Going Out Like That

So, here I am, writing the last sermon of my first pastorate. On Sunday, after nearly ten years I will be saying goodbye to the folks in Atwood and Plumville.  On this snowy Friday afternoon, when I normally have things more or less sussed out for Sunday, when I normally am enjoying my weekly Sabbath rest, here I am thinking about the Body of Christ.
As it so often does, the Revised Common Lectionary has thrown me a curve, but as in baseball, if I can manage to track that curve, it might just go out of the park.
Did I mention this is my last sermon to the congregation that I have served since I graduated from Seminary?
Did I mention that this is my last sermon to people who helped Michele and me welcome and raise two children?
What do I want to tell them?
I want to tell them the same thing that Paul told the church at Corinth: "Now you are the Body of Christ, and each one of you is part of it." (1 Cor. 12: 27 NIV)  Actually, that's all I really ever wanted to tell them.
So why is this a curve?
Good question, I'm not sure, but I have this gut feeling that this thing is about to break on me.
See the metaphor of the body is really loaded, we are all intimately connected with our body.  In fact, Incarnation is at the center of Christian faith and doctrine: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."  Scandalous really, to any good theist, the idea that God, immortal, invisible, omniscient and all powerful, walks around in the same sort of fragile sack of guts and bone that we do.
Gnostics have always had major problems with that, and so they tackled the "problem" of Jesus by trying to make him into something other than God in a human body.  It would just be easier if we could come up with some sort of explanation that didn't involve the Creator of the Universe traipsing about in the body of a Nazarene craftsman.
What to do about Jesus?
That's a real problem.  That's the problem that I have been wrestling with here in this little congregation for almost a decade.  Once the Incarnation happened, for some reason, God thought it was a pretty good idea, and so it wasn't over with just Jesus.  Jesus gave his Disciples marching orders and told them to go and do what he did, represent God to the world, not just in words, but with who you are.  We take up the charge of being the Incarnation of God in the world, the Body of Christ.
I'm not making this up, that's what Jesus said, it's what Paul founded all those early communities upon.  Before they ever called themselves a church or even Christians, they were the Body of Christ.
There's an awful lot of talk in the Church these days about what exactly is going wrong.  We're not growing, and some of us seem to be infected with hate, anger and other bad ideas.  One of the solutions that is rather popular is to look back at the beginning of the church and find out what they did right.  How exactly, did the early church go from 11 people to a world religion in a little less than 250 years.  It's tempting to think that the church then was just different.  That the people were more willing to commit and less distracted by all the nonsense that the world has to offer.
But I'm pretty sure that's not true, mostly because I've read the letters that their pastors wrote to them.
I'm pretty sure that when Paul, emphatically reminds the church at Corinth that they are all part of one body and that no one of them is better or more valuable than another, he did so because they had begun to fight with one another and claim that some were more valuable than others.
Just as the body of Jesus of Nazareth could be beaten up and crucified, the Body of Christ that is the Church, can still be broken and torn apart.  There is eternal significance to the fact that we break the body of Christ and have his blood poured out for us on a regular basis and call it a sacrament.
So what is my last sermon to this part of the Body of Christ going to say?

You are broken,

But you are holy.

Christ has made you.

You are few and small,

But you are wonderful.

Christ has called you.

 Frightened and unsure,

The light of the world.

Christ lives 

In 

You.

You are 

The Body.

You are enough,

You are what God needs.

You are all that God wants.