One Body - Together 1/26/25

One Body – Together

Luke 4:14-21; 1 Cor 12:12-31a

Luke 4:14-21

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

1 Cor 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.

Prayer – God of togetherness – as we gather this day, remind us of the more excellent way of living faithfully – by remembering that we are one body – all with different gifts and talents – who come together, unified and working to bring about your holy realm. Help us to utilize those gifts you have offered to each of us that we may bring honor and glory to you – amen.

         We often confuse unity with uniformity, because it is much easier to gather with people who are like ourselves, than it is to reach across the divisions which mark our culture, society and even our churches. Thus, few of our churches reflect the ethnic, social, and economic diversity of the neighborhoods around them. Our congregations are often very homogenous, and we are, sadly, comfortable with that.

Paul insists on something richer. Since the church is intended to be a foretaste of the final reconciliation of all things that God promises, Paul calls the church to start acting that way. Thus, diversity within the church is not a problem to be avoided, solved, or managed, but a gift of God’s grace and a sign of the Spirit at work. The differing gifts of the Spirit form us in such a way that we do, and indeed must, belong to one another.

Paul’s claims throughout our passage this morning is that we, the church, find our foundation in baptism, in belonging to God. In baptism we experience the Spirit of God at work to overcome the divisions which the powers of this world nurture and on which they depend. The Corinthians, perhaps not unlike our current culture, had been competing with one another according to their culturally-defined values. They were using the gifts of the Holy Spirit, meant for the good of the whole community, as their personal arsenal in the competition for honor at the expense of others. However, by pointing to the church’s common experience of God’s grace in baptism, Paul makes clear that we all share the same water, the same promise, the same Spirit, and thus all are equally part of the same body.

It will be helpful for us to ask what, in our context, corresponds to the culturally-divided pairs mentioned in verse 13. Where do we find the human polarities now overcome in baptism, and brought to surprising and profound unity in Christ? Black or white, Asian or Hispanic or First Nation; straight or gay, single or married; citizen or undocumented; rich or poor; young or old. What about the homeless, or the mentally ill? It is unlikely that fights over spiritual gifts will cause trouble in most of our congregations. However, these ethnic, social, and economic distinctions more frequently do. This is where our own struggle for unity within diversity may be focused. Perhaps even more challenging for us is the accompanying diversity in conviction about how the faith is to be lived out. In such disagreement, though, we find ourselves called to recognize that diversity helps us to keep asking what God’s will actually is, rather than trapping ourselves in the same old assumptions. Holy diversity is an important remedy for our tendency toward complacency.

The image of the body as a communal reality is not unique to Paul (though Paul is the only writer in the New Testament to use it). Other writers in the Roman world (especially politicians and philosophers) used the same image. Most often, it was used to support the social hierarchy (whether of the family, or the city, or the empire as a whole). The point was that every body needs a head, and in society that was provided by the wealthy, the rulers, and the elite. Every body needs hands and feet to do the hard and dirty work, and that was provided in society by just about everyone else. Paul, while drawing on the same image, turns the point in a very different direction. The unity of the body does not, in fact, mean that the less honored members get abused and treated roughly; rather, all the parts belong to one another, and therefore the “weak” parts are treated with special care. The end result of the body metaphor in Paul’s hands is not the same old hierarchy, or even the inverse of that culturally-expected pattern of domination with new people placed on the top, but a deep unity of the whole body, with each part cared for by the others.

Yet there is a kind of inversion happening here around the “weak.” The theme of weakness in 1 Corinthians has basic social and economic dimensions. Paul reminds the Corinthians that God has called mainly the weak of the world, i.e., those without status rather than the noble-born and the powerful. Paul has already insisted that such cultural weakness characterized his own ministry because, in a foundational way, it characterized Jesus’ crucifixion. Contrary to most translations, 1 Corinthians 1:25 does not talk about “the weakness of God,” but “the weak thing of God,” which is the cross itself. Thus, the socially and economically “weak” cannot be despised, rejected, or marginalized in the church (or by the church!), because God’s power is in fact at work in what the world sees as weakness.

In the Corinthian church, the “weak” were in fact being despised and shamed by some of the others. Paul calls the church to a better way of life together. Differences within the church are, astonishingly, something that God has arranged. Thus, the diversity within the church community is not something to be tolerated, or regretted, or manipulated for one’s own advantage, but something to be received as the gift that it is.

Paul’s argument implies that not only diversity, but unity in that diversity, is a reality without which the church cannot live.

Whatever strengthens the community of the church is to be sought, welcomed, and nurtured as God’s good gift. Yet it may be worth noticing that the gifts which Paul lists as “first, second, third” all deal with the word spoken to the church in one form or another. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing comes through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). A congregation can probably exist and even thrive without healings or speaking in tongues; but it cannot live without the word of Christ spoken and heard. It is the good news, proclaimed and taught, that will form the church into one body in Christ.

At some point Paul has to “seal the deal” and bring the argument home. In one final appeal he addresses his hearers and us directly. The first word of verse 27 is a big emphatic YOU! (in the plural not the singular to underscore once again this many-membered body). Now here’s the point, Paul says, and it’s all about YOU: “You are the body of Christ, and each one of you is an important member of that body.” But of course, in light the preceding verses, we are meant to hear that this calls us not to some assertion of privileged status, but rather to the recognition of our responsibility for mutual care for the members of this body. That for this whole thing to work, we must understand that we are one body when we are together, working interdependently, rather than for our own glory.

All of this belongs to God’s purpose from the beginning. At this point the church is in a certain sense no way different from the whole of creation. In a series of rhetorical questions, Paul directs attention to a variety of ministry functions, a list that now takes its place alongside the list of the variety of gifts of the Spirit. But now these gifts and ministry functions have been newly interpreted and directed toward the mutual edification of a community, a body of which Christ is also a part, through the mutual care for one another in both the sufferings and the successes of life.

This leads me to make a final comment about being the body of Christ, a church, in our context. Ultimately we are drawn into the body so that God’s love might be known not only by each other but by the whole world. The gifts we are given are for the building up of the whole, that is to say the entire world.

Yet as Christ’s body in the context of our current culture, we are called to reflect on how the gifts we bring to this country, community and world, might be used for the building up of the whole, as a witness to the promise of the reconciliation of all things in Christ. The words of Paul proclaim good news: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” Our life in this body is a gift, what we offer to one another comes to us as gift, and what we offer to the culture and world around us is bigger than who we are because it is the very grace of God revealed in Jesus and through the Spirit that is working in and through us. And just as a reminder, together – anything is possible – thanks be to God – amen.