THE TIES THAT BIND I – TEAMWORK – I COR. 12
INTRODUCTION: In Florida, the Estero High football staff gathered in head coach Rich Dombroski's office late Friday (10.10.8), almost in stunned silence. Earlier that night, Estero lost to Naples High by 13. Not by 13 points’ by 13 touchdowns. That's right: Naples 91, Estero 0. After the one-sided affair, the Estero defensive line coach said "Hey, I didn't even know 91 was a multiple of seven." With that, the coaches all got a much-needed laugh. The Naples coach Bill Kramer—the man on the winning end— ran only 31 plays and he kept most of his best players on the sideline—for the entire game in some cases. The schools aren't far off in size but the pedigree of the football programs couldn't be more different. Estero is rebuilding from the lowest level, with their coach in his first year at the school and having inherited a program that had simply crumbled. Naples, on the other hand, is the reigning state Class 3A champion, and a contender to win the title again. Dombroski isn't blaming Naples. He said "Naples did absolutely nothing wrong. We just didn't do anything right." Dombroski knew when he took the Estero job that there would be days like Friday, but he said the 91-0 thumping might help him turn the program around. "We won't forget this. I won't forget this," said Dombroski. "Our team might not be winning or might not be on top right now, but we all have to do the best we can do. We can't forget that." And so, they were back to work, which they'll need. This week, Estero plays Cape Coral—a team that nearly beat Naples.
Today I want to talk about teamwork. I’m beginning a new sermon series out of I Corinthians that I’ve entitled “The Ties That Bind.” Paul wrote this letter to a Corinthian church that was divided, discouraged and demoralized. Like the High School team that lost 91 to nothing, the Corinthian church needed rebuilding from the bottom up. We’ll spend the next four weeks looking at ties that bind a church together from I Corinthians chapters 12 - 15. We want to reinforce those principles in our own congregation as PREVENTION rather than cure. As a church, we’re not at the bottom of the heap. We’re not on the loosing end of “91 to nothing”; but neither do we want to find ourselves in that situation because we failed to pay attention to the FUNDAMENTALS.
In I Corinthians chapter 12 Paul communicates that teamwork is a “tie” that binds a church together. He doesn’t use the word “teamwork” but in my opinion that’s a word that nicely sums up what he writes about in this chapter. This morning, let’s consider four aspects of church teamwork that we learn from I Corinthians 12.
But before I say something about teamwork, let me explain the context of this chapter. One of the problems that plagued the Corinthian Church was jealousy over the presence of supernatural spiritual gifts. These gifts are named in verses 7 – 11 of this chapter and they included such abilities as healing, prophecy, miraculous powers, and speaking in tongues. The people that had these supernatural gifts became proud and acted superior to the ones who didn’t. And the people who didn’t have these supernatural gifts were jealous and envious of the ones who did. I’m not going to say a lot about the supernatural gifts themselves today because that’s not really my point and they’re not really the point of this chapter. I WILL say in passing that if I understand what the Bible teaches, the supernatural gifts were temporary. Their purpose was fulfilled during the formational years of the church and they had completely passed away by the third century AD. God still gives gifts, but they’re natural, not supernatural. I’ll teach more about that in the third sermon of this series.
I. TEAMWORK ARISES FROM AN INSPIRING COACH
I Corinthians 12:4-6 “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.”
Teams don’t just happen, they’re created. There has to be a leader, a mover and a shaker, a creative force that calls that team into existence and holds that team together. In the case of the church, that creative force is God. Look at the emphases on God in the first 13 verses of this chapter. In verses 1-3 Paul emphasizes that it is God the Holy Spirit who inspires someone to say “Jesus is Lord.” Verses 4-6 allude to the trinity when Paul says the various gifts are the result of the same Spirit, same Lord, and same God. In verses 7-11 Paul enumerates the supernatural gifts and emphasizes over and over that they were distributed by God the Holy Spirit.
APPLICATION: One of the keys to great teamwork in a church is that we all realize that we have been brought together by none other than God. The church is different and unique from any other gathering of people for that reason alone. We’re not a social club, though we may socialize. We’re not a service club like the Rotarians though we may serve. We’re not a business though we do get busy. The church is a living, spiritual organism that has been created by the living God. God is the one who has called us out. God is the one who gives us our abilities, our team assignments. God is the author of our playbook. The church is the greatest team of all because God is the greatest leader. We must always keep God in the equation when we talk about the church. Otherwise, we’re just another human organization instead of what we are. The church is the SUPERBOWL in God’s play schedule. We are the end-game in God’s plan of redemption.
ILLUSTRATION: It was half time in the locker room. A lot was on the line in the 1928 game between Army and Notre Dame. It didn't look good for the Fighting Irish. The team had struggled the entire first half. Coach Knute Rockne dug deep for words to turn his team around. He encouraged them. He challenged them. He warned them. He demanded their best. Finally, he paused. The scene was made famous in the 1940 movie "Knute Rockne--All American" starring Ronald Reagan. Rockne finally breaks the silence. He reminds them of a former player, George Gipp who had recently died. That's the part Reagan played in the film. The coach quietly tells his team of his last visit to the bedside of Gipp. "And the last thing he said to me, ‘Rock,’ he said, ‘sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they've got and’ (AND DO WHAT?) That’s right; he said ‘win just one for the Gipper.’"
Why do we all know that line, even if we’re not athletes and we’re not elderly? We know it because it’s a classic example of a coach’s ability to inspire his team. Who has ever been more inspirational than God? God’s leadership and inspiration is the reason why a spirit of teamwork pervades our church.
II. A COMMON IDENTITY
I Corinthians 12:12-13 “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”
Paul introduces a human body as a metaphor for the church. Paul states that the church, the body of Christ, is formed when all different kinds of people are baptized by one Spirit into the body and are all given the one Spirit to drink. As individuals we are incorporated into this body by God Himself. And the defining moment when this incorporation into the body takes place is the same for each and every one of us. It’s an experience that we all have in common and it forms our common identity…our baptism.
Great teams often have some critical defining moment, some crucial shared experience that transforms them from a group of individual players into a lean, mean, fighting machine.
ILLUSTRATION: In the movie, “Remember the Titans” a black coach took over a white High School football team during the 60’s just as the team was integrated. He took the players away to training camp but the players remained suspicious and divided. At training camp Coach Boone put the players through grueling THREE-A-DAY practices trying to force them to come together, but to no avail. He took them on a midnight run which ended in a misty wooded graveyard. He said “Men, do you know where we are? We’re at Gettysburg. This is where men fought, brother against brother, that our nation might stay united. If we can’t come together here, on this ground, we’ll never come together.” Finally, at their very next practice, there came a break-through, a defining moment, when the two most influential players, one white, one black, came together. All the players saw it, experienced it, and shared it. From that point on, they became a team and went on to an undefeated season. (A clip from the film works well here if available).
For the church, that defining moment and shared experience is baptism. All kinds of things happened to you when you were baptized. When you were baptized your sins were washed away. When you were baptized you were given the Holy Spirit to drink (that means He came into your life to indwell you). And when you were baptized you were placed into the body of Christ, you were added to the church; not by the preacher, not by the congregation, but by God Himself. That’s one thing that every one of us has in common. When we watch a baptism every one of us can say, “I did that. I experienced that. I felt that.”
I Corinthians 10:1-4 “For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.”
The shared experience of the Exodus transformed those 12 tribes into the one nation of Israel and Paul called it a baptism into Moses. The shared experience of baptism into Christ is what forges us from a motley crew of disconnected individuals into the one body that is the church – a lean, mean, devil-fighting machine!
III. A RESPECTFUL CHEMISTRY
I Corinthians 12:14-20 “Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.”
As I said earlier, the people in the Corinthian Church who had supernatural gifts were acting superior to those who didn’t. Those who did not have supernatural gifts were jealous and envious of those who did. How shameful that the gifts that God gave to build the church up were being misused to destroy the church. Paul uses hyperbole to emphasize that the members are interdependent. What if the whole body were an eye? How could it move? It would just have to roll around everywhere. Can you imagine a giant EYEBALL rolling down the aisle of this church building? That would be awkward. How could it hear? I guess maybe it could read lips.
A body is the ultimate team. Every part has a function and the whole body depends upon all of the parts functioning together. Every successful team has an attitude of respectful chemistry where I respect what you contribute and you respect what I contribute and we’re all willing to exercise whatever gift God has seen fit to distribute to us for the common good.
QUOTE: “There are plenty of teams in every sport that have great players and never win titles. Most of the time, those players aren't willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the team. The funny thing is, in the end, their unwillingness to sacrifice only makes individual goals more difficult to achieve. One thing I believe to the fullest is that if you think and achieve as a team, the individual accolades will take care of themselves. Talent wins games but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” - Michael Jordan - I CAN'T ACCEPT NOT TRYING
ILLUSTRATION: Alex Haley, author of ROOTS, had a picture in his office showing a turtle sitting atop a fence. The picture is there to remind him of a lesson he learned long ago: “If you see a turtle on a fence-post, you know he had some help.” Alex said “Any time I start thinking, “Wow! Isn’t this marvelous what I’ve done!” I look up at that picture and remember how this turtle – me – got up on that post.” Philip Barry Osborne – The Handbook of Magazine Article Writing.
1) We all have something to contribute. You don’t have a supernatural gift and neither do I but we do have gifts, talents, abilities and resources from God.
2) We all need to figure out a way to use what WE have been given by God for the common good of the church.
3) We ALL need each other and one another’s gifts in order to function and grow and thrive the way God wants us to. If somebody doesn’t do their part, the body doesn’t necessarily die, but it is crippled. It’s not what it could be.
