1 Corinthians 12:12-26
12 For 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. 13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
14 Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15 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. 16 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. 17 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? 18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 21 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.” 22 On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 24 whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, 25 that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
12 For 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.
Sometimes God gets our attention by putting the same message in front of us in many different circumstances. This week, God has been tossing today’s text into my path over and over again. It seems as though I need to devote some prayer time to this.
St. Paul’s delightful way of explaining that dissensions in the Body of Christ are as futile as dissensions within our own bodies has always intrigued me. It’s perfectly obvious to all of us that an eye, or a hand, or an ear, cannot leave the body. We chuckle at the absurdity of it and then go off to torment each other at a committee meeting. How can we be so obtuse?
A friend of mine recently saw one of those Olan Mills church directory pictures that puts tiny portraits of the congregation’s members together to form a picture of Jesus. She was captivated by the image and remarked that it made her completely aware that we are all The Body of Christ together.
Maybe God needs to tether us together with some sort of elastic bands for awhile to make us understand, but we probably wouldn’t understand that either. We’d just spend our time trying to figure out how to strengthen our bonds with people we like and sever our bonds with “those people”. Sorry, my pessimism got the better of me there.
Here’s the point. Nothing in this world happens in a vacuum. The things that I say and do have a real effect on the lives of others. When we choose not to acknowledge that basic reality, we feel entitled to take what we want without counting the cost, doing violence to the whole Body in the process. Jesus offers a better way.
Prayer: Lord, make us instruments of your peace. AMEN