Exhortation, April 25

Trinity Reformed Church is large enough that it is difficult to know everyone in the church. And now we have been around long enough that it is awkward and embarrassing for us to meet each other. When you introduce yourself and say something like ?Are you visiting??Ethe response might well be, ?No, I?ve been here since the church began.?E Because of the potential awkwardness, we are inclined to avoid introducing ourselves at all.

Get over that awkwardness. Don?t let the potential embarrassment deter you. One of the reasons Trinity exists is to provide the opportunity for a more intimate and close-knit church. But if we don?t make the effort to get to know one another, and are not willing to suffer the embarrassment of introducing ourselves to people we should already know, this will never happen.

There is a deeper reason for overcoming this awkwardness: Paul says in several passages that the church is a body made up of many members. When Paul uses the image of the body to describe the church, the accent is on the unity-in-diversity of the church. Just as your physical body has many organs and parts, so does the church. Just as you need to have all your organs and parts in working order to be healthy, so does the church. Just as weakness or damage in one organ of your body affects all the organs, so too with the church. Each part of the church has a function in the body, but unless we know each other?s gifts and needs, we can?t be effective in edifying other members of the body.

One of the dangers is that Trinity, with the large number of students that we have, might develop into two churches instead of one. You students spend a lot of time together, form a close-knit group within the church, and share your lives. But you might have minimal or no contact with anyone who is not connected with the college or university, and little contact with adults or families. Meanwhile, those who are married, have children and jobs, live in a completely different world. Both groups show up to the same place on Sunday morning, but that is no guarantee that we make up a single body, a real communion in Christ and the Spirit.

Let me make a particular application: In the sermon today, I?m going to be addressing the young men of the congregation, especially those who are about to take or have taken the initial steps into adulthood: Leaving home, getting started in a calling, getting married and starting a family. These steps are important as the beginning steps of the priestly stage of life. But in addressing the concerns and challenges of this stage of life, it?s essential to realize that you young men are not alone. Gangs of young men can constitute a community, and often a very powerful one. One might say that great ancient civilizations like Sparta and Rome were originally and fundamentally gangs of young men. But a gang of young men is not a healthy or a Christian community.

This is an exhortation both to the younger and to the older, more established, men of the congregation. To you younger men: Break out of your gang, and get to know the older men of the congregation, seek their counsel, learn adult responsibilities from them. And even more importantly, to those of you who have established callings and families: Make the effort to know the young men of the congregation. Introduce yourself at church; invite them into your homes; invite them out for a cup of coffee. And the same goes for the young women and older women of the congregation.

Do this so that Paul?s statement will in fact be true of us: Even as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ.