Sermon “You are Fearfully and Wonderfully Made”
Scripture: Psalm 139: 1-14 read responsively
and 1
Corinthians 6:11-20
Preached by Linda Jo Peters
January 15, 2012, Martin Luther King Sunday
In this Psalm, singers praise God for God's goodness in delivering them from various life-threatening situations. The psalmist celebrates the creative goodness of God in these first 14 verses.
Psalm
139: 1-14 read responsively
1O
Lord, you have searched me and known me.2You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.
3You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
4Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.
5You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
6Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.
7Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?
8If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.
11If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,”
12even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.
13For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
I
Corinthians 6:11-20
In
the Corinthians letters there is a conversation going on, but we are only
hearing one side of it. Paul is writing
to a congregation he probably helped found.
He is facing some challenging behavior for this congregation and it has
brought conflict to the community as a whole.
There is a freedom living as Christians that laws and norms of culture
cannot prescribe. It is our union with
Christ that directs the choices we make in life. For Paul the main thing is: there cannot
really be a divided loyalty. As God is one and Christ is one, so what we do
needs to be coherent. His argument has less to do with laws of immorality and
more to do with what happens in relationships and how they can compete with our
relationship with God. Two slogans were
probably circulating in the Corinthian church:
“All things are lawful for me,” and “Food is meant for the stomach and
the stomach for food.”
Paul
wrote by challenging these with some wisdom in Christ Jesus:
11And
this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified,
you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of
our God.
“All
things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are
lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the
stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will destroy both one and the other.
The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the
body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not
know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the
members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know
that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is
said, “The two shall be one flesh.” But anyone united to the Lord becomes one
spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside
the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know
that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from
God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore
glorify God in your body.
SERMON
Each
one of you have been fearfully and wonderfully made. You were made with a purpose. Paul wrote about your purpose to the church in
Ephesus:“In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of God who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory.” (1:11-12)
So our purpose is to give God glory? How do we that?
By
being all God created us to be. We know
God created us good, yet over and over we make choices that diminish us. We abuse our God given bodies with variety of
pollutants that make us ill and unable to live up to all God has created us to
be. We consume what we do not need and
destroy our relationships with one another.
They we see ourselves as failures rather than as blessed children of our
Heavenly Father.
On
Thursday evening before the Praise service, Jan gave me a resource with a
series of studies for young women to develop their God given gifts for
leadership in the church and society. As
I was perusing it, I saw one study was on “women and food.” Now I love food and I am a woman, so I was
reading it when I came to a discussion on body image. Now when I grew up the perfect woman was like
a playboy bunny or Marilyn Monroe who was a size 16 in her famous white
dress. Now while most Americans have
gotten heavier, our ideal woman is almost anorexic, some models and movie stars
have even needed treatment for this eating disorder. There right in the middle of this study was
the statement the “Many women struggle to see themselves as “fearfully and
wonderfully made” in the image of God…”[1] For a preacher that is a God moment. I get really attentive when that happens to
me.
So
I started to consider, “What is the body image of most people?” Is it, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made”
or is it more “Does this make me look fat?’
We are very visually conscious society.
All about projecting a perfect image of youth, health, control. But Paul is challenging us that our body
image is not found in our outer appearances but in our relationships,
especially our relationship with Jesus Christ.
He was speaking to both individuals and the corporate church as
well. We are held accountable to how we
treat the temple of the Holy Spirit whether it is our physical body or our
communal body.
I
love to swim. But when I am in a big
pool or at the beach, there is a comfort to see a life guard watching over
me. The life guard is a sign that if I get
into trouble, someone will act to help me.
The church gives God glory by being the life guards of the world. We stand prepared to risk our lives for
others, and equipped to help. Once
people are rescued from the water, the life guard may make suggestions about
water safety but on the whole they do not say, “just stay out of the water.” People have to live in this world. They have to leave the safety of the
congregation and go where others will judge them if they are tall or short,
heavy or thin, dark-skinned or light, male or female, extraverted or
introverted. Paul in his letter to the
church in Corinth was dealing with some very unhealthy behavior that believers
had come to justify because they were Christian. Anything goes because in Christ they are
forgiven and made new.
He was having none of that. Yes “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are beneficial.” The body image Paul uses over and over in teaching us about our relationships is that together we form the body of Christ. What kind of body image do we have when we use another to satisfy our desires? “Use” is the key word. Using another for our own wants and desires is as destructive to our temple of the Holy Spirit as it is to their temple of the Holy Spirit. Just as anyone who has carried anger and a desire for revenge around in their body knows it is destructive, just ask them how it makes them feel. It will push all that is beautiful and true right out of their self image. This is true of sex, of a desire for control, even a passion to be independent –free as the cost of others is destructive to the body. It takes over everything we think and do. The question we must ask ourselves is about any attitude or action we take is, “Will this serve God’s purpose for my life to give God glory?”
Tomorrow we celebrate the birth of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He is best remembered for his position of “Social Justice and Non-Violent Civil Disobedience.” As a pastor he was greatly influenced by the life of Jesus the Christ. King was also highly educated and well read so the teachings of civil disobedience by Mahatma Gandhi also came to bear on his choices. He entered the world stage with a determination to eradicate social injustice by building bridges of community and peace. In an effort to bring these ideals to fruition, he encouraged and espoused a life of service. Such an understanding was rooted in his study of the barefoot preacher of Nazareth, who said, “If you want to be great, be a servant of all!”[2] So tomorrow is a day of service to others. Use the day to break the bonds that diminish us. Instead in everything you do remember that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. You were made for a purpose to give God glory. See yourself not as a business leader, a pretty face, a demanding client, a loser, an athlete but rather see yourself as fearfully and wonderfully made, a child of the living God, a vital part of the body of Christ, a temple for the Holy Spirit. Then let you choices lead you to be a servant of all and give your heavenly Father great joy. Amen.
