“What is the Zygology of Our Church?” January 24, 2010

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 & I Corinthians 12:12-31a

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I. When I was a boy growing up in Northeast Ohio the older brother of one of my classmates won the National Spelling Bee.

A. There was a wild celebration in my hometown and it was just the beginning of some great accomplishments by Bill Kerrick.

1. When he was a high school senior Bill took the Advance Placements tests to receive college credit before he ever got to college for the purpose of skipping some introductory classes in order to accelerate the date for his graduation so he could move onto working on his Master’s degree and his Ph.D.

2. Those advanced placement tests are scored on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest and Bill scored a 5 in Chemistry and a 5 in Biology.

3. Prior to Bill no high school student had gotten higher than a 4 on the Physics advanced placement test but it was Bill Kerrick who got the first 5.

4. I don’t know what happened to Bill after that as we just didn’t have much in common, but I’m sure he did very well.

5. I also have no doubt that Bill had what it took to keep it together.

B. In preparing for this sermon I read an article by the Rev. Susan Fritz-Kent that described another national championship and it was one I had never heard of so I ask “Have any of you ever heard of the Dry-Stone Walling Association National Championship?”

1. Dry-stone walls are constructed without any cement or mortar and they are held together by their own weight.

2. Long before the birth of Christ such walls were constructed and many of them are still standing.

3. According to the Rev. Fitz-Kent there is a man named Steven Allen who is a legend among modern day dry-stone wall builders.

4. Apparently there is a Dry-stone Wall National Championship competition and Steven Allen has broken many records in the walling contests held over the years to the point that he is described as a rock star in dry-stone construction circles throughout the United States and Britain.

5. He is a guy who has devoted himself to such construction.

C. As you might have guessed there is art to building a dry-stone wall.

1. Each stone, be it big or small, is vital to the integrity of the wall.

2. Whenever Allen builds a wall he tilts the stones slightly downward, like roof tiles, so that water will drain out of the wall.

3. To give the wall the critical strength that is required for the wall to stand the builder includes pebbles and rock chips that are packed in to the wall’s center area.

4. Allen is amazing in that after studying the stones he chips them with a hammer and easily slips them into place, lodging them between their neighbor stones (as Fritz-Kent describes) “as neatly and securely as if he were building with Legos.”

D. Allen is passionate about dry-stone wall building and he has said that “Cement is a sin.”

1. This may be because Allen is British and grew up visiting Hadrian’s Wall on which construction was begun in 122 A.D.

2. The Romans built it to keep out the Picts and to control trade.

3. Originally the wall was almost 75 miles in length and a fair amount of it still remains despite people’s desire to take a small souvenir.

4. Now the truth is that a well-built, dry-stone wall can stay intact, without repair, for hundreds of years which is several times the life span of a cemented wall.

5. That’s because land moves.

6. There are sinkholes and settlings during the rainy season along with ice in the winter and the thawing of spring.

7. Dry-stone walls are able to bend and shift and thus are accommodating to such movements and changes.

8. A dry-stone wall doesn’t reach “old age,” according to Allen, until it is distorted through someone hitting it with a car.

9. Otherwise it remains solid and sturdy.

10. The same cannot be said for a cement wall.

11. Cement walls never reach old age.

12. They are not made up of individual pieces that work together and stay in relationship.

13. Rather, a cement wall cracks and then it crumbles and then it collapses.

14. And that is why cement is sin in the eyes of Steven Allen.

II. It seems to me that the church can learn from a dry-stone wall.

A. In essence a dry-stone wall is nothing more than a pile of rocks, each rock with its own job to perform to help hold up the structure.

1. If one rock is missing then the structure is compromised and things might begin tumbling down.

2. But when all the individual stones do their unique job while working together, the wall will endure for centuries.

B. Again, the amazing thing about the dry-stone wall is that there is no obvious adhesive – there is no mortar, no caulking, no cement and no Elmer’s Glue.

1. Never-the-less, these stones stand the test of time and examples of this such as Hadrian’s Wall amaze us.

C. Now this is counter to life in this day and age.

1. In our society we’re very interested in adhesives.

2. It seems like we’re always looking for the newest glue technology to hold up our posters in the kids’ bedrooms without leaving a mark on the wall or to permanently hold together the ceramic vase that broke when it got knocked over.

3. Since there is big money to be made along these lines there is a field of science that is devoted to learning more about adhesives and what holds things together and that field of science is known as “zygology.”

4. The term comes from the Greek word for “yoke” so zygology is the science of joining things together.

5. These folks are particularly interested in studying the abilities of the diptera muscidae (pronounced muss-si-dee) better known to the rest of us as the common housefly.

6. A good day in the office is for these guys to reflect on how the housefly operates like the superhero Spider-Man, defying gravity while crawling up walls and on ceilings.

7. And while I poke fun at them this is a very practical field as this stuff effects every aspect of our life.

8. After all, holding stuff together is what welds and nails, as well as screws and rivets, do.

9. Without zygology the high heels on women’s shoes would fall off (which many of you might find to be a blessing), books would fall apart and there’d be no way to cap our teeth.

10. Think of what our lives would be like without stamps or wallpaper or tape or Post-it notes.

11. We need the things in our lives to hold together.

D. Now while the study of adhesives is not a well-known field of science, it is important and I have run through all this to make the point that what holds us together in Christian community is important and that leads to this question, “What is the zygology of our church?”

1. How well are we adhering to one another?

2. When you walk outside of the doors of our church it seems that the world around us is coming apart at the seams.

3. On an international scale a nation like India does not trust its neighbor Pakistan, and the Japanese don’t trust the Chinese, Israel does not trust Iran and South Korea does not trust North Korea.

4. And that’s just a few of the troubled spots in this world where people are having difficulty being near one another.

5. In our American society there is a pressure from our peers to look a certain way, drive certain cars, and enroll our children in certain programs and schools.

6. With all that is going on around us what keeps us Christians from becoming unglued to Christ and one another and thus falling apart?

III. The Apostle Paul tried to help the church in Corinth with this when he wrote, “For just as the body is one and has many members of the body, though many, are one body, so with Christ.” (I Cor. 12:12).

A. Paul seems to be thinking along the lines of Steven Allen of dry-stone wall fame.

1. The Apostle believed that God created a system of interdependence, a system that worked like the human body, to hold the church together.

2. His understanding was that God has created us to be dependent on one another, that we in essence belong with one another.

3. In the dry-stone analogy if a stone falls from a dry-stone wall then the wall isn’t as strong as it was before and that fallen stone is left unprotected to be claimed by the forces of nature.

4. In the body analogy if an arm is severed from the body then the body isn’t as strong as it was before and that arms withers and dies.

5. The fact is that if we try to function without each other in the church, we and the church will become unhealthy, crumble and decay.

6. That’s why like a dry-stone wall we have to work with each other, support one another, lean on each other and help each other.,

7. Folks, God has made you for others and others for you, and God has made all of us for the body of Christ that is the church.

B. Each of us has different gifts, different passions, and God wants us to share them for the sake of the Kingdom and for God’s glory.

1. These gifts should be affirmed but so often we act like the Corinthians and degrade other’s gifts while overinflating in importance our own.

2. To correct this Paul pointed to the unseen adhesive that holds us all together and that is the Holy Spirit.

3. And it is this same Holy Spirit who provides each of us our gifts in accordance with the will of God.

4. Some sing, some teach, some preach, some pray and the list goes on and on.

5. None of us are good at everything but when each of us uses our gift to the fullest AND not only allows but encourages everyone else in the body to use their gift to the fullest then great things are accomplished.

C. Divisiveness according to gifts was a serious problem facing the church in Corinth and another serious problem was who they viewed as their mentor.

1. Some said “I belong to Paul,” while others said “I belong to Apollos (who was the better preacher), and still others “I belong to Cephas” (also known as Peter who was Jesus’ closest friend on earth), and still others took the “holier than thou” attitude of well, “I belong to Christ” which is the correct response provided you take away the “holier than thou” attitude.

2. Paul, who wasn’t afraid to step on toes, wrote “Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1:10b-13)

3. One point Paul was making with this is that since we are united through Christ we are not to be clones of one another.

4. We’re not to be clones of Paul or Apollos or Cephas, nor are we to be clones of a previous pastor or the present pastor or any future pastors.

5. We’re to be what God created us to be, using our unique gifts.

D. And that brings us back to the dry-stone wall.

1. Paul doesn’t tell us, even in these modern times with great scientific advancements, to go looking for some secret glue.

2. He tells us that God has given us one another to hold us together individually and the church and the world if it will let us.

3. If we will lean on one another, support and encourage one another than we will stand strong.

4. Diversity among us in age and gender and experience while being there for one another in sorrow and in celebration is a good thing.

5. When one suffers we all suffer and when one is honored we all rejoice.

E. The Rev. Fritz-Kent in her article closes by pointing out that the contemporary emphasis on self-esteem, on ourselves, has made us suspicious of losing our individuality in a group effort and that suspicion has led some to not fully committing themselves to God and to God’s church.

1. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians makes clear his opinion that God doesn’t want a weak, featureless, concrete wall of followers, a body made of nothing but arms.

2. God needs eyes, ears, arms and legs; God needs a strong adaptable dry-stone wall made up of all sorts of stones, with all sorts of strengths.

3. God needs us in all our individuality, with all our different skills, making the walls of God’s church ones that will continue to endure the ages.