The film "The Body" is based on a sermon preached by Rev. John Randolph Taylor at Pilgrims in 1964. The sermon centered on how the Body of Christ is to be used to challenge segregation as an "instrument," and that the Body is "visible" as well as being "alive."
The following passage of the sermon was inadvertently deleted from the film The Body:
“Then we will say that we will be concerned and we will tell people about it. We will tell people of our love. And John answers exactly that problem within us and closes our last escape hatch when he says, "My little children, my little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in deed and in truth." For that is what love is about. Love is visible like the body. Love is not something we simply talk about or think about, it is something we do.“
Read the full sermon transcript below or download here.
“THE BODY”
Dr. John Randolph Taylor
Sunday, November 22, 1964
The Church of the Pilgrims, Washington, D. C.
Ephesians 4:4-7, 11-13; I John 3:16-18
I am not going to preach this morning on “Render to Caesar". We shall return to that at another time. Today I want us to look at what it means to be a part of the Body of Christ.
We in The Church of the Pilgrims have come to a moment of truth. We came to it, perhaps in its crucial form, on last Wednesday evening, when some in our congregation gathered together in Fellowship Hall to hear a simple presentation of a modest proposal whereby we may be of some Christian service in the life of this community. A fine group of young adults called the Covenant Community, who are committed to a Christian discipline, came to help us see what they were trying to do on one single block with a few families who are badly pressured by poverty -- a block called Seaton Place. The residents of Seaton Place happen to be Negroes. The members of the Covenant Community presented their program and offered us the glad opportunity of sharing with them through the use of a few of the rooms in our education building. The fantastic thing to me was that their simple, modest proposal was met by a kind of trench fire; an inquisition in which the common canons of courtesy were disregarded and we were actually rude to guests in our midst.
I was ashamed. I was not ashamed for the Covenant Community. I thought they conducted themselves as mature Christians; they turned the other cheek and absorbed the hostility without any apparent difficulty. But I was ashamed of The Church of the Pilgrims and what we said and what we did not say when we were presented with this kind of practical opportunity. Now, this morning, I am not primarily concerned about the Covenant Community. I have a feeling that their plan is a good one, touched with a feeling of Christlikeness, and that our Session is wise enough to see if there are inherent faults in it and to make a decision as to our acceptance of it. I am more concerned with the soul of The Church of the Pilgrims and about the eternal souls of members within it. When we were confronted with the task of being in fact the Body of Christ at work in the world, we found ourselves springing into patterns of rudeness and hostility which only give evidence that there must be deep roots of prejudice that lie within us.
It was shocking to me; I am sure that it was shocking to others. One of our elders said that he went home that night feeling that we had talked about the poverty of our neighborhood but the greatest poverty that he has seen and the greatest lesson of the evening was the spiritual poverty within our own communion. He and his wife went home to talk about it and to pray about it, asking God to show them what He would have them to do. That describes not only our poverty, but our wealth. Our poverty lies in our prejudices; our wealth lies in our ability to see that God calls us beyond our prejudices into an understanding of what He would have us to do.
Wednesday night was somewhat like tearing off the mask. The surface tissue was cut, and we found that there was something like a cancer. I do not think that it is a deep cancer, nor that it is widespread. I do not think that it is more than that which unfortunately is typical of any church. But I do not think that it can be ignored, just as a cancer cannot be ignored. If it is ignored, it will spread and it will eat away the souls of some of us and the sense of mission of all of us.
Therefore, it seems to me that today there may be some ears open because of the moment of truth through which we have passed. Now I have been preaching for a number of years that the church has a mission, and I have been trying to preach as a faithful minister of Jesus Christ that this mission is relevant to all men, that it is a down-to-earth mission in keeping with the down-to-earth gospel of God Who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, however, it came clear to me as your minister in a fresh way Wednesday night that the word just hadn't gotten across. I do not want to fail you as your pastor. I do not want anyone under my ministry to die tonight with a segregated heart and find himself in an integrated eternity. I do not want anyone in some future aeon to point his finger at me and say, "Why didn't you tell us that God is no respecter of persons?: Why didn't you make it clear that there are no racial distinctions: in Christ?" I hope that we can make it clear today, and if I have been vague, I apologize; I shall seek never to be vague again. I hope that we shall never come to the place where we so misunderstand our calling and mission, that we do not realize that God has created some- thing radically new in Jesus Christ and has called us into responsible service in our own time and place. That kind of misunderstanding is like a canoer which must be dealt with radically, as radically as the New Testament deals with it.
