Linking the Chain      

                                 1 Corinthians 12: 12, 13, 24b-26

 

 

          What do you do when you need a rope and none is to be found? What if there is no time to go find one? What if lives depend on that rope?

          In the twelfth chapter of his letter to the Romans, Paul talks about spiritual gifts; how they are different; how each of us is gifted with some special aptitude from our Lord that will enable us to serve him. Paul also talks about how all these gifts come together; how they merge into a unity that he compares to a human body. Our bodies function inter-relationally. We need all kinds of parts to make a whole. Eyes, ears, mouths, hands, feet all come together to make one body. Take away one of those parts and the body may function, but not as well as when all are together working as a team.

          Just recently, Roberta Ursrey was enjoying a day at the beach with her family. Her sons had taken out the surfboard near the pier at Panama City Beach. The rest of her family was also there enjoying the day when she suddenly realized that her sons were missing. As she went looking for them, surveying the landscape, she found them, foundering in the water where they were caught in a riptide. They were trapped and a good hundred yards from the beach.

          There was no lifeguard. There was no rope or buoy or boat. Against advice from others, Roberta acted as a mother acts. She started swimming. Five other family members joined her. It didn’t take long for them to find out how hard it is to do things by yourself. Now ten people were trapped by the current in water fifteen feet deep. They tried swimming in. They tried swimming with the current. No matter what they tried, they made no progress.

          Paul tells us that “just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body though many, are one body, so it is with Christ…for the body does not consist of one member but of many.” If only there were a rope. If only there were some way to come together instead of all those individual efforts. If only those bodies could become one.

          Jessica Simmons and her husband were at the beach. They had come for dinner and were taking a walk. Jessica had just claimed a discarded boogie board when she noticed people pointing at the water. At first, she thought they had sighted a shark. As she focused her gaze in the direction pointed, she realized what was happening. Simmons, a strong swimmer, started swimming to them.

          Paul goes on to say that God arranges us, just as he does the human body. We can’t all be eyes or we would only see. It takes many parts to make up a body. To make one takes many. To become stronger than yourself, you must unite with others.

          Jessica would have made little difference by herself, no matter how strong a swimmer she was. Her husband knew this. He and a few other men started making a human chain, linking arms and elbows, stretching from the surf into the ocean. Everyone helped. No one was too small. Those who couldn’t swim stayed in shallow water. It didn’t take long before about 80 people, pretty much total strangers, had formed a human chain that stretched almost a hundred years into the water, just a few feet from the now desperate swimmers. What do you do when you need a rope and there is none to be found? You make a chain.

          Are you too little or too weak or too insignificant to help? Paul says that the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. There is no such thing as too insignificant. As surely as the human body needs all of its parts to function the best, so does God arrange us to be part of a flourishing whole. Separate, we function. Together, we conquer.

          The chain worked. Jessica and a couple others swam to those in trouble. One by one, they were passed along to the chain, and then passed down the chain to safety. One woman rescued, Ursrey’s mother, was actually having a heart attack. She too was rescued, gotten to the hospital, and survived.

          The Corinthian Christians are told that “there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” After the rescue event, Simmons commented how impressed she was with everyone working together to rescue the family. This is her comment: “It’s so cool to see how we have our own lives and we’re constantly at a fast pace, but when somebody needs, help, everybody drops everything and helps.” When it was over, everyone walked away. No names were taken. The 80 plus people became anonymous again. There is something very beautiful about that. It shows compassion, unselfishness, a willingness to be part of the body when the body is doing something good.

          Ursrey, the mother who had to be saved while trying to help her sons, commented that “These people were God’s angels…I owe my life and my family’s life to them.” How about that! Just another morning at the beach and you are called an angel! It happens that way when you become part of God’s chain.

          You know, the Corinthian church to which Paul was writing probably would have let that group of people drown on the beach while they were busy debating who was in charge and what should be done. The whole reason Paul was writing to them was because they had, in the words of the Old Testament writers, gone their own way. They had little direction and no unity. It happens with churches. It happens when they are healthy and it happens when they are sick. They lose their ability to respond to that still, small voice that guides and directs and spurs them to something and someone bigger than themselves.

          Was Roberta Ursrey right? Were God’s angels on the beach that day? I’d like to think that they were just like us, that they were going about their business when they heard a call. And they answered. Maybe they had no particular reason to be unified. But when the reason appeared, they stopped what they were doing and got in line. They literally became links in a chain of life.

          Our church, our little church in this little community, has taken a beating. We have lost our buildings and some of our resources. But this is a temporary thing. The buildings are not the church, but in the coming months there will be times when we wonder if we can be the church that God has called us to be. We will be prone to argue, to disagree, to think that whatever is on our hearts is the only way forward. To get our answer about how to move forward, we can look to stories like that of Roberta Ursrey and Jessica Simmons. Their paths crossed on a beach and both women and many more on the beach that day were changed. They experienced discipleship. They didn’t have to think. They just acted unselfishly. And they were called angels.

          Disciple is another word for messenger. That’s the job we are called to do. Spread the news. Bring the message. If, as Paul reminds us, we can do that message on a beach by joining arms to make a chain, that is just as true a testimony as standing in any pulpit. Just ask Roberta Ursrey.

          Sometimes we find discipleship. Sometimes discipleship finds us. No matter which way it comes, the call is there for us to answer. Answer the bell. You won’t be by yourself, and God needs you!