The Living Body of Christ
Text: 1 Corinthians 12:1-31
If any of you have been out to see the latest Indiana Jones film, there’s an off chance that you might have seen a rather odd commercial that plays just ahead of the film. It’s very new, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve not see it yet… but bear with me. It was an ad for a particular type of soft drink. It was odd, because the set-up for the commercial is a pair of disembodied tongues with legs and Australian accents enjoying (they think) a bottle of Coke. Their fun is spoiled when a disembodied eye walks up to them and informs them with a Spanish Accent that they are drinking “Coke Zero.” The tongues then call the eye a “liar” and then insult him about the eye’s inability to taste. It’s popular enough that four different commercials have found their way onto YouTube.[1]
I have to say they’re awfully strange… funny, but strange… and most of you are probably wondering why on earth I would be talking about this. For me the first thing that actually came to mind when I saw this very surreal commercial was Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians talking about the different parts of the body as a metaphor for the Church of Christ…
The part of the passage that came to mind
“Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot were to 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 were to 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?” -1 Corinthians 12:14-17
The image that this conjures up is not unlike what is visibly portrayed in that rather surreal commercial… especially to someone like me who has an overly active imagination… Paul may well have been going for a comedic effect that might have been lost in translation… but the upshot of this whole thing is that all parts of the body have a specific and unique role. By virtue of function, they cannot possibly be the same thing, because all of these individual parts of the body work together for the greater whole.
Paul creates his own surreal image of different body parts hopelessly shuffling around, trying to do their own thing, and failing miserably. He then lifts it up that whole mental image and layers it on to the church as a whole. Now if a whole bunch of body parts are off trying to do their own thing and it looks ridiculous, then how silly is it for us as a church?? Paul was getting frustrated by the inability of the Corinthian church to work together, because people started openly proclaiming that they were somehow better than others… or than there were some who didn’t feel that they could contribute because it wasn’t something flashy or high profile.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Paul goes to great lengths to show that everybody has a role to play in the church of Christ. Nobody is expendable, nobody is worthless… AND nobody is any more deserving of recognition than anybody else… because everyone is part of the living body of Christ.
Paul’s reminder is still true today, if not more so. We are not a bunch of individuals that are completely separate from the people around us. Look at the people beside you. They are your brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. Even today as we ordained new people into the role of Elders to serve on the Session of this congregation, we are still together a part of the living body of Christ. Through our election process you, as the people of this congregation, have recognized that they have certain gifts and abilities that will help the Session fulfill their role. Wonderful… but that doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t have a role to play. Paul goes out of his way to remind the Corinthian church about that, and with that benefit of experience we don’t have to make the same mistake. All the parts of the body have different roles, but work together to form a greater whole.
The Good News is that nobody is expendable. Together, today, we celebrate that. We come to the table as equals. All of us are fallible human beings who are in need of God’s grace and love. We come together as the living body of Christ, and around this table God reminds us that we come as equals. Each of us come with a diversity of gifts that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts… nobody is disposable.
I think each of us has moments where we may feel worthless, or ignored… and each of us also is tempted to put others down as way to make ourselves feel more important. Because of this table, because of what God did for us in Jesus Christ we don’t have to do that anymore. All of us are equals around this table, social status, money, power, all of that means nothing when we come here… In fact, if anything, this table shows us how vain and shallow all that stuff is. Jesus values each and every one of us for who we are… and the least that we can do is to realize that all of us are part of the living Body of Christ.
Amen.
Youtube Links:
[1] http://youtube.com/watch?v=M2bXDegq_hM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L6wh-Ufvro&NR=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFNKS172tmI&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OSBUfNBeJk
If any of you have been out to see the latest Indiana Jones film, there’s an off chance that you might have seen a rather odd commercial that plays just ahead of the film. It’s very new, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve not see it yet… but bear with me. It was an ad for a particular type of soft drink. It was odd, because the set-up for the commercial is a pair of disembodied tongues with legs and Australian accents enjoying (they think) a bottle of Coke. Their fun is spoiled when a disembodied eye walks up to them and informs them with a Spanish Accent that they are drinking “Coke Zero.” The tongues then call the eye a “liar” and then insult him about the eye’s inability to taste. It’s popular enough that four different commercials have found their way onto YouTube.[1]
I have to say they’re awfully strange… funny, but strange… and most of you are probably wondering why on earth I would be talking about this. For me the first thing that actually came to mind when I saw this very surreal commercial was Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians talking about the different parts of the body as a metaphor for the Church of Christ…
The part of the passage that came to mind
“Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot were to 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 were to 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?” -1 Corinthians 12:14-17
The image that this conjures up is not unlike what is visibly portrayed in that rather surreal commercial… especially to someone like me who has an overly active imagination… Paul may well have been going for a comedic effect that might have been lost in translation… but the upshot of this whole thing is that all parts of the body have a specific and unique role. By virtue of function, they cannot possibly be the same thing, because all of these individual parts of the body work together for the greater whole.
Paul creates his own surreal image of different body parts hopelessly shuffling around, trying to do their own thing, and failing miserably. He then lifts it up that whole mental image and layers it on to the church as a whole. Now if a whole bunch of body parts are off trying to do their own thing and it looks ridiculous, then how silly is it for us as a church?? Paul was getting frustrated by the inability of the Corinthian church to work together, because people started openly proclaiming that they were somehow better than others… or than there were some who didn’t feel that they could contribute because it wasn’t something flashy or high profile.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Paul goes to great lengths to show that everybody has a role to play in the church of Christ. Nobody is expendable, nobody is worthless… AND nobody is any more deserving of recognition than anybody else… because everyone is part of the living body of Christ.
Paul’s reminder is still true today, if not more so. We are not a bunch of individuals that are completely separate from the people around us. Look at the people beside you. They are your brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. Even today as we ordained new people into the role of Elders to serve on the Session of this congregation, we are still together a part of the living body of Christ. Through our election process you, as the people of this congregation, have recognized that they have certain gifts and abilities that will help the Session fulfill their role. Wonderful… but that doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t have a role to play. Paul goes out of his way to remind the Corinthian church about that, and with that benefit of experience we don’t have to make the same mistake. All the parts of the body have different roles, but work together to form a greater whole.
The Good News is that nobody is expendable. Together, today, we celebrate that. We come to the table as equals. All of us are fallible human beings who are in need of God’s grace and love. We come together as the living body of Christ, and around this table God reminds us that we come as equals. Each of us come with a diversity of gifts that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts… nobody is disposable.
I think each of us has moments where we may feel worthless, or ignored… and each of us also is tempted to put others down as way to make ourselves feel more important. Because of this table, because of what God did for us in Jesus Christ we don’t have to do that anymore. All of us are equals around this table, social status, money, power, all of that means nothing when we come here… In fact, if anything, this table shows us how vain and shallow all that stuff is. Jesus values each and every one of us for who we are… and the least that we can do is to realize that all of us are part of the living Body of Christ.
Amen.
Youtube Links:
[1] http://youtube.com/watch?v=M2bXDegq_hM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L6wh-Ufvro&NR=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFNKS172tmI&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OSBUfNBeJk
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