29 July 2005

Chapter 12 of Corinthians has us remember what a gifted and diverse people we are in the church.

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. ...If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. (1 Cor. 12:12-15, 19-20)

Yes, we could have included the piece about the eye...or the ear...but Paul makes this point so well in many different ways that his argument is dramatic and thorough. Again and again, we hear of Jews and Greeks and slaves and free because the world was seen in just such a divided state. And yet, with this undeniable set of natural divisions, all drink of one Spirit. That Spirit is what makes the many and the various and the opposites and the enemies - one body: the body of Christ. For as much as we have heard Paul and others use this picture of the church, it is as though we only consider its call for oneness when the differences are simply the "gifts" we can use in the church. In that way, we can completely ignore any call for justice among us. When we use this passage merely as another to talk in a stewardship campaign about talents, we fall so short of its power to heal within the life of the church. As Paul will eventually say, there is this love that is the greatest of powers...the greatest of gifts given to those who are followers of Jesus. Within the life of the church, nothing can separate us from one another...nothing can rule one better or more worthy than another...nothing can designated us a full member or a lesser member. This is not a cute passage. It is meant to turn our heads because we see in ourselves how we can so easily think less of others or exclude others because we have a notion that the way we live and how we live and who we are is the way most everyone else should be. The church demands that we remain a culture of sheer diversity that the world cannot understand nor will it ever accept. When we can honor that refreshing gift of the Spirit, we may find among us a very powerful and beautiful community of saints.

Connection: Sentimentality in the church can be like a disease that slowly put the body to sleep and then to death. Cute pictures of the community do us no good. As one people within the church, we are given the opportunity to be people working with our differences and against our natural inclination to be self-absorbed. But look around...we usually use our differences an biases to separate from one another in a community that is to seek reconciliation rather than division.

Lord be the power of our lives that heals us so that within the life of the church we can be witnesses to that amazing grace that binds us together even when we are dead set on rejecting others or keeping to our own kind and our own ways. Amen.