IV. A FIERCE LOYALTY
I Corinthians 12:21-26 “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don't need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don't need you!’ On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”
ILLUSTRATION: The human appendix was once scorned as a useless “vestigial organ”. Medical doctors now know it’s a highly specialized organ that plays an important role in controlling bacteria that enters the intestines, especially in early childhood. At one time, evolutionary scientists postulated that there were 180 vestigial structures in the human body. Today the list has shrunk to virtually zero.
Likewise, every person who comes into the body of Christ is to be loved, embraced, honored and protected. Some of us may be “extra grace people”, we may need a little more patience and long-suffering than others…but even the seeming misfits among us have their role and can help us build an other-worldly spirit of teamwork.
ILLUSTRATION: In December of 1996, Sports Illustrated carried an article entitled "Someone To Lean On" about James Robert Kennedy of Anderson South Carolina.
James Robert Kennedy is mentally disabled. At the age of 18 he was a dirty, disheveled boy who enjoyed roaring down a hill on a grocery cart screaming like a banshee holding a transistor radio to his ear. No one ever played with him. He could barely speak or understand the rules. He couldn't read or write a word. He was scared from various accidents and the fear in his eyes reflected his experiences with neighborhood bullies. One day in the autumn of 1964 James' cart took him to the Hannah High School football field. He watched the team practice and silently absorbed it all. A few days later the players heard noises and looked over to see James commanding his own team, one that only he could see, through a series of calisthenics and drills, doing his best to mimic the coaches' body language, signals and commands. The players giggled; it was a distraction, to be sure. The young coach, Harold Jones, turned and looked too. The choices that unmake or make a life are so small. The coach said "Come over here, boy."
What made Jones invite the wild boy with the missing teeth to come onto his field, and then to a game, to help carry the water coolers and then hop into Jones's pickup truck for a ride home? Why would a coach work so hard at discipline and deployment and then unleash a loose cannon like James Kennedy? After all, everyone knew Coach Jones to be a strict and quiet man who virtually never showed emotion or affection. No one knew that when he was a kid growing up in Anderson, he was the one who would fight anyone who picked on the smaller boy who lived across the street, and he was the one who, when working at his grandfather's theater, would slip a mentally disabled man in the door for free and put a box of popcorn in his hands.
And so, before you knew it, James Kennedy was going everywhere Coach Jones and his team went, and his halftime show was gaining renown. At halftime James would charge onto the field and bend down like a center, screeching those preposterous signals, hike the ball to himself and dipsy-doodle all around. Finding no one open except himself, James would flip the ball to James and then, to the crowd's roar, boogie-woogie all the way to pay dirt.
Coach Jones took James to the doctor every year, monitored James's diet and made sure his medical and dental bills were paid. Assistant coach Honeycutt said, "James would be dead by now if not for coach Jones." The players and the town adopted James Kennedy. The players who lived in James' neighborhood kept at bay the bullies who used to target him, and a half-dozen players might each deliver a hamburger and an order of fries to James on game day. James holds more high school varsity letters than any other man in history, having received one each from the football, basketball and track teams every year for the past three decades and filed them all carefully between his box spring and his mattress.
Imagine, just for a moment, that you could go to a football game one day and play every role, be everyone in the whole stadium. That's what James did every game. Gumming and gnawing another freshly mooched fried-chicken drumstick, he would start out as the official greeter, holding open the Hanna program to make sure all arriving fans saw his photograph and hoisting up his pants legs to make sure everyone got a gander at his new pair of shoes—"Wook at my Weeboks!"—along with his socks, one white and one black. Then he would commandeer the bass drum as the Manna band made its knee-pumping entrance, quickly double back to wolf down a free hot dog and then scurry up to the press box to become the radio color commentator, barking over the airwaves, "We gon' beat dey butt!" All at once it would occur to James that he was also Hanna's coach, and he'd bolt down onto the field to yelp stretching instructions to the team during warmups—"You roll dat neck, boy!"—and then back to the bleachers to scarf some free popcorn and sign his autograph, loop-de-loop.
For the next two hours, to the ricochet of impulse, he would be the band director leading the touchdown celebration tune, the pom-pom-shaking cheerleader, the team trainer kneading cramps from players' calves, the 15-year-old flirt tossing popcorn at the cheerleaders' bare legs, the drum majorette in the halftime show, the fanatic racing up and down the sidelines with a giant Manna flag, the water boy rushing squeeze bottles—empty, as often as not—onto the field during timeouts, and the coach arm-waggling defensive signals at the offensive line...all to the steady background bleating, from white-haired alumni and kids alike calling to James by his nickname of Radio, "Raaaadiooooooo! Hey, Raaaadioooooooo, come over here!"
The choices that make or unmake a life are so small. We make those choices also in the church…in THIS church. Les’s always remember those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty and God has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.