The New Testament acknowledged the fact of race and said that there is no difference; in Christ there is no difference. They understood themselves to be a new body being created out of all races by the Spirit. This symbol of the body is that instrument which can best help us today in an understanding of what it means in 1964 at the corner of 22nd and P Streets in Washington, D. C. for us to be a Church. Now the body of Christ is all over the New Testament--it is in Romans 12, it is in I Corinthians 12 and it is in this passage of Ephesians 4, a part of which we read this morning. But if it is only in the New Testament and if it isn't in relationship to our lives, then we ourselves have misunderstood the eternal nature of God. God isn't dead. God is alive. Christ is not a Christ that was alive and is now dead; He is a Christ who was dead and is now alive. He moves through history today and He calls us to be faithful to Him as His body,
I.
Now, the image of the body is saying at least three things to all of us--in the New Testament age and in the 20th century in which we live. The first is that The Body is an Instrument.
A body lives only to obey the head. The body hasn't any other possibility of life or growth apart from the head. The body is an instrument, a tool, a means for being of service. Your head tells your hand to pick up something, and your body obeys, Christ takes up His Body and He uses it as He chooses. It is not the church of our choice; it is the church of His choice. We talk blandly about "go to the church of your choice" -- well and good. But let us recognize that the New Testament is talking about something entirely different. The Body of Christ is the church of His choice and it only lives and functions as it is an instrument in His hand and in obedience to His will. The Body then cannot escape from the world. God did not escape from the world in Christ; he became involved in the world in Christ. God is not just an idea, an other-worldly thing; He became a this-worldly person in Jesus, and Christ established His Body in order that it might be in this world as an instrument.
Now, we try to escape often. We try to distinguish between those things that are spiritual and those things that are practical; and we say that the Church's task is in the spiritual realm and not in the practical realm. Well, the New Testament never said so. We should frankly recognize that this is a part of our cultural inheritance. We are many of us at least, and I am one as well--the spiritual heirs of men who had to grapple with the deep sociological problem of slav ery. They had to reconcile for themselves the fact that at one and the same time they held Christ as Lord on the one hand and men as slaves on the other. Now the only way that they could solve that kind of dichotomy was to say that the Lord and His Church are concerned with spiritual things and never with practical things.
Now we are the inheritors of that kind of schizophrenia and we try to divide the world in the same way, and say that God is concerned with those spiritual things and that He is not concerned with these practical things. That over there is Christian service but this over here could not be -- so we rationalize, The New Testament knows of no such distinction. The whole nature of the Body is that it is down to earth, that it is an instrument, that it is in the hands of Him who is the head of the Church. This kind of schizoplurenia, we should recognize, leads ultimately to suicide, In the Church it leads ultimately to the guilt of ministers who are afraid to speak and elders who are afraid to rule. That is the kind of suicide which a congregation can commit just as can a single personality.
The modern parallel of the old slavery issue is the modern issue of segrega tion. We have failed to see that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is greater than this issue of race. The Gospel forces us to deal with segregation, for as long as men see only the blind spot of race they will never see the reconciliation of the Gospel. The fact is that slavery was itself abolished by the Gospel. A number of things played with it: political forces, economic factors, military forces. But slavery was abolished basically because beneath all of these forces there were five words of insight: "Men for whom Christ died." "Men for whom Christ died".. people came to see that ultimately you could not hold Christ as Lord on one hand and hold your brother down on the other. Now the Gospel still presents that demand before us, so that segregation is in the process of being abolished--I thought that we were much farther along than apparently some of us are--and the abolishment of segregation is not simply a legal necessity, it is a Gospel necessity. To get into the world and into its problems is the privilege to which God calls His Church as an instrument.
