Scripture
Manuscript
Today’s reading from Paul is a continuation of the passage we heard last week. So, to catch you up:
We are all given gifts by the Holy Spirit to do the work of the Kingdom of God. To live more justly, to love more fully, to walk more closely with our God. The gifts are different, but the Spirit is the same, the value is the same, the importance to the work of God is the same.
It’s like a body, Paul continues today. A body is not uniform. The DNA in our cells might be (mostly) the same, but each cell is different. There are muscle cells and brain cells and blood cells. There are ecosystems of bacteria on our skin and in our gut.
We have hands and feet and livers and kidneys and eyes and mouths and on and on and on.
No body is the sum of identical parts. Birth requires difference. We spend nine entire months moving from a blob of equivalent cells to a functioning body made of hundreds of systems, all working in concert to create the life that is us.
That is the Body of Christ, too, Paul says. It’s not a body that can function when we compete with one another, when we ask whether a hand is better than a foot, whether we need that eye or that ear.
The Body works when it works together, Paul says. This Body enlivened by the Spirit, given gifts unique to each of our positions in all of spacetime, to do the work of God in this moment, in this place, as this person. This member of the Body of Christ.
It’s something we forget, from time to time.
We like to believe that the Body needs to be more like our own body. That the people in God’s Beloved Community need to think more like us, dress more like us, smell more like us.
It’s easier, right? It’s easier when we all agree. It’s easier when we all feel familiar. It’s easy when it all feels like we are the same.
But it’s boring. And it’s not the Body of Christ.
I’ve been thinking this week about illness, about the ways that bodies hurt and struggle. There are things from outside the body that can harm us—you know, viruses, glass shards, stray Lego bricks.
But then there are the illnesses that come from within.
When a body has an autoimmune condition, for instance, it sees itself as a threat. One part of the body looks at another and says “you don’t belong here, you are foreign, you are unneeded, you are dangerous.” And so it attacks.
Body against body, self against self. The one part sees another as a threat, and tries to rid itself of its own neighbours.
How often we humans do the same.
How often we, too, look down on those who look different, live different, spend different. How often the Church at large has seen entire swaths of people and condemned them as a danger to the Body. It’s no wonder so few people find it safe to walk into a church building these days.
But the truth is, we are all the Body of Christ. And, as Paul says, when one of us hurts, the Body hurts. As the great civil rights leaders have said, none of us is free until all of us are free.
This Body of Christ—it should be a reflection of our own bodies. It is black and white, and every shade in between. Male and female, and every space in between. Tall and short. Thin and wide. Old and young. Gay and straight. Trans and cis. Rich and poor. Citizen and immigrant. Able and disabled. Republican and Democrat. Broken and whole.
On and on—every facet of life is contained in this Body.
It is all of us. Together. Bound to one another by this web of perfect love that we call the Holy Spirit. In other words, it’s not a static cord that connects us.
It’s a living flame, a rushing wind,
a flowing wave, a dancing dove,
arcing and twisting between and among us,
alive and eternal and ever-changing
with the moment,
guiding us always to the will of God
in this time, and this place,
as this Body.
Out love for one another might not always be perfect—might not often be perfect—but the Spirit’s is.
And if we close our eyes, and quiet our hearts, if we can embody our souls, we can almost reach out and touch it, feel it, hold onto it. Let that love of the Spirit flow over our hands and into our minds, fill our hearts and direct our lives. So that we truly may be the Body of Christ.
We are the Body of Christ.
And we belong together.
May it be so.
Amen.