11:20-27

²⁰ When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord's supper. ²¹ For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. ²² What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you!

²³ For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." ²⁵ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. ²⁷ Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord.

I want to share an inspiring story with you that I just learned about a week ago. Ken Goodwin and some other musicians connected to our church who play every night at the Sing Sing nightclub in downtown Denver did something unusual a few days ago. They devoted a whole evening to raising money for relief work for Hurricane Katrina and they not only donated all of their tips that evening but they also encouraged their patrons to contribute extra and last Sunday Ken showed me the check they were putting in our offering plate designated for United Methodist Committee on Relief and it was over $1400 they had raised in one night!

UMCOR has now received from just our congregation over $48,300 and from our annual conference a total of $356,179.47, and as we have mentioned, every cent of this money goes to help people, nothing goes for administration, because you and I already provide the administrative structure through our regular Sunday tithes and offerings.

I was proud of Ken and his colleagues at Sing Sing and the apostle Paul would have been proud of them too because this sense of community, the sense that we are here to care for each other and not just for ourselves, is what he is trying to foster in the young congregation he has started in the Greek city of Corinth.

He was trying to help these new Christians see that life is not just about us, it is about us and God; it is about us and each other and about caring for each other as we care for ourselves. He says it this way in another verse in his letter to the Philippian Christians: “Look out for one another’s interests and not just your own.”

And that is his theme in these verses we have just heard. First some background: when the Lord’s Supper was first celebrated it was a whole meal and not just the small amounts of food we use today. And Paul is very angry with his congregation because they are not looking out for one another; they are being greedy and selfish. So when some people get to the meal early, they eat everything and when others come in later – usually because they were working late, there is nothing left for them and they go hungry!!

Paul tells them they are a family, a community, one body, and the selfish people are eating and drinking judgment on themselves because they are “failing to discern the body”, the community and the obligation they have to each other.

There is a balance in the teachings of Jesus between loving one self, caring for oneself, and caring for others, between individual well-being and the well-being of the community, and some people become martyrs and completely forget to care for self, and others can become so self absorbed that they forget that we are a family and that the needs of the family or community may need to come first part of the time.

This is always a balancing act and some times the balance needs to be on one side, and other times on the other side.

Judy Martz called me Wednesday afternoon from Washington DC where she was on business. She got into town a bit early and took time to visit the new WWII memorial and was just in awe as she walked through it toward the Viet Nam War memorial.  She was aware, as we all are when we are in similar places, of the sacrifices that Americans have made for the cause of democracy and liberty. We will feel those feelings here in worship in a few weeks when we honor our veterans on a Sunday in November.

All those memorials are vivid examples of people who have put the well-being of the country, the community above their own needs and safety.

Paul is saying to us that Christians are called do balance between self care and group care, and we are not to adopt the selfish posture of our culture that believes in getting everything you can for yourself and letting others go to hell.

Rick Warren in his best selling book that we are reading on Tuesday mornings has two fairly dramatic quotes about this. He says, “Rampant individualism is contrary to the teachings of Jesus!” and he implies that what our culture teaches us is selfish individualism instead of community responsibility. He also says, ‘Mind your own business’ is not a Christian statement.”

Paul would agree with those sentences. Paul would say we are not just here to do what is best for ourselves but for our community. President Bush echoed that belief when he asked us a few days ago to help conserve fuel and to use less if we can – because it is in the interest of our community, our nation and we are to look out not just for ourselves but also for our community. Bob Tipton talked about that when he told us about the extra help needed from each of us in the next few weeks as we look at some new expenses. Our family will be giving extra money out of many motivations, but one of those motivations is that St Andrew has been spending more for child care than we anticipated last November because we are caring for many more children now in our new space. Hallelujah! That is good news! We are having a chance to touch more lives!

AND… it is costing us a little more for personnel than we could have known eleven months ago. I don’t have any children or grandchildren in child care and if I took the attitude of the Corinthians, I would say, every person for themselves!  But if I take the posture of Paul and realize that we are a body, I will say, we will joyfully help to make that possible! I know most of you will do that also because it is not just about me, it is about all of us together.

Where are you this morning in this balance between caring for your needs and caring for the needs of the communities you belong to: work team, family, church, nation? Do you need to care more for yourself, or do you need to move out of your self concerns and do what is best for the whole team, the whole church, the whole nation, the whole community?

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