May the words of
my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God,
for you are our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
Throughout Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, you can see that the community at Corinth was characterized by rivalry; obsession with status and superior wisdom leading to arrogance; disregard for the less spiritually enlightened and gifted, as well as for the economic have-nots; sexual immorality; and assertiveness with regard to individual rights.[1] Paul had to deal with this reality and, using his correspondence, he does everything possible to refocus the community to the gospel. This morning, we have been given one of Paul’s most famous analogies that he uses to do the work of refocusing the Corinthian community.
Let’s consider our own bodies for a moment. The average human body has 206 bones, 639 muscles, and about 6 pounds of skin, along with ligaments, cartilage, veins, arteries, blood, fat, and more. Every time we hear a sound; every time we take a step; every time we take a breath, hundreds of different parts work together so that what we experience is a single movement, our minds and bodies working one unit. That is why the human body is one of the most powerful images for the church offered in scripture.[2]
The body analogy was a common figure of speech during Paul’s time and in this passage, he lays out a pretty straight-forward extrapolation of what the body is about:
- Each
body part has its own function
- All
parts are of the same body
- No
function is more important than another. All work together as a part of
the whole.
- Division
of labor is not a class-system or hierarchy.
- No one can be everything.
Paul is using the body analogy to stress the diversity, interdependence, and importance of all members of the community, who together form one body. Paul’s lesson to the Corinthians is clear, the human body can’t be a body without the diversity of parts, nor can the body of Christ function without each distinct believer. God doesn’t differentiate between members as there can be no division because the body relies on interdependence of its parts for its functioning. The body of Christ must be unified in order to serve God to its fullest. If there is division or discord, the whole body suffers.
Let me be clear here, though, that we are talking about unity, not uniformity. 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. To be uniform, means to be the same – look the same, act the same, believe the same. Whereas unity is the totality of related parts, a combination of parts that promotes an undivided total effect. Unity can happen even when people don’t look the same, act the same, or believe the same. Rather than expecting everyone to be like us, we ought to celebrate the differences graciously provided by the Spirit, the God who called us all together. It is unity, not uniformity, that we seek as members of the Body of Christ.
Being a member of the body of Christ means an absolute, out-and-out conjoining of one with the other. To exist in division, to see only difference and not the unity we are able to profess because of Christ, to demand conformity without celebration of difference, is to entertain the notion of dismemberment. We will find ourselves cut off from the very source of our life, our existence, and in a way, our ability to be most fully who we are.
Last Tuesday, The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Wahington, delivered a powerful sermon about unity. She stated that “for unity as a people and a nation, not for agreement, political or otherwise, but for the kind of unity that fosters community across diversity and division, a unity that serves the common good.” She also said that “unity, in this sense, is a threshold requirement for people to live in freedom and together in a free society” and that “unity is a way of being with one another, that it encompasses and respects our differences, that it teaches us to hold multiple perspectives and life experiences as valid and worthy of respect, that enables us in our communities and in the halls of power to genuinely care for one another, even when we disagree.”
That was just the beginning of a very powerful sermon. I truly recommend that you go find it on YouTube and watch it, if you haven’t already. She made many gospel statements in her sermon, but her call to unity is the same as Paul’s call to unity to the Corinthians. Both Bishop Budde and Paul call us to work together in all of our diversity to build up the kingdom of God. It is the essence of who we are as the church – the body of Christ and individually members of it. In Christ, the church is a unified body, a unity that is present and possible because of the death and resurrection of Christ.
Going back to Bishop Budde’s sermon, she declared that there are three foundations of unity that can be drawn from scripture. The first is “honoring the inherent dignity of every human being, which is the birthright of all people as children of God.” This means refusing to mock, demonize, or discount those with whom we differ, but instead be respectful of differences and work towards finding common ground.
The second is honesty. Without honesty, our actions work against our words, creating a false sense of unity. We should always endeavour to speak the truth, even in difficult times.
The third foundation of unity that Bishop Budde mentions is humility. She says, “we are all fallible human beings. We make mistakes. We say and do things that we later regret. We have our blind spots and our biases, and perhaps we are most dangerous to ourselves and others when we are persuaded, without a doubt, that we are absolutely right, and someone else is absolutely wrong, Because then we are just a few steps from labeling ourselves as the good people versus the bad people, and the truth is that we're all people. We're both capable of good and bad.”
Diversity in the church is not a problem to be solved, but a gift of God’s grace. And just as the human body needs all of its different parts to function as a whole, the Body of Christ needs a diversity of gifts, unified to function for the common good.
Let
us pray.
O
God of unity and not uniformity, help us to discover and use our varied gifts
for the building up of your kingdom. As we call again and again for unity in
Christ, may we know the abundant grace and forgiveness only you can give. Amen.
[1] Pascuzzi, Maria A. "The
Letters to the Corinthians." New Collegeville Bible Commentary: New
Testament, edited by Daniel Durken, Collegeville, MN, Order of Saint
Benedict, 2009, p. 479.
[2] Bartlett, David L., and Barbara
Brown Taylor, editors. Feasting on the Word. Year C ed., vol. 1,
Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2013, p. 279.
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