If We Are the Body
Psalm 24:4-12 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
January 20, 2013
First Presbyterian Church of Jesup
A few weeks ago I broke my new vacuum cleaner. Well not quite broke it entirely, as much as I just rendered it unusable. With a living room full of pine needles from a now absent Christmas tree, I called the Hoover help center. The woman on the phone walked me through the trouble-shooting steps. With her guidance I affirmed that yes, it was plugged in, and yes, it was getting power, and yes, the brush was spinning, but still it would not actually pick things up. Then she talked me through taking apart the hoses and using a broom handle to clear out the hose, which was indeed filled with pine needles. I felt triumphant and useful, but still the vacuum would not work.
So I took the vacuum cleaner to a repair shop and after the technician went through some of the same steps I had taken, discovered that while I had indeed cleared out the hose of pine needles, in doing so the grip of the broom handle had become lodged in the hose, letting through just enough air to make a different sort of noise, but not enough to actually vacuum. I paid him the requisite “user error” repair fee and went about my day.
Since I posted a message on Facebook requesting help in finding a repair place, I received a string of comments about how things weren’t made like they used to be, a vacuum cleaner joke, and some advice on what to do. When I posted that it was now fixed, a friend of mine wrote a declaration: “You may now visit your minister. She will have a clean house!”
As I looked at the pine needles still on my floor and my vacuum cleaner in the corner I thought about this comment: “She will have a clean house!” As someone who can sometimes have a quick wit, and other times thinks about calculated responses and intentional word choices, my brain mulled over this one for a while. “She will have a clean house!”
Since I did not in fact have a clean house, this made me think: having the ability to have a clean house is not the same thing as actually cleaning a house.
Which then, being a theologically minded person, made me think about the many ways in our world where capacity and realization stand in stark contrast. There are many who are homeless and many who live in mansions. There are many who go hungry and many who have far more food than they could ever eat. How do we bridge these gaps?
In our New Testament lesson today we heard a Biblical message of our interconnectivity and our capacity for action.
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…26If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
We are equipped for ministry, but when we do not fully live into being the body, we will not have a “clean house.” God’s Kingdom will not be fully realized. Christ’s body will no longer be living and breathing and moving about in this world.
In order to move forward we must first acknowledge our capacity for action, our gifts for service. This passage in 1 Corinthians has always challenged me to think about what part of the body that is the church I might be at any given moment. When I really feel like I have it all together, I feel that I just may be the brain, leading the other parts of the church body in the way they should go, reacting to the pain felt by any given part, and making decisions to move things forward. Other times, I feel like I might be the hand, doing the work of the church in the world, reaching out, planting, building. And sometimes, perhaps I’m simply a fingernail, providing some support, some comfort, but largely going unnoticed. As this scripture passage tells us, each and every part of the body of the church is important, not in and of itself, but in the way we all work together as a functioning whole.
So what part do you think you may be? Are you gifted with the ability to speak God’s word, a word of truth, a word of encouragement? Are you gifted with the ability to fix things with your hands, to create new things, play an instruments? I know that many of you in this congregation have arms that extend God’s love through hugs of fellowship and compassion.
You are not going to be gifted in the same way the person next to you is gifted. You are not the same part of the body as everyone else. You are called to be your own individual, uniquely gifted self. Your task is to recognize how you are gifted, and serve God from the place of joyful capability.
Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
You are gifted as your very own self, in your very own body, and called to live out Christ’s body through your own. You may not be called to climb a tree, you may not be called to swim, but you are called to serve God. You are still very gifted, very whole, and very useful to God’s kingdom.
Ephesians 4:8 says that Christ gave gifts to his people… In verse 11-12 it continues saying: “11The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, 12to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” In verse 16, “16from Christ the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”
When we each are “working properly,” we are able to go forward, to grow as a community, to grow the Church universal. Notice, each working properly, does not mean each working the same. We each have different gifts and take different roles. When we use these gifts to work together towards a communal vision of service to God, we become “the body” of the church.
Once we have discovered this place of ability, this unique strength we are called, as members of the body of Christ, to use that ability for God’s Kingdom.
In a few minutes we will sing Casting Crowns’ “If We Are the Body,” but for now I would like to lift up to you a poem with a similar message that was written around 400 years before, by St. Teresa of Avila called “Christ Has No Body”:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
God was once incarnate on this earth, born by his mother, Mary lived within the skin of a human, sweat, cried, healed, and built. But when Christ died, he transcended human embodiment. He created a path for eternal life and left an example for how to compassionately lead and serve others. Christ lived within human skin so that we might experience God in human terms. In doing so, Christ showed us how to be incarnate in Christ’s body. How we might serve this world as the body of Christ.
Presbyterian theologian, Frederick Buechner wrote, “Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It’s the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too. ”
In closing I will share with you a video clip from a beautiful movie that came out last year, “Hugo.” If you haven’t seen this yet, you’re missing out. This is a beautifully crafted film with complex characters and a very original plot. The book, “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” by Brian Selznick, is also very worth a read, particularly because though it is about 500 pages, most of them are pictures. The story follows Hugo, a young orphan who spends his time maintaining the clocks at a train station in Paris, and is searching for his place in the world.
“I’d imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with exact amount they need. So I figured if the entire world was one big machine… I couldn’t be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here some reason, too.”
Know that Christ has placed a call on your life, and gifted you with unique function and purpose. You are not an extra part, you are here for a reason and God is ever longing to reveal that purpose to you in the service of God’s Kingdom. May we live into the fullness of God’s creative power in our lives so that all may experience the love of Christ. Amen.
Presbydestrian 