I Corinthians 12:12-31a

3 Epiphany / Year C

21 January 2007

The Church of the Good Shepherd

Wareham, Massachusetts

 

Preached by the Rev. David Fredrickson

 

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1 Corinthians 12:27)

 

 

The church has always been a complicated place, a microcosm of the world in which we live. Within the confines of the church universal there is a battle that goes on, not unlike the battle that we all face every day of our lives. No I am not talking about a spiritual battle of good vs. evil; that is way too simplistic and unhelpful in my view. I am talking about life with all its subtlety and complexity.

I still remember the pre-postulancy conference that I went to back in the winter of 1996 in the Diocese of Pennsylvania. It was an overnight conference held once a year where all of those who wanted to be priests in the diocese were interviewed and grilled on every facet of their sense of call and their spiritual life. Like most dioceses if you get turned away at the pre-postulancy conference then you are all done. There are no second chances not even in other dioceses in most cases. “God calls and the church confirms.” This was the mantra we heard all weekend long. Knowing the church as I do, you will have to forgive me if I was just a bit skeptical.

There were nine of us there that particular weekend and I still remember Bishop Bennison’s address to the group that first evening. “As priests in the church, he said, you will know the deepest joy you can experience and be exposed to the most profound evil you have ever known.” At the end of the conference, as we were getting ready to leave, David Anderson, my sponsoring rector came in and apologized for not making it to the conference to be with me. He had just spent the weekend with a family in the church whose healthy five year old son had just died from bacterial meningitis.

After explaining where he had been I still remember what he said to me, “With where I have been these past couple of days, he said, your ordination seems trivial by comparison.” There is no question that he was right and I was truly shocked that he showed up at all, but it was still a hard thing for me to hear. I had spent the previous six years of my life in the ordination process in the Presbyterian Church and had already finished my seminary studies and interviewed with a number of Presbyterian Churches. All the sudden, through a decision that I made, I found myself starting over in a new faith tradition having to go through the same grueling process all over again.

During that weekend we were interviewed over and over again by different people and groups. By the end of the conference only two out of the nine of us were allowed to seek ordination to the priesthood. I still remember the tears and I remember thinking that some of the folks that were rejected would have made great priests. In the grand scheme of life and death, however, my ordination to the priesthood or anyone else’s for that matter, was no doubt a trivial matter, yet I had left everything I knew to pursue what I believed God was calling me to do.

Four years later Bishop Bennison threatened to pull the plug on my ordination and I had to struggle all over again. This confrontation was more about politics, authority, and personality differences then it was about seeking the will of God; not unlike what the pre-postulancy conference was actually all about.

The Church is an institution run by human beings, frail, fallible, sinful human beings. One need only to look at our own Anglican Tradition right now to see the fallible nature of our institution. Our communion is rife with anger, distrust and conflict. The church universal has been that way since the earliest days. Doctrinal disputes, politics, questions of authority, infidelity, it’s all been there right from the beginning.

As I expressed to you last week, the Corinthian Church that the Apostle Paul was writing to was a troubled community. In the words of Methodist Bishop Will Willimon, “…,Paul has a troubled, troublesome church on his hands in first church Corinth. The precise difficulties in Corinth are a matter of speculation. We can infer that there were divisions, disputes, infidelities, and a host of other problems that made this group a candidate as poster child for Paul’s worst congregation. And yet to them, with all their problems, Paul says, ‘Now you are the body of Christ.’” What a striking admission.

Paul's argument begins, as it did in the beginning of this chapter, chapter 12. His focus is on the oneness of the Holy Spirit. “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body…” he says. From there, he argues in favor of the diversity of the body of Christ. “Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many [he says].If 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. And 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.If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as HE chose.If all were a single member, where would the body be?” [Emphasis mine]

From this visual picture of diversity, Paul moves on to argue for the profound interdependence of the members of the body. “As it is, [he says] there are many members, yet one body. The 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. On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable…”Based on this interdependence, Paul asserts finally that the "weaker" and less significant parts of the body are, in fact, "indispensable" and worthy of honor and respect. This, and this alone, he concludes, should help the Corinthian congregation to overcome the dissension, the distrust, the anger, the infidelity in their midst. Since they are profoundly interdependent, they should be able to show the same care for one another, the kind of care that is expressed in mutual suffering and rejoicing in the living of life even with all its subtlety and complexity.

It is on this platform of diversity, interdependence, and mutual respect and care that Paul begins to build his argument toward love as the greatest gift that each member of the church can have and that of course is what chapter 13. We most often hear I Corinthians 13 read at weddings. The ultimate goal is love and that is why we gather into a body, to seek love in community with one another. In spite of our failings as human beings we gather together to seek love from God and one another.

You and I are not god’s and the one God is not finished with us or the church. We are a work in progress, the Kingdom of God is a work in progress. Yet we have been called to come together and strive for the greater gifts, that we might be shown a more excellent way. Sisters and brothers let us strive for the greater gifts, strive to use our diversity of gifts to move us toward love for God and for one another for we are the Body of Christ.

In Jesus Name; Amen.