A Healthy Body
Text: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
In the early nineties, there was an ecological research project which was hailed the next big step in the advancement of humanity. Called Biosphere 2, it was intended to show that humans could live within a completely sealed environment replicating earth’s environment –the “original” Biosphere. While inside, they’d grow their own food, and through plant life, effectively breathe their own air. Part of it was research into the sustainability of long-term space travel. The original project had eight of some of the most brilliant people on earth to come together and live within this massive edifice built near Tucson, Arizona. In addition to agricultural and living areas for its human occupants, the Biosphere 2 building houses tropical rain forest, desert, savannah, and cloud forest ecosystems as well as a coral reef within a miniature ocean.
The hopes for it were idealistic… almost utopian… called a “New Age Eden” by many, the stuff of science fiction films… but it seemed that the science itself was reasonably sound. Except for one small, teeny, tiny factor that absolutely everybody overlooked: human nature.
The eight entered into Biosphere 2 as friends, and everyone had high hopes for it. Yet no sooner did things get underway that things began to go wrong. By the end of their two year stay, they were no longer friends, having broken into two different factions… and even the people in those groups could barely tolerate one another’s presence. The harsh conditions inside the facility were something they prepared for, and yet when push came to shove, it was the inter-personal conflict over petty things that were the greatest threat. Even the most brilliant of people, were still fallible human beings. It is a modern reminder that as idealistic as we might be about how we get along, and how far we have come, there is a darker side to human nature that we can’t ignore.
I think within the church we have this naïve sort of belief that somehow something like what happened in Biosphere 2 could never happen within a community of faith. After all, we are the people of God, we’re above that sort of thing! The painful reality is, of course, much different. The reason that various church governments exist in the way they do is precisely because conflict… human nature… happens. This is nothing new either! We have evidence that in the earliest days of the church of this happening… it’s right in the Bible itself. I think we delude ourselves if we believe that things like that can never happen.
In any of Paul’s dealings with the church in Corinth, it seemed that all he was ever doing was putting out fires of personal conflict, and people breaking up into different factions, threatening to go their own way. I’ve said this before, but reading either of the Corinthian letters should be a lesson of what not to do in church.
The trouble is, we only get part of the discussion. When Paul wrote this first letter, he wasn’t able to go there in person to try and sort things out. From the sounds of it, he had already been there a few times, and this letter was to be a written reminder. From what Paul says we can make some good guesses as to what was going on, and the picture that it paints isn’t pretty. As much as Paul writes from a sense of optimism, hope, and faith, the situation he is addressing seems to be far more petty and trivial… and yet it is serious enough that it threatens to tear apart the Corinthian church.
Ever the diplomat, Paul tries to bring the people together… he never once singles out a single individual, throwing his weight into one side of the conflict or the other. His chief concern is the overall health of the church community, and in much the same way that a physician cares for the patient, it’s the whole thing that matters most. Paul shares his thoughts, using the metaphor of the church as a body of people in Christ… He goes further to describe the church as the body of Christ… He uses a very tangible image to describe one of those intangible things of what it is to be a community of faith.
Last week, we heard Paul’s preamble to this week’s reading. He wrote about how each of us has different gifts within the church. As his argument builds, he associates these gifts with the different parts of the body… something all of us can relate to, because all we need to do is either look in a mirror, or look down.
12For 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. 13For 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.
Paul ties it in… and ties it together. In the midst of the erupting conflicts, Paul uses this metaphor to try and unify a divided people… a church that was coming apart at the seams. He begins to talk about the church as a body… an allegory to help a conflicted people think about their life together.
14Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If 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. 16And 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. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?
This is pretty much common sense… but Paul goes on to drive the point further.
18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many members, yet one body.
The real punch is what Paul says next… because it has an echo of what’s going on in the Corinthian church.
21The 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.” 22On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and 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; 24whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, 25that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
By this time, Paul has used the allegory of a body to talk about the church… but just in case his target audience is too dense to figure out where he is going with this, Paul finally switches gears and makes it absolutely crystal clear:
27Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 28And 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. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31But strive for the greater gifts.
Reading between the lines, it’s obvious that the church was breaking into factions, depending upon what their own personal interests or gifts were. We know from history that the culture in Corinth was one of Spiritual competition, and it seemed that element had taken root even in this fledgling Christian community. Paul was reminding the Corinthians that nobody is expendable, that everyone matters in their community. Everyone has gifts that God has given them to be used in faith, and they all work together for the good of all. Nobody is expendable. Everyone matters. In a healthy body, all the parts work together. It should be that way for the church!
We have to remind ourselves that the Corinthian church was at best only 15-25 years old at this point. As much as we would like to hold these early communities as an ideal, like the Biosphere 2 project, it again reminds us that human nature is still part of the equation. It’s not how “it should be” but helps us to realize that conflict can and does happen. I think we do ourselves a disservice when we presume that the church can do no wrong precisely because it is a church. It’s often at that point that we are capable of doing the most harm.
Even after Paul gives the Corinthian church this written tongue lashing about how they’re all called to work together, he reminds us that we are the body of Christ… He doesn’t say “you should be” he says “you are…” Even with all of their faults and failures, they are… we are still the body of Christ… Maybe it’s a reminder to us to try and set aside all of those petty conflicts… or at very least, when they do happen, to realize that we’re called to something bigger… After all, we have a means and a way to try and reconcile and work together once again. After all, a healthy body, when working together, has the ability to heal… and becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Maybe that’s an image we need to pay more attention to…
You are the body of Christ! That really is good news!
