The Body of Christ 1 Cor 12

I have a confession to make. I have always struggled with the idea of community, let alone Christian community. I think we’ve all shared a bit about our stories up until now, and the week before I head to seminary is as good as any to share mine. I’ve grown up in the same church and I have been surrounded by loving people. But even though we were loving, we weren’t always real with each other. Which confused me. Then some big things happened in our church and a new pastor came in bringing along his family, who tore me emotionally to shreds. They verbally abused me and sexually harassed me and finally one day I left that church and went to another. Eventually I did come back to my home church, after this pastor and his family left, however, it wasn’t without reservations. So all of that is to say that this little experience deeply impacted me. What I thought was my church home and family had become unsafe. And because we weren’t really all that honest with one another about our pain, I wasn’t able to tell anyone about how I was abused. My entire perception of community and relationships had been shattered and I retreated into a shell, avoiding getting close to anyone.
Of course a few people did get close, here and there. But I still didn’t understand community. To me it seemed more like an ideal instead of a reality. I have this really amazing friend in my life who I have grown close to over the past two and a half years. We share a lot of intimate thing with one another, but I still wasn’t able to call us a community. Not until I re-examined 1 Cor 12. Verses 21-26 describe what community is to a T. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need for you’. On the contrary, the members of the body seem that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members we treat with great respect, whereas the more respectable members don’t need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior members., that there may be no dissension amongst the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one members suffers, all suffer together, and if one member is honored, all rejoice with it.” We have been raised in a culture that tells us to be independent, self-sufficient, and non-emotional. And brothers and sisters, this is such a lie. And it’s why we have such a hard time getting our minds wrapped around this idea of community.
We cannot fathom community because we refuse to think that we need others. We’ve been told that we need to achieve everything on our own and claw our way to the top, not acknowledging the costs. But here Paul is telling us that we have no right to say to anyone that we don’t need them. No! We need one another to support each other, to help each other out. Here’s the thing, God put this huge task in front of the Church, to go and make disciples of all of the nations baptizing them in the name of the Triune God. I’m sorry, but you can’t do that alone. You need others to accomplish this. We need to work off of the generations before us and trust the generations after us to work towards the great commission, while fully being the body of Christ now with our brothers and sisters, depending upon one another.
Can I tell you one of the greatest tragedies of the church. Not sharing what we are going through with one another. Can you please explain to me how we are supposed to live out verse 26 about rejoicing and suffering together, if everyone keeps everything to themselves! We are depriving the body! You may be having a really rough day right now. Maybe you just got a diagnosis that you want to keep to yourself. But if you don’t share it how can anyone come beside you and encourage you, pray for you, be your family? Or maybe you just had a baby and are feeling completely overwhelmed! Why not ask for help from one of the wise mothers in the body? The reason we reject sharing our trials and joys is because it requires honesty and humility. The author Lauren Winner wrote in her book Real Sex, "Community doesn't come about simply by having hard, intimate conversations. Having hard, intimate conversations is part of what is possible when people are already opening up their day-to-day lives.". We need to start sharing our day to day lives! Doing life together like a true family! And this may mean asking each other the tough questions. Calling each other out on sins. One of the beauties of community is being able to know someone well enough to challenge them out of sin or complacency and into growth.
And when we share our day to day lives we see each other’s needs and can reach out and meet them. I volunteer at a women’s shelter, and a few months of go, one of our ladies gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. The mother didn’t have any family or husband to support her. In fact, the dad wasn’t even in the picture. And she didn’t have anything but a few outfits for the baby. So I decided to throw her a baby shower. People from the church, none of whom knew this women, donated so much stuff that they were able to help two women! And sadly everyone was shocked by this. Brothers and sisters, we exist as a body, to also support one another! So why aren’t we! Why do we let needs slip by as we live in our own little shell of the world?
Another reason we don’t really understand what it means to be the body of Christ, is because we don’t know where we exactly fit. Being part of a body means that we know ourselves enough to be able to give of ourselves. Have you ever really noticed that giving of yourself is really hard if you don’t know who you are? Even worse, when you don’t know who you are, you easily become jealous of other people. You find yourself wanting the gift or talent that another person has instead of rejoicing in your own gift and sharing it with others. Paul uses this obtuse image of the entire body being an eye or an ear. I don’t know about you, but if I saw a giant eye or ear, I would be pretty freaked out. Yet for some reason, we try to live in this balance between being independent and being just like everyone else. How does that work? Oh that’s right, it doesn’t. God has created you to be unique, but to fit perfectly with everyone else. To be your own bright color in the rainbow. Or to be your own puzzle piece that fits with everyone else to make the picture complete. If you were meant to be a center piece of the puzzle and you desire to become a corner, you aren’t going to fit into the puzzle anymore. What a tragedy this identity crisis that we are going through is!
And the list of dangers of not knowing where we fit grows. I don’t know how many of you have came from a traditional church background, but the church I grew up in was quite large and a lot of volunteers were needed to make everything work. Which is fine. What is not fine, is that the same people always fill the positions even if they aren’t within their gifting because no one would step up and help. There are two huge errors here. First, these people are stealing the opportunity from someone else to live out their gifting. And second, its okay if no one fills the position right away because maybe that will put the pressure on the people who have the gifting in that area to step it up. Our spiritual gifts don’t exist for ourselves, they exist for the greater good of the body.
Obviously we have a long way to go as the church at large to become a body, the family, the intimate community of the body of Christ. But we are slowly but surely getting there. It has been such an inspiration for me to watch you build this alter week after week listing your gifts and talents, what a testament to becoming the body of Christ and a willingness to use your gifts for others. I’ve also have been blessed with a thought that I’ve had since the start of Soul Café, that we are few but we are a family. We truly have become family. We have prayed together. Cried together. Rejoiced together. May we never loose that!
To close I want to share with you a prayer that my friend, prayed for us here at Soul Café,
"Jesus, they may be few and they may be faithful, but if must be you who makes them into a family. Make them into your body; the image and the vision and the actors (and actresses!) of your love in the world. Holy Spirit, be the love flowing through them to all they meet, and be the love that binds them together and draws them to You. And Father, be the one to whom they give all that they do, the one to whom they aim and to whom they strive in everything, their hope and their joy."
Amen.