January 20, 2019
First Presbyterian Church, Sterling IL
Christina Berry
This text we consider today from 1 Corinthians is not new to most of us. These verses are used often in services of ordination and installation, and we study them together as a church seeking to live together in unity.
The Apostle Paul is writing to the church at Corinth, which he founded, and which had been torn apart by arguments and competing loyalties. He uses the metaphor of the body to illustrate to the church that we are interdependent, that we literally cannot live without each other.
In this body – the body of Christ – there are different parts, and every single part of the body is indispensable, every part is needed for the body to function. Each of us has gifts to exercise on behalf of the church, and each one of us is a part of the body of Christ. Let’s listen for God’s word to us in 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.
For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—
Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.
If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,”
that would not make it any less a part of the body.
And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,”
that would not make it any less a part of the body.
If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?
If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?
But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.
If all were a single member, where would the body be?
As it is, there are many members, yet one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,”
nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”
On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect;
whereas our more respectable members do not need this.
But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another.
If one member suffers, all suffer together with it;
if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
And God has appointed in the church first apostles,
second prophets, third teachers;
then deeds of power, then gifts of healing,
forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues.
Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles?
Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?
But strive for the greater gifts.
And I will show you a still more excellent way.
God’s word for God’s people.
Thanks be to God.
I was thinking about this text all week and remembered a long ago conversation with a colleague about it. We were imagining the children’s sermon scenario:
The pastor, clueless about children’s cognitive development, thinks that they can make the connection between the actual human body and the metaphorical body of Christ.
The pastor says, “We need all the parts of our body!”
And one child asks “What about the appendix? We live without those.”
And another says, “We can live with no spleen. And just one kidney.”
And a third says, “And we can manage without our distal phalanges.”
The pastor gives the kid a blank stare.
The kid stares back. “Distal phalanges.
The bones at the tips of our fingers and toes. Duh.”
And the pastor says, “Uh….Okay kids, let’s have a prayer.”
Really, think about the appendix.
What does it do?
If we are lucky, our appendix doesn’t do a darned thing.
If we are lucky, it just sits there, not pretty, but not bothering anybody, like a piece of old chewing gum stuck in the abdominal cavity. Unfortunately, this useless little thingummy can flare up and if it doesn’t get removed, it can rupture and kill us.
Makes it pretty easy to say to the appendix, “I have no need of you.”
That’s the trouble with poetic language.
We’ve said the church is the body, and all the parts are important.
But then there’s the appendix, and who might that be?
If you hang around the church very long,
pretty soon you’re going to run into an appendix.
Then you start wondering who is the spleen, and what if it’s me?
What if it’s me that the body can do without?
It’s a painful thing to admit that we have this disunity in congregations.
Thom Rainer, a church consultant, knows about this pain and its source.
He writes about causes of disunity in Christ’s body.
He talks about secrecy, gossip, power, bullies and selfishness.[1]
It’s not uncommon – in fact it’s more common than not.
Fortunately, while we, like every congregation have our issues, ours is not disunity.
But every person is different, and every congregation is different, in their gifts, their strengths and their failings. Every group of humans eventually has some disagreement or differences among themselves. Every relationship has its tough spots. Think of it like a marriage, and in our case, it’s lasted 175 years.
The crucial difference for the church, for Christians, Paul says,
is that we are each one a part of the body,
so this is a relationship we can’t get out of!
We are interdependent, diverse, and stuck with each other.
In the local congregation, then, we celebrate our diverse gifts,
and we learn to live together in Jesus Christ.
But we are so fractured and fragmented in the larger Christian world!
Martin Luther King called it out more than fifty years ago-
In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. King addressed that disunity.
He wrote in response to a group of white clergymen
who had written an open letter called “A Call to Unity.”
The eight white clergymen were urging patience and forbearance;
they believed that King should back away from his efforts.
They were persuaded that the best course of action was through the courts,
not through non-violent resistance and peaceful marches.
King replied with prophetic power:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,
tied in a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly…
Anyone who lives inside the United States
can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."[2]
Dr. King expressed his disappointment in the silence of white Christians:
“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” [3] Dr. King understood that the body of Christ extended beyond the local church. He called on white clergy to join him in his work. Interestingly, two of the clergymen who signed that letter to King ended up losing their pulpits, pressured out by segregationists.
Sadly, Sunday morning is still today the most segregated hour of the week.
We are segregated not only by race, but by creed and class and culture.
This is a sin and a failure of our Christianity.
Racism, xenophobia, homophobia, discrimination and prejudice of every sort are sins,
and they are injuries to the body of Christ.
In the divine view of the world, there is one church – not many.
One body.
Here at First Presbyterian, and across Sterling and Rock Falls, we are pretty ecumenical. We’re connected with other churches and we work together well. But there are pastors and churches who are not connected. Sometimes this is intentional – they simply prefer not to associate with us. Other times, pastors may want to engage with others in the work of justice and inclusion, but are afraid to risk doing so. Unlike our congregation, some do not support their pastor in justice work. One young pastor writes,
"when we do speak, all the systems around us
will use all the tools at their disposal to try and silence us.
They’ll withhold their giving.
They’ll leave the church.
They’ll say you aren’t being pastoral.
They’ll call the bishop.