Amen.
In the early nineties, there was an ecological research project which was hailed the next big step in the advancement of humanity. Called Biosphere 2, it was intended to show that humans could live within a completely sealed environment replicating earth’s environment –the “original” Biosphere. While inside, they’d grow their own food, and through plant life, effectively breathe their own air. Part of it was research into the sustainability of long-term space travel. The original project had eight of some of the most brilliant people on earth to come together and live within this massive edifice built near Tucson, Arizona. In addition to agricultural and living areas for its human occupants, the Biosphere 2 building houses tropical rain forest, desert, savannah, and cloud forest ecosystems as well as a coral reef within a miniature ocean.
The hopes for it were idealistic… almost utopian… called a “New Age Eden” by many, the stuff of science fiction films… but it seemed that the science itself was reasonably sound. Except for one small, teeny, tiny factor that absolutely everybody overlooked: human nature.
The eight entered into Biosphere 2 as friends, and everyone had high hopes for it. Yet no sooner did things get underway that things began to go wrong. By the end of their two year stay, they were no longer friends, having broken into two different factions… and even the people in those groups could barely tolerate one another’s presence. The harsh conditions inside the facility were something they prepared for, and yet when push came to shove, it was the inter-personal conflict over petty things that were the greatest threat. Even the most brilliant of people, were still fallible human beings. It is a modern reminder that as idealistic as we might be about how we get along, and how far we have come, there is a darker side to human nature that we can’t ignore.
I think within the church we have this naïve sort of belief that somehow something like what happened in Biosphere 2 could never happen within a community of faith. After all, we are the people of God, we’re above that sort of thing! The painful reality is, of course, much different. The reason that various church governments exist in the way they do is precisely because conflict… human nature… happens. This is nothing new either! We have evidence that in the earliest days of the church of this happening… it’s right in the Bible itself. I think we delude ourselves if we believe that things like that can never happen.
In any of Paul’s dealings with the church in Corinth, it seemed that all he was ever doing was putting out fires of personal conflict, and people breaking up into different factions, threatening to go their own way. I’ve said this before, but reading either of the Corinthian letters should be a lesson of what not to do in church.
The trouble is, we only get part of the discussion. When Paul wrote this first letter, he wasn’t able to go there in person to try and sort things out. From the sounds of it, he had already been there a few times, and this letter was to be a written reminder. From what Paul says we can make some good guesses as to what was going on, and the picture that it paints isn’t pretty. As much as Paul writes from a sense of optimism, hope, and faith, the situation he is addressing seems to be far more petty and trivial… and yet it is serious enough that it threatens to tear apart the Corinthian church.
Ever the diplomat, Paul tries to bring the people together… he never once singles out a single individual, throwing his weight into one side of the conflict or the other. His chief concern is the overall health of the church community, and in much the same way that a physician cares for the patient, it’s the whole thing that matters most. Paul shares his thoughts, using the metaphor of the church as a body of people in Christ… He goes further to describe the church as the body of Christ… He uses a very tangible image to describe one of those intangible things of what it is to be a community of faith.
Last week, we heard Paul’s preamble to this week’s reading. He wrote about how each of us has different gifts within the church. As his argument builds, he associates these gifts with the different parts of the body… something all of us can relate to, because all we need to do is either look in a mirror, or look down.
12For 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. 13For 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.
Paul ties it in… and ties it together. In the midst of the erupting conflicts, Paul uses this metaphor to try and unify a divided people… a church that was coming apart at the seams. He begins to talk about the church as a body… an allegory to help a conflicted people think about their life together.
14Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If 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. 16And 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. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?
This is pretty much common sense… but Paul goes on to drive the point further.
18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many members, yet one body.
The real punch is what Paul says next… because it has an echo of what’s going on in the Corinthian church.
21The 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.” 22On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and 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; 24whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, 25that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
By this time, Paul has used the allegory of a body to talk about the church… but just in case his target audience is too dense to figure out where he is going with this, Paul finally switches gears and makes it absolutely crystal clear:
27Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 28And 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. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31But strive for the greater gifts.
Reading between the lines, it’s obvious that the church was breaking into factions, depending upon what their own personal interests or gifts were. We know from history that the culture in Corinth was one of Spiritual competition, and it seemed that element had taken root even in this fledgling Christian community. Paul was reminding the Corinthians that nobody is expendable, that everyone matters in their community. Everyone has gifts that God has given them to be used in faith, and they all work together for the good of all. Nobody is expendable. Everyone matters. In a healthy body, all the parts work together. It should be that way for the church!
We have to remind ourselves that the Corinthian church was at best only 15-25 years old at this point. As much as we would like to hold these early communities as an ideal, like the Biosphere 2 project, it again reminds us that human nature is still part of the equation. It’s not how “it should be” but helps us to realize that conflict can and does happen. I think we do ourselves a disservice when we presume that the church can do no wrong precisely because it is a church. It’s often at that point that we are capable of doing the most harm.
Even after Paul gives the Corinthian church this written tongue lashing about how they’re all called to work together, he reminds us that we are the body of Christ… He doesn’t say “you should be” he says “you are…” Even with all of their faults and failures, they are… we are still the body of Christ… Maybe it’s a reminder to us to try and set aside all of those petty conflicts… or at very least, when they do happen, to realize that we’re called to something bigger… After all, we have a means and a way to try and reconcile and work together once again. After all, a healthy body, when working together, has the ability to heal… and becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Maybe that’s an image we need to pay more attention to…
You are the body of Christ! That really is good news!
Amen.
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