1 Corinthians 12:12-26 This passage has a lot of meat. In case your French or Spanish are a little rusty, let’s do a quick summary of the main points:
• One body, many parts
• Baptized by one Spirit
• Together as Jews and Greeks, slaves and free
• Can’t discredit ourselves
• Need our diversity
• Each part is important and where it needs to be
• Can’t discredit the other parts
• Those that seem less honorable get special treatment
• Equal concern for one another
• If one part suffers, all parts suffer
• If one part is honored, all parts are honored
There’s so much here, we really could do 3-4 weeks on just this passage. But we’re not going to. Instead, let’s hone in on just a couple of things.
1. The body of Christ, known as the church, is defined by multitude and diversity. We are the body when we are many and when we are different.
2. We are to be valued equally—those who are visible and serving up front and those who are invisible and serve behind the scenes, and those who have yet to step into dedicated service. Each one matters just as much as the other.
3. We are connected—so much so that when one hurts, it should affect the others and when one is lifted up and praised, all should feel elevated with them.
Those things are true, not just in this place, but all over the world. We’re invited to be especially mindful of that today—World Communion Sunday. It reminds us of global sharing, global gathering, the big ol’ body of Christ and it’s 2000 + parts! We are invited to think of brothers and sisters gathering in cathedrals and huts, in small country churches, and big theaters, in restaurants, schools, even bars, in pastures and dirt fields, at rehab centers and in hospital chapels. Some traditional, some charismatic, some modern, some in silence, some filled with singing, some gospel style—all of us—in our own language, in our own ways—the body of Christ.
One body
One Lord
One baptism
One Spirit
One bread
One cup
Many different parts
And we are called to be mindful of each other, aware of the needs of others, so much so that we all hurt when one part hurts. That’s a tall order! Think about if we hurt each time the well was dry, or someone else was diagnosed with HIV, or malaria, or Ebola. What if we hurt when there was no food in the cupboard, or we had walked days just to see a doctor?
These aren’t just issues…these are people…people with stories and names and beautiful faces in the image of God. Paul Jeffrey is a photo journalist and Methodist missionary who has traveled the globe. I have some of the pictures he has taken, as well as a pinch of the story related to these people—so we can truly be mindful of parts of the body. We’ll start with some who are hurting, some whose needs we need to see and understand.
• (Image: children in line): [This picture is from this morning. Paul went to worship in Goma this morning. Because of the Ebola crisis, no one got in without having their temperature checked and washing their hands in a bleach solution. It's a common scene at the entrance to many offices and restaurants.
• (image, woman’s profile in the field) Alefa Soloti weeds her field of sesame in Dickson, a village in southern Malawi that has been hard hit by the climate crisis, with chronic drought leading to food insecurity, especially during the "hunger season," when farmers are waiting for their harvest. As if that wasn’t bad enough, cyclones Idai and Kenneth caused damage and destruction to harvests in the region this year.
• (man with coffee leaf) Juan Lopez Balan, a Kaqchikel (“ka-chi-kul”) Maya coffee farmer, displays a leaf that has been affected by coffee rust in San Martin Jilotepeque, Guatemala. A fungus encouraged by higher temperatures, coffee rust has affected coffee farms throughout the region. Yet another product of the climate crisis, it has helped drive emigration.
• (woman gardening in a hijab) Ali Attan works in her garden in Beit Hanoun, Gaza. Her home and garden were damaged by Israeli rocket fire during the 2014 war, during which she took refuge in a United Nations school. [In the stories of pain, there are also stories of hope and life. For this woman,] When the war ended, International Orthodox Christian Charities helped her rehabilitate her garden and install new irrigation equipment and buy new seeds. She produces tomatoes, onions, eggplant, squash, spinach and other crops, supporting her family of 11 people.
• (woman raking cacao in front of her home) Doris Maria Trillos rakes cacao drying in the sun outside her simple home in Garzal, Colombia. People in this community have struggled for years to stay on their land, despite threats and violence from drug traffickers and paramilitaries.
Celebrations:
• (image: boy with potatoes): Six-year old Paul Peter harvests potatoes in Singbi, a village in South Sudan near the country's border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Once displaced by attacks from the Lord's Resistance Army, the boy's family and their neighbors have returned home and are starting life anew with help from Caritas, which has provided seeds, tools and technical support to the rural farmers. Caritas is also helping mediate a dispute between the community and a large teak plantation that has laid claim to the land.
• (image of women pressing sunflower seeds) Women in Kamina, a town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, work together to extract sunflower oil with a communal press. With help from the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), they formed a coop. They each grow sunflowers in their gardens, then collectively extract and market the oil.
• (image: women with gardening tools): A group of landless women in Bukid, a small village in the southern Philippines province of Leyte. They received tools and seeds from a church agency following Typhoon Haiyan and started joyfully working together in a communal garden.
• (shadowed profile pic of woman with baby on her back) Rhoda Nyoni, her son Moses on her back, waters a community vegetable garden in Kayeleka Banda, Malawi. Nyoni is pregnant, and the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian works with her and other women in the village to insure that they and their children receive proper nutrition and health care.
Our world is broken and hurting.. What would it mean to bear one another’s pain? What if it was more than issues, but was faces and names, and then lives and stories? What if their pain could help us slow down and assess what is wrong and how to help?
We know we can’t drink from the fire hose. It can be hard to slow down and feel the pain because then we often feel powerless in being able to help. We know we can’t cure all the ills at once, but what if we stopped to listen well and see where we could help, even just a little bit, to make a difference in someone’s story. What if we could see who we could feed, who we could encourage, who we could empower?
We can see from these stories we wouldn’t be alone as helpers, there are Presbyterians, and orthodox Christians, and Catholic charities and many more who are offering medicine, medical care, education, seeds for the garden, help for communities. We are able to be the body of Christ together, not just feeling pain, but attending to it, helping it. Offering rest, and sustenance, and clean water to drink. And we can do more when we work at it together.
We are one body, with many parts. And just like our body, it’s a complicated system where sometimes the problem isn’t easy to diagnose and even when it is, the solution isn’t obvious. But some help does help. Right? If something is ailing you, taking care of it generally wards off the next thing that could go wrong, a little can go a long way. And sometimes there are big things that are wildly complex, but the solution is not to ignore it…but to break it down, study it, try possible aids and move forward as best as we can.
Together we are the body of Christ…broken and messy AND able to heal in miraculous and wonderful ways. Able to help each other in ways that give life. Able to be a part of something bigger than ourselves because we work at it together.