They’ll say you’re supposed to just hunker down and focus on them.[4]
I have begun to believe that this is based on a basic failure to understand Christianity as the body of Christ. It has occurred to me that we think we are joined together as Christ’s body because we chose to come together. What we often fail to grasp is that we are joined together as Christ’s body because Christ put us together.
Whether we know it or not.
Whether we like it or not.
We are part of one another.
Even quantum physics demonstrates that we are connected to one another
in ways that are beyond our understanding.
There is a phenomenon known as “quantum entanglement.”
MIT physicist David Kaiser says “Somehow what happens to one particle
can have an impact on what we would expect the second one to do,
even if those particles are nowhere near each other.”[5]
"If one member suffers, all suffer together with it;
if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”
This body of Christ, us, and every other Christian in the world,
is God’s creation, and our welcome of others
is the welcome of those who already belong to God.
We don’t create the body of Christ by being nice or smart,
or by concentrating on defining orthodox doctrine.
The body is knit together in Christ, and we don’t get to define it,
or decide which member is better or worse
or welcome or unwelcome.
We simply are members of the body.
It turns out that even though you can get along without your appendix,
you are more prone to problems without it.
That seemingly useless appendix plays a role in immunity,
providing good bacteria and protecting us from bad bacteria. [6]
So we can’t even say to the appendix, “I have no need of you!”
We are one body, connected inextricably and purposefully.
We belong to God and to each other.
As Bonhoeffer puts it, “We have one another only through Christ,
but through Christ we do have one another, wholly, for eternity.”
Look around you, at the faces around you.
This is the body of Christ:
the hands that open the mail and wipe down the kitchen ;
the feet that run to the front for the children’s time
the voices that sing the anthem each Sunday
and speak to the shut-in on the phone and make committee reports;
the eyes that shine when a child is baptized
and weep when we lose a brother or sister in Christ;
the hearts that swell when we sing and pray together
and move us to reach out to the least of God’s children.
We are all a part of the body of Christ in the world, each with a job to do.:
One body. One Lord. And we can’t live without each other.
Amen.
[1] https://thomrainer.com/2015/05/fourteen-key-reasons-for-the-breakdown-of-church-unity/
[2] https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
[3] ibid
[4] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/clintschnekloth/2019/01/the-silence-and-silencing-of-the-clergy/
[5] https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-07-25/love-quantum-physics-and-entanglement
[6] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/84937.php
Here at First Presbyterian, and across Sterling and Rock Falls, we are pretty ecumenical. We’re connected with other churches and we work together well. But there are pastors and churches who are not connected. Sometimes this is intentional – they simply prefer not to associate with us. Other times, pastors may want to engage with others in the work of justice and inclusion, but are afraid to risk doing so. Unlike our congregation, some do not support their pastor in justice work. One young pastor writes,
"when we do speak, all the systems around us
will use all the tools at their disposal to try and silence us.
They’ll withhold their giving.
They’ll leave the church.
They’ll say you aren’t being pastoral.
They’ll call the bishop.
They’ll say you’re supposed to just hunker down and focus on them.[4]
I have begun to believe that this is based on a basic failure to understand Christianity as the body of Christ. It has occurred to me that we think we are joined together as Christ’s body because we chose to come together. What we often fail to grasp is that we are joined together as Christ’s body because Christ put us together.
Whether we know it or not.
Whether we like it or not.
We are part of one another.
Even quantum physics demonstrates that we are connected to one another
in ways that are beyond our understanding.
There is a phenomenon known as “quantum entanglement.”
MIT physicist David Kaiser says “Somehow what happens to one particle
can have an impact on what we would expect the second one to do,
even if those particles are nowhere near each other.”[5]
"If one member suffers, all suffer together with it;
if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”
This body of Christ, us, and every other Christian in the world,
is God’s creation, and our welcome of others
is the welcome of those who already belong to God.
We don’t create the body of Christ by being nice or smart,
or by concentrating on defining orthodox doctrine.
The body is knit together in Christ, and we don’t get to define it,
or decide which member is better or worse
or welcome or unwelcome.
We simply are members of the body.
It turns out that even though you can get along without your appendix,
you are more prone to problems without it.
That seemingly useless appendix plays a role in immunity,
providing good bacteria and protecting us from bad bacteria. [6]
So we can’t even say to the appendix, “I have no need of you!”
We are one body, connected inextricably and purposefully.
We belong to God and to each other.
As Bonhoeffer puts it, “We have one another only through Christ,
but through Christ we do have one another, wholly, for eternity.”
Look around you, at the faces around you.
This is the body of Christ:
the hands that open the mail and wipe down the kitchen ;
the feet that run to the front for the children’s time
the voices that sing the anthem each Sunday
and speak to the shut-in on the phone and make committee reports;
the eyes that shine when a child is baptized
and weep when we lose a brother or sister in Christ;
the hearts that swell when we sing and pray together
and move us to reach out to the least of God’s children.
We are all a part of the body of Christ in the world, each with a job to do.:
One body. One Lord. And we can’t live without each other.
Amen.
[1] https://thomrainer.com/2015/05/fourteen-key-reasons-for-the-breakdown-of-church-unity/
[2] https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
[3] ibid
[4] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/clintschnekloth/2019/01/the-silence-and-silencing-of-the-clergy/
[5] https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-07-25/love-quantum-physics-and-entanglement
[6] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/84937.php
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