Sticking Together

  I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. 1 Corinthians 1:10

“Jesus Flake? I’ve heard of a Jesus freak but never a Jesus Flake, what’s that about?”  This was the question I was compelled to ask the man who had just worked on my tires. I was responding to the little blue and white pin he was wearing that had snowflakes around the words “Jesus Flake.”

 

I got the impression that he was pleased to be asked! (I guess you only wear a pin like that because you want to be asked.)

He explained that he couldn’t sleep one night and he kept recalling making snowmen when he was a child. His mind just wouldn’t rest and he felt that God wanted him to get up and write a story, one that he promised to read to me when he finished with my bill.  It was the story that prompted him to have the “I’m a Jesus Flake” pins made and he would give me one before I go. Okay, now I’m curious!

He finished his work and went into his office and came out with a few handwritten pages (on the kind of long skinny paper I use to write grocery lists, exactly the kind that would be readily available at 3 am).  The title was “The Body of Christ.”  Now I’m even more curious as he starts to talk about how a rolling stone gathers no moss but how that is not true about rolling snowballs that are made from millions, even billions, of individual snowflakes of which no two are alike.  Each one is required to build the body of the snowman and he says they are like Velcro as they stick to each other.

He continued, when he was a child, he would sometimes use all the snow in his yard for the bottom part of the body and then go into the neighbor’s yard to gather more snowflakes to roll into the rest of the snowman.  He talked about how the primary makeup of each flake was water (Living Water) and how they reflect the light of the sun (Light of the Son). And that, after a time, when the sun (Son) would shine on them they would, each one, be transformed into a new form, (Living) water.

When this Jesus Flake started to talk to me I don’t know if he knew I was a Christian.  He was quick to tell me that there had been a time when he doubted God’s Word but that then he was born again and he knows that God has inspired it and it is true. By the end of our conversation it was apparent to both of us that we had been rolled into the same Body, the Body of Christ.

This man was making a pointed witness for the work that God does in the heart of believers as He binds us together in one body, the body of Jesus Christ. The Bible talks about how all the parts, though separate and gifted differently, form one body. (1 Corinthians 12)  This body is to serve God and each other, using the gifts and talents God has given each individual, allowing, and even encouraging, others to use their gifts as well.

Now, this is a story from several years ago but I’m reminded of it when I see a snowman — moreso when I see a snowman begin to melt because the analogy doesn’t stop with the making of the snowman.  Just as it is sad to see the snowman’s body begin to melt, it is hard to watch the body of Christ stop “sticking together.” It fragments into loose connections and separate work rather than the unity of the body that Christ prayed we would have in John 17:11b, “Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.”

As Jesus continued to pray in John 17:20 – 21, He added,  “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

The Jesus Flake man doesn’t come from the same “yard” that I was rolled in.  Our denominations do not agree on all doctrinal issues but we are unified on Jesus’ death and resurrection.  In John 17:21 Jesus said the unity between us was so that the world would believe that the Father had sent the Son. The Jesus Flake was trying to reach others with this life-changing message.

Doctrinal and denominational issues are one thing.  My concern today is for those who are already members of particular congregations, part of whose work is to spread this same message.  We hear and read, and some are living through, stories of divisions, rivalries, and dissensions in the local body of Christ. These are nothing new but they are less doctrinal than personal.  Paul, (Romans 14:1,16:7;  2 Timothy 2:14) and James (James 4:2) warn Christians about the negative impact of quarrels and fighting but many ignore them, bringing disunity to the body.

If our unity is cause for the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, what does our disunity cause the world to believe?

Will the Son be reflected from these snowmen?