Vital & Connected
Beloved, good morning. I am grateful to have spent a week vacationing in a place that was warm and wonderful, and I give thanks for this place to come back to. Please don’t take that lightly – the church world has been a hard place for those called to ministry this past few years, especially in The United Methodist Church. But I give thanks to God for the opportunity to serve with you right here at 6810 Montrose as we evolve as a place of belonging. There are amazing things happening here, thanks be to God.
A place to belong...that continues to be our focus for the next few Sundays. What does it mean for us as Faith Church to act in ways that shape us as a place where people know that they belong?
A couple of weeks ago, I specifically mentioned that scripture outlines what belonging looks like in descriptions of the early Christian community, the church before it was known as that, as Christ’s body. On that Sunday, we looked at the book of Acts, at the way the gathered shared from what it had so that no one was in need.
Today, in our reading from 1 Corinthians, Paul is using the metaphor of a body to describe how the church community exists and functions.
I have to confess, Paul was not my favorite when I started reading scripture in earnest 20 years ago – complicated sentences, strange rhetorical devices… but the more time I spend in Christian community, the more I appreciate his letters to the earliest churches.
These letters are not edicts about how you and I are personally to behave so much as they are guidelines for how we share life, how we work together, how we are called to weather the complicated work of being a community focused on Jesus.
Living together as the church is different from living together as a neighborhood association, as a PTA, even as a family.
Living together as the church is difficult.
And maybe that is an understatement. We are called as the church to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world. That means living differently, apart from but still in the world. This is the hard message of many of Paul’s writings.
In the 1 Corinthians passage, Paul talks about how it is we come together as disparate parts to make one living body – a body with the purpose of representing Christ.
A body is a complicated system. And the more we know through science, the more complicated and amazing the body becomes. Where are my doctors? My biologists? Can I get an amen?
Today’s reading follows some teaching about spiritual gifts. Paul specifically describes a wide range of gifts granted by the Spirit – faith, healing, wisdom, miracles, prophecy, discernment, tongues, and interpretation.
Paul goes on to declare that our primary belonging is to the body of Christ – not to an ethnic group or a social class or a professional association.
Nope, we are all part of the same system when we commit ourselves to the life of the church.
And let’s be honest. In a society that prides itself on rugged individualism, this idea of being just one part of a body is radical and hard.
A system is defined by Oxford Language as “a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network.” Merriam Webster defines it as “a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole.” That state of interconnection and interdependence is vital to our understanding of the church as a body.
That state of interconnection and interdependence is vital to our functioning as the church. And each of us plays a different part. Each part we play is vital.
Our differences make us uniquely suited for the roles we are called to…the church as the body of Christ needs our gifts and we need the body of Christ. We also need the gifts of those seeking community with us. All gifts belong.
Paul warns us that there are no weaker or indispensable parts. There are no parts that are less respectable. All parts belong.
All parts belong.
All parts belong.
So, when we commit ourselves to the church, to the body of Christ, as part of our decision to follow Jesus, we commit ourselves to honoring and recognizing the value of all parts of the body. AND we commit ourselves to employing our Spirit granted gifts to the work of being the hands and feet of Christ in the world. We commit to belonging in interdependent relationship, with others, for this purpose.
I wonder, how often have you read about something happening at the church and thought to yourself – I have nothing to offer to this work?
Or, maybe in a different direction, you are knee deep in an effort here at church and someone suggests another person to help with the work, and in your mind, you think – what can that person possibly have to offer this work?
Now…
I’m sure you have never thought either of those things. I surely haven’t. Ha.
Paul suggests that it is the job of the strong parts to raise up the weak parts. It is the job of the respected member to raise up the disrespected member. It is the job of the honored member to honor the inferior member.
Our work is to accept that all are vital. All need to be in connection.
Let’s put this to the test within the metaphor of the body.
Let’s talk about toes. Gnarly little digits. Inclined to be misshapen, calloused.
Have you ever broken a toe?
It makes it very hard to walk. For quite a while.
But it turns out that those toes are vital to our balance. And our balance is vital to our walking and standing.
Paul goes on in his first letter to the church at Corinth to talk about LOVE in just the next chapter – you know…love that is patient, kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love that does not insist on its own way. And while that passage is often used at weddings, the real context for Paul’s writing it is right here in the community of believers that is seeking to be interconnected and interdependent.
It is as if Paul knew that this work of staying in connection, staying focused on doing the work together, will require all of that patient, kind, flexible, accepting, inclusive love.
That is much the work of being a place to belong.
Remembering our connectedness. Honoring it. Seeking it.
Remembering that each one is vital. Seeking to affirm the vitality of each part.
We have work to do.
We need one another to do that work.
You belong. We belong. Others belong.
May it be so.
Amen.
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