Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
January 24, 2010

Body Language

You’re just a little bit late for the covered dish supper. Not very late. Just a little bit late. You walk into Room 206. The fried chicken is gone, and so are the deviled eggs. All that’s left of the macaroni cheese is a greasy spot in the casserole dish, and there’s nary a crumb left on the shortbread platter. You go into the Westminster Room and discover a Communion service in progress, but not a proper Lord’s Supper conducted decently and in order.

No. This is more like a cross between a frat party and a bacchanal. The preacher is potted. The elders are tipsy. The choir is crocked. In the Lord’s Supper the church is supposed to "discern the body," but there’s little evidence of that in what you’re seeing.

Some are hungry. Some are full. Some are drunk. Welcome to the First Presbyterian Church of Corinth.

I strongly suspect that the phrase "warts and all" was coined to apply to the Corinthian church, that struggling band of Christians living in the middle of the Roman province of Achaia, in one of the most important cities of ancient Greece.

Planted by Paul himself, the church was composed of extremely gifted people who were also extremely quarrelsome and pigheaded. Paul returned to Corinth at least once for what he called a "painful visit," trying to sort out the squabbles that plagued the church, but shortly after he left town, bickering and backbiting returned.

It’s a wonder Paul didn’t give up on the Corinthians. I certainly wouldn’t have blamed him if he had. But he didn’t. He stuck with them, calling them "saints of God" rather than "pains in the neck," and exhorting them to live up to their calling.

As if their behavior in the common meal were not bad enough, the Corinthians were also obsessed with status. Taking their cue from the pagan cults that surrounded them, they seemed to have valued ecstatic experience over almost everything else. Apparently, speaking in tongues brought the most prestige. If you spoke in tongues, you were a first class Christian. If you didn’t, you hardly counted.

I read recently about a visitor to a church (not ours, of course). He walked into the foyer of the sanctuary and the first thing he saw was a gigantic jug of hand sanitizer. Over the jug was a large sign that read, "Please use."

"The message to me was clear," the visitor reported. "You are nothing but a big germ." That’s what it must have felt like to be a non-tongue speaker in Corinth. Worthless. Dangerous. A big germ.

Paul used several approaches to the Corinthians. He exhorted. He appealed. He threatened just a little bit. But most of all, he tried to get the Corinthians to think in a new way about the very nature of the church. They were thinking "top down," from tongue-speakers to tongue interpreters, to healers to teachers, right on down to whoever was at the bottom of the ladder – pastors perhaps, or maybe second sopranos.

Don’t think that way, Paul, admonished. Instead, think of one Holy Spirit who bestows on the church many gifts. "To each is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." (I Cor. 12:7) The gifts are different, but it’s the same Spirit who gives them. Many gifts, one Spirit.

It’s a simple enough concept – to us, anyway -- but to the Corinthians this must have come as a radical paradigm shift. If what Paul is saying is true, then the fellow who owns the big house in the nicest neighborhood of Corinth and speaks loudly in tongues ranks no higher in the church than the servant in that man’s own home who empties out the chamber pots every morning. If Paul is right, women have as much value as men, Gentiles as Jews, slaves as free people.

In fact, Paul says as much in the opening verse of today’s epistle reading: "For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into the one body – Jews or Greeks, salves or free -- and we are all made to drink of one Spirit (12:13)." Baptism is the great equalizer, but its effects are not automatic. Christians must grow into their baptism, and the Corinthians were growing in the all the wrong directions.

Many gifts, one Spirit. That’s one way for the Corinthians to rethink their ecclesiology. In this morning’s passage he comes up with another trope – a metaphor that has stuck with the church more or less ever since the ink dried on the papyrus.

Think of yourselves as a human body, Paul writes. How absurd if the foot were to say, "Because I’m not a hand, I do not belong." And what if the whole body were an eye? How could it hear? He draws the metaphor out as far as he can, asking the Corinthians to imagine a body that is all ears, but can’t smell, and a body that’s at war with itself. The eye says to the hand, "I have no need of you." The head says to the feet, "I have no need of you." You get the picture: chaos.

Paul was not the first ancient writer to use this body metaphor to describe human communities. The body metaphor has a long history in classical literature. But Paul was the first writer to put this particular spin on the image.

Other ancient writers reinforced the idea of hierarchy. The head was in control, and the lowly feet had to follow orders. This is nature’s way of justifying privates in the army and slaves in the household. Those at the bottom of the social ladder should be grateful for the protection and order provided them by their natural superiors.

That way of understanding human organizations is still alive and well, of course. That’s how we justify paying CEO’s multimillion dollar salaries while line workers in the same corporation struggle to make ends meet.

Paul’s use of the body metaphor is different. He suggests that God has arranged the body so that the greater honor is given to the inferior members, and all the members care for one another. "If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it (12:26).

It’s a wonderful image, and it has stuck with the church because it’s true. A church that is living into baptism is indeed like a body. Not necessarily an athletic body, mind you, with six-pack abs and buns of steel. More likely it’s a body a little worse for wear, with a touch of rheumatism in the left elbow and a bum knee that acts up on rainy days. Bodies come in all shapes and sizes and most of them shouldn’t be wearing Speedos to the beach, but it does help to think of the church as a body – to think organically, we would say today.

If we’re going to think that way about the church, we’ll have to give up other metaphors that drive the church today.

Perhaps most important of all, belonging to the body of Christ means participating in the life of the body. Every member of the body has gifts to use for the common good. Every member. If nothing else, your very presence contributes to the vitality of the church, and your absence hurts the body. Membership in the body means more than having your name on the active roll.

Yesterday the elders on the session went out in teams to the homes of people who had signed up to have their homes retrofitted for energy efficiency. I haven’t heard reports from all the teams, but I did hear from one team that visited an older woman whose house certainly needed the compact fluorescent bulbs, the caulking, the low-volume shower heads, and the other goodies the elders were offering to install.

As they were visiting, the elders discovered that that woman’s daughter was one of the very first African-American children to attend the First Presbyterian Preschool in the early 1960’s. That little girl is now 44 years old. Ms. Belinda, of blessed memory, must have been one of her teachers.

Do you know how the first racially integrated preschool in this city began? It began with church ladies going into Frenchtown, knocking on doors and inviting people to bring their children to First Presbyterian to work and play and learn with their own children.

Why? Because those women understood that the body of Christ would be incomplete without those children. Because racial segregation is a scandal to the gospel. Because the church is more than a voluntary institution of like-minded people. Because the church is more than a place of passive entertainment. Because the hand cannot say to the foot, "I have no need of you."

"You are the body of Christ and individually members of him."

Warts and all, bum knee and tennis elbow notwithstanding, you and I are the body of Christ. Thanks be to God.

 

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