Says John in his First Epistle, "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." (3:16). The cross is not an ornament; the cross is not a brass instrument to hang around your neck; the cross is not something to embroider in lace; the cross is a way of life. "By this do we know lóve, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to be willing to lay down our lives for the brethren." When prejudice influences the Church more than the Church influences prejudice the Church is failing as an instrument. The Bible is clear that the Church has a task of service and it goes over any racial lines. God is no respecter of persons, as Peter discovered in the encounter with the Gentiles, Paul writes out of the deep places of his heart, "In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greekin-and we would have to translate that into twentieth century life: "In Christ there is neither Negro nor white"--"for all are one in Christ," The fact is that Christ has broken down the middle wall of partition, of hostility, and brought those who were segregated into one household, It is out of harmony with Christian faith to continue to maintain a kind of prejudicial segregation,
What I am saying is that the New Testament and the Church in our own time have made it perfectly clear that segregation is a practical heresy. Our General Assem bly said in 1954, and has said repeatedly over and over again, "Enforced segrega tion of the races is discrimination, which is out of harmony with Christian theology and ethics; and the Church, in its relationship to cultural patterns should lead and not follow." Now those are General Assembly words and we can say that they are vague and thus don't mean anything. What they are saying is that segregation is out of harmony with Christian theology and ethics. Now the Christian theology centers in Christ, in the cross, the love of God, the power of His spirit. It is out of harmony with that understanding of who God is to hold a brother down, to think of him as something other or less than ourselves. The Church has been saying this consistently and the difficulty has been in terms of being the Body of Christ in implementing that understanding as an obedient instrument.
The Church then is an instrument and not a club. We have got to make a choice whether we are going to be a kind of downtown club or whether we are going to be a church of the Lord of history. The Church of the Pilgrims, with our peculiar Southern accent and orientation at this point has a particular choice to make: whether we are in fact to be a church of the Lord Jesus Christ or whether we are going to be an in-town association of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, with husbands attached. It becomes a rather simple choice ultimately, whether we are going to try to get away from life or whether we are going to get into it; whether we are going to be involved in life as an instrument, or whether we are going to try to escape from it -- which is precisely what God did not do in Christ.
II.
There is a second thing that the Body tells us: it is that The Body is Visible. Men only hear about Jesus Christ but they see His Body, the Church. That is why the Body is here; that is why the Church is here, acting out its reconciling love. It is visible and tangible. The word is fleshed out by the body. The body is fleshed out for deeds and not just for words.
We need to watch the wooing danger of wordism; we like to talk a lot about how God loves us and how we love God. Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned about "the phraseological concept of the church." Another German pastor who lived through the concentration camps built by the racism of Hitler has a word for us today: "The Christian should not easily verbalize a conviction to which he is not willing to witness with his life." Now the body is visible and tangible. It is there; you can get at it. Words are important, but they are only important if they are spoken in the context of deeds--this is certainly the lesson of the New Testament. When they presented the good news of Jesus Christ, they presented it in terms of deeds and then in terms of words. Peter on the day of Pentecost rose only after the people in Jerusalem said, "What is going on here? What does this mean?", and then he told them about the good news of God in Christ. Peter and John were going into the temple one day and at the gate called "Beautiful" saw a man who was lame from his birth. They took pity on him--pity, concem, interest sponsored by Christ-o, and healed him and then the people said, "What does this mean?" And then and only then did they tell them the good news about God in Jesus Christ. Paul and Silas over in Philippi did not hang onto the Philippian jailer's lapels to tell him about the Lord Jesus. The jailer began to ask, "What is this?" "What is going on here?" "What is happening? When he saw the joy and the courage and the concern of these two men he said, "What must I do to be saved ?" There isn't any evangelistic word apart from the evangelistic deed. That is a truth running through the New Testament; and that is how the body works--it is visible, it is tangible.
The Church in history and the Church today work in the same way. We say, let's tell the people of this neighborhood about Jesus. All right, exactly; how shall we do it? Not just by singing hymns; not just by reading passages of Scripture to them. We don't do that anywhere in the world. We send our missionaries to the far corners of the world and what do they do? Do they only sing hymns, or just read passages of Scripture? No. They go out as modern technicians who can deal with the haunting needs in the communities to which they go. They deal with the hunger, the need for clothing, the need for education, the need for healing. Why is this young man, Dr. Paul Carlson, in Congo today? Is it to sing hymns? No, it is to deal with the diseases of people. It is only as we deal with the practical needs of people that the evangelistic deed takes place and the evangelistic word is ever heard. The hymns have significance, the preached word has its value, but only as it lives in the context of the Body at work -- visibly, tangibly dealing with the problems of its community. It is strange to me that we will give to that kind of practical work over there, so far away, and be scared to death of it when it is just a few blocks from where we live and worship.
