1 Co 12:12-31

21 January 2001

 

"We Have to Want It"

 

Last week, the focus of my sermon was the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  I mentioned that, though they are diverse, they all come from the same Spirit, the same Lord and God.  I also said that they are to be used for the common good.  One major reason for this leads us into this week's epistle reading, which deals with Paul's description of the church as the body of Christ.

Though we are many, we are one.  We, as members of Christ's church, are like parts of the body.  In the ancient world, this idea of the human body was often used to describe how all of us are bound together, but not everyone took it to the level that the apostle Paul does.  For Paul, reminding the Corinthian believers that they’re part of the body of Christ is more than a statement of fact—it’s also a statement of obligation.  He not only tells them who and what they are, but also how they should be.

And it all starts with baptism.  Verse 13:  “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.”  Baptism not only tells them who and what they are, but also how they should be.  It not only transforms the individuals, but also the community of the baptized.  We just can’t seem to get away from this idea that baptism changes everything—or at least, it should!

But then, Paul is a bit of a radical.  He shows this with his next words, when he says just who is included in this one body:  “Jews or Greeks, slaves or free.”  It’s hard for us to understand just how revolutionary—how countercultural—this statement is for the people of Paul’s day.  Almost one hundred years ago, two Anglican ministers, Archibald Robertson and Alfred Plummer, wrote about this very thing.  “The racial difference between Jew and Greek was a fundamental distinction made by nature; the social difference between slave and [free] was a fundamental distinction made by custom and law.”[1]  These are deeply ingrained ideas.  Paul is really going against the current.

According to the apostle, “both differences were to be done away, when those who were thus separated became members of Christ.”[2]  In the court of popular opinion, Paul would be guilty of defying the natural order of things.  For Paul, however, being baptized into Christ means a wholesale re-evaluation of what the culture assumes to be true.  (I wonder what such a re-evaluation of our culture’s most basic assumptions would yield?)

Yesterday, George W. Bush became the 43rd president of the United States.  I don’t have to tell you how deeply divided our country has been about an election in which the winner received fewer votes than did his major opponent.  This division sets the stage for a lot of different camps becoming even more contentious than they’ve been in the past.  I’m afraid Mr. Bush's slogan, “I'm a uniter, not a divider,” will be put to a severe test.

I hate to use the American political environment as a description for the church, but it seems especially appropriate for what Paul’s talking about.  Let me put it this way:  I find it interesting that, in verses 15 and 16, he chooses to give the parts of the body a voice.  The foot complains, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body.”  The ear laments, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body.”  And in verse 21, we have the eye and the head telling the hand and the feet, respectively, with a note of disgust, “I have no need of you”!  Why not just say that they're all part of the body?  Why go to the point of letting us listen in on this imaginary conversation?

I wonder if it doesn’t in some way indicate our own denial—our own refusal to associate with others.  By giving voice to the parts of a body that are trying to deny that they belong together, Paul shows how absurd we are when we do the same thing.  We become like the various political factions who refuse to work together for the common good.

In many ways, our own Presbyterian Church is like that.  We find ourselves faced with issues that produce competing groups, groups that do their best to distance themselves from each other.  Still, as chaotic as we often seem to each other, we need to bear in mind verse 18 of our scripture text:  "But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose."  We fit together in ways we can't imagine.

Even though we don’t know precisely how we, as members of the body, all fit together, it’s clear that we need everyone.  As Paul says, “If all were a single member, where would the body be?” (v. 19).  Whenever anyone excuses him- or herself from the fellowship of the church, we’re all the poorer for it.  The body is missing a member, a member with gifts and abilities, and at the same time, a member with pains and struggles.  They too help form the bond of love that can endure all things.

Likewise, that member, cut off from the body, suffers.  That person goes without the support, as well as the hassles, of the body of Christ.  He or she does not receive “a hundredfold,” as Jesus puts it in Mark’s gospel, of “houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life” (10:30).  Such a person misses playing on the greatest team that has ever existed, being part of the greatest movement that has ever been—the church of Jesus Christ.  Considering the worldwide reach of the family that is the church, Jesus' use of the word "hundredfold" is an extreme under-exaggeration.

After discussing members that we assign greater and lesser honor, Paul makes the point that when "one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it" (v. 26).  Robertson and Plummer remind us, "The Christian principle is the law of sympathy.  The interests of all individuals, of all classes, and of all nations are really identical, although we are seldom able...to see that this is so:  but we must try to believe it.  The benefit of one is the benefit of every one; and a wrong done to one is a wrong done to every one.”[3]