The fact is that words can be a part of our deeds, but they can never be a substitute for them. The only effective way to speak is to speak at the right time to the open heart. The trouble with so much of our Christian wording and witness is that we are just talking to ourselves. We tell each other about how much we love everybody. Now when a Body begins to talk to itself its reasonable effectiveness is at an end. We discount a body which just talks to itself. If we are not involved in getting out into situations where the needs are visible and tangible, then it can be asked to what extent are we in fact a part of the Body of Christ. Sometimes, I suspect, preaching is a part of our problem here. It is a problem always for me to preach on the practical mission of the Church because there are two things that usually happen as a result that have dangers about them. The first is that a number of people go out and say that the preacher today did not preach the gospel. That is precisely the point: this is the gospel, and we do not want to admit it because our prejudices stand under the judgment of the gospel. But the second thing that worries me is the number of people who go out and say, "Hurrah, the preacher preached on some thing that is practical." Nothing is done when the preacher stops preaching; only then does the service really begin. Only as you and I go into the silence of our hearts and say, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" only then does the preached Word have its significance and does it bear its fruit.
The significance of the Body is that it must be visible. It is not enough for us simply to discuss the ways and means of being of service in the community. We have discussed it, and we have discussed it and we have discussed it. Finally, of course, we are going to run out of time, We are going to run out of problems, we are going to run out of little petty predicaments that can hold us back, and we are going to have to face the task to be done. No one wants to make mistakes, but we are in danger of discovering that the greatest mistake we have made is not doing something ill-advisedly or wrong, but not doing anything. The greatest mistake would be being certain that we make no mistakes and thus doing nothing."
Sometimes we say that we should pray about it. Now I believe in prayer and I believe in it as deeply as anyone in this room, but I think also we must deal with the answers that God has already given to the prayers that have gone up to Him year in and year out. Men and women of faith have prayed, "Lord, what wilt Thou have us to do?" And He keeps answering by putting opportunities in our path and we keep tripping over them. You know, in this matter of prayer, I am reminded of my little girls. I find they get devout around bedtime. As the night hour comes and they are responsible for going to bed and they know it, they insist that Daddy come and have prayers with them. That is perfectly all right. What they are doing in part is an honest expression of their desire to pray before going to sleep and that is fair and honest. But do you know what else they are doing? I. would be a dull father if I did not know that they are also just buying time. They are just buying time with their prayers. Now that is all right in a child, but in mature adults in the Christian Church it is wrong to buy time with our prayers, to put off the duty we know is there in order to ask God to show us what we ought to do. This is not prayer, this is simply a defense mechanism. We are running out of time; we are going to have to face up to this.
Remember that John, in the passage we read this morning said, "If anyone has :: this world's goods," (He did not say the other world's goods, he did not say hea ven's goods, he said, "This world's goods,"..that's clothing, that's food, that's housing, that's education; that means the practical things of human need-) "If any one has this world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?" I did not say that. You would resent it if I said that. But John said that. If any man sees this world's need, and does not do anything about it, how does the love of God abide in him? Now a man can close his eyes and his ears for so long and then finally he has to recognize that his prejudices mean more to him than the love of God. He has got to abide one place or the other, either in his prejudice or in the love of God who has called him in Christ, The Church can sometimes be taught by the society. around it. Young people today are singing a folk song, a beautiful song that ... speaks precisely to this problem in the church. We have the danger of not seeing, not being aware of what is going on. Apparently, we can walk right through need on the way to church and not see it, or can drive right through need -- having to keep our eyes open in order to drive -- and not be able to see it. The folk song sings about that:
"How many years can a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea? And how many years can some people exist before they are allowed to be free? And how many times can a man turn his head, pretending he just doesn't see? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind."
John said that centuries ago. If a man stands before need and closes his heart to : that, how can the love of God abide in him?
Then we will say that we will be concerned and we will tell people about it. We will tell people of our love. And John answers exactly that problem within us and closes our last escape hatch when he says, "My little children, my little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in deed and in truth." For that is what love is about. Love is visible like the body. Love is not something we simply talk about or think about, it is something we do. *
III.
There is one final thing about the Body: it is that The Body is Alive.
It is a symbol for life; for service and for life, and the more it serves the more it lives. If the Church tries to live by simply sustaining itself and by protecting itself, it will die - just as surely as anything it will die. It is only as it gives its life, as it sacrifices, as it understands the joy of being of service that it comes to life again.
In mission the Church finds its life and its unity. Part of our tragedy, it seems to me, is that some in our church do not see social action as their responsibility and, because their own blind spot does not enable them to see this, they do not want anyone else to see it either. They would kick and scream and be discourteous and ride in order to keep the whole Body from doing what they knew and what everybody knew they were not going to take part in in the first place. The Body is made up of many members, not all eyes, nor all hands, nor all feet; and not all have the same blind spots. If we believe in the freedom of the Spirit, we must know that Christ uses His Body in many ways. He can use some of us to pray and He can use some of us to work. The different parts of the Body become united in service. The Body badly needs to be at work or it shall find that it does not have any harmony at all. If we are standing still in the area of service in order to keep harmony on the surface, then we are paying too high a price for harmony. The Body must be at work or it dies. If what we want in the church is just peace, then we can just quiet everything and lie down and rest. "Rest in peace” could be written over us in that case, which is exactly what men write over a dead body. This is exactly what Mr. Carter was saying to us at the end of the program on Wednesday evening. We are living in a grand and awesome time. It will be a tragedy if in future years we look back and discover that at the time we were alive we were dead.
The Body of Christ finds its life by losing it. This is the way its unity and harmony is established, and the way it grows. In Ephesians we read that all the varied gifts and abilities of God's people are given for" the equipment of the saints, for the work of serving, for building up the body of Christ." (Ephesians 4:12). This is the way that the Body is built up.
I was introduced not too long ago in another city as the pastor of a great church in Washington, D. C. Now I knew better than that, but I did not say anything about it because I liked the way it sounded; it sort of sounded good. I bowed my head in some embarrassment, for I knew that it was not true, and I know it is not true today. We could be a great church. I would like to be the pastor of a great church, and I would like for you to be members of a great church -- not simply great in numbers. I honestly could not care less about numbers. I cared about numbers for about the first two years of my ministry, and then the Lord helped me get over that. The Lord calls us to mission and He brings the benefit, He counts the total. We don't need to worry about that; what we need to do is to : be obedient. I am told that some fear that if we serve the community we are going to lose members of the church. But, you know, that is such a cynical attitude. I do not feel that members of this Church are just members of a club that they could quit at will or would leave simply because it tries to do what it is called to do.
And I do not mean a great church in terms of a building and possessions. Sometimes we get confused about that. You know, I have noticed in the few clubs with which I have some association there is always a great concentration on the clubhouse. But the Church is not a club, the Church is the Body of Christ in mission; it is a Body that lives by giving itself. Last Monday night, Dr. James Appleby of Union Theological Seminary, a friend of this congregation for many years, came and spoke to the joint meeting of our men and women. I had planned to show him our new education building before I took him to catch his plane. I wanted him to see its new lights and its facilities and its comforts because when he was here several years ago it was just a gray mass. But you know, that night he talked to us about the fact that we do not live on a plantation any more, we live in the city. Some of you will remember that he said there are just three things that a church can do when confronted with the challenge of the city. One is that it can escape, the second is that it can ignore the problem--at least for a time, until it dries up. And the third alternative is that it can become involved. I didn't take him to see the building. The building is too clean, the building shows too many signs that we haven't been involved. We need some wounds, some marks of service, We are terribly comfortable,
Yes, I long for you to be a member of a great church, but the only way to greatness in the Church is to be great in service and obedience and faithfulness and witness. Our opportunity is great. I want to challenge you as a member of The Church of the Pilgrims to recognize that you and I have an almost unique opportunity for greatness in the world today. Our very Southern accent is an asset for us, Our location in this crucial city is another. What would happen if a church with a Southern orientation such as ours, born on the roots of the prejudice of the past, could demonstrate in effective and efficient ways that our love for Christ is greater than our prejudice? Do you know what it would do? It would remake in part this city. It would remold in part our whole denomination. It could rejuvenate in part the Church across this nation. And it would have an effect on every mission field around the world, where we are working with three fourths of the world's population who are men of color.
The fact is that we could be a great church, if we would understand and ex perience what it means to be a part of the Body of Christ--an instrument--visibly and tangibly at work and thus alive, but we are scared to death of touching a few little four-year-olds who live on a single block. The Body lives by mission, and if we fail in our mission then we shall stand under the judgment of God who gave us such an opportunity. We cannot pretend that we do not see.
The thing that has caused men to speak of a post-Christian era is not that the Church has suffered so much, but that the Church has suffered so little. The Church has been so comfortable, so quiet, so still--as still as death. For the Church only lives as it serves, and obedience along its way is its way to insight as to what its next step should be. If we are afraid, we are going to fail. If we are faithful, by God's grace, we can fulfill the life to which He has called us here and now as the Body of Christ.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
*This passage of the sermon was inadvertently deleted from the film “The Body.” - Norman Kelley