Third Sunday after Epiphany 1/24/10 Text: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 Title: Welcome to the Body.
Third Sunday after Epiphany
1/24/10
Text: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
Title: Welcome to the body.
Ever since Advent, the Sunday after Thanksgiving the Gospel lessons have been showing us that Jesus is the promised Messiah. We started with the angel telling Mary that she was going to be the mother of the Messiah. Then John leapt in Elizabeth’s womb fulfilling the prophecy of him knowing the Messiah even before he was born. Then the angels proclaimed to the shepherds that Jesus was the Messiah, after which the shepherds told everyone they knew that Jesus was the Messiah. Then we heard Simeon tell Mary and everyone within hearing distance that he was holding the Messiah when Mary and Joseph presented him at the temple. We heard the Magi proclaim him to be the Messiah. We heard Jesus, as a young boy, say he had to be about his father’s business. In other words he said he is the Messiah. Then God the Father at Jesus’ baptism declared him to be the Messiah when he said, “This is my son with whom I am well pleased.” Last week Jesus proclaimed to all, through his act of turning water into wine, the best of the best wine, that he is the Messiah. And this week in our Gospel we hear him say after he read the Isaiah text, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In saying that short sentence Jesus told the people gathered there that day that what the Prophet Isaiah spoke some 700 years earlier was talking about him. Jesus is the Messiah. And since we are united to him through our baptism into his death and resurrection we are the body of Christ on earth.
And since we are part of the body of Christ the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we all possess are not our gifts for us to use as we see fit, but belong to the body of believers for the use of the congregation. What that means is that when you are not using your gifts given to you for the good of the congregation you are hindering the body and thus the work of God in the congregation.
There is an old fable close to two thousand years old that is attributed to King Agrippa. It is told that he once quieted a troublesome Roman forum by telling them that there was once a body whose members charged the stomach with being lazy because it allowed itself to be nourished by other parts of the body. Some of the parts were so upset about the stomach acting that way that they rebelled. The hands refused to raise food to the mouth, the mouth refused to accept food, the teeth refused to chew it. They figured that that would bring the stomach in line. It would show the stomach who is the boss. Of course the result was that the entire body became emaciated and enfeebled. It was too late for the body before the hands, mouth, and teeth saw their mistake. The body died and they died with it.
We are the body of Christ; each one of us is a part of the body. That is what Paul in our Epistle reading is telling us when he compares the body of Christ to the human body with all of its wonderful parts. Paul is not trying to teach a biology lesson here, but a spiritual lesson that affects how we as Christians are to live our lives especially within the local congregation. Whether we believe it or not according to God’s Word we need each other.
I don’t believe that I need to go into great detail as to the analogy that Paul is using. It is natural for a foot to be a foot or a heart to be heart. You can train it thus improving and strengthen it, but you cannot change it from its purpose, for a foot can never become a heart or a brain, or a hand an eye. They are what they are and that is just the way it is according to God’s grand design. And when they don’t work properly all the body suffers. Just stub your toe and you will know what I mean.
What Paul is after here is that the body is not one member but many parts making up the one body. We who make up this congregation and are individually gifted by the Holy Spirit with gifts that are for the common good of the congregation must ever keep this great fact in mind. And by doing this we will avoid many of the problems that exist in so many congregations. The body, that is this congregation, is not one member but many. And the many form the one body in Christ.
While there are many areas in a congregation that can cause problems in the congregation I want to address two: They are envy and prideful disdain. Envy comes into play when another person or group of people seems more favored than I am. Disdain comes into play when there are those whose gifts and whose positions in the congregation seem to be much below mine.
As an example of this Paul lets the eye and the head speak. Because the eye is able to reach out to great distances in its sight it is the member which may scorn the hand which is able to grasp only nearby objects. Because the head is placed so high it is the member that may look down with disdain on the feet plodding away down in the dust. Those who are endowed with greater and higher gifts may thus foolishly think that they do not need those who have lesser gifts.
Paul wants us to know that because each of us are important to the body for it to function properly we should conduct ourselves as if another member who is also part of the body is of equal value even though they might not be equal to us in our sight. We must remember and rejoice that each member of the body has been given a specific function to perform in the body and since God, that is the Holy Spirit, is the one giving the gift, as he sees fit, to be used for the good of the congregation we dare not look down on anyone or become prideful.
Paul teaches in Romans and 1 Corinthians that the strong, honorable, healthy members of the body of Christ do not glory over those that are weak, less honorable, and sick as if they were their masters and gods; but on the contrary they are to serve them the more, forgetting their own honor, health, and power. In fact according to the analogy that Paul uses the weaker, the sicker, the less honorable a member is, the more the other members serve it. That is just the opposite of the world’s way of thinking, but why would it not be the opposite of the world’s thinking, for God through Christ turned the upside down world right side up.
To consider oneself, with each of our personalities and gifts to be one body does not come easily because of our inclination toward individualism. We strain against the idea of being a part of a larger whole. The atheist wants to be the lone definer of the universe. The fundamentalist wants to be the lone definer of the body. Those who want to be in power, to exert power over the body, want to be the lone definers of the course the body is to take.
We rejoice in our own lonely freedom. We shrink with horror at the prospect of giving up any of our freedom even if it is for the common good of the body, but that is exactly what God wants us to do, not for ourselves but for the body of believers because we are not our own, but Christ’s.
He died so that you can be part of the body, or it might be better to say, with the big game tonight, part of the team. And being part of the body or team, if you prefer you have been given spiritual gifts to use, so that we can do what God has given us to do. There are still opportunities to help. Just look at the table and see how you can use your gifts, the gifts God has given to you for the good of the body. Amen.
1/24/10
Text: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
Title: Welcome to the body.
Ever since Advent, the Sunday after Thanksgiving the Gospel lessons have been showing us that Jesus is the promised Messiah. We started with the angel telling Mary that she was going to be the mother of the Messiah. Then John leapt in Elizabeth’s womb fulfilling the prophecy of him knowing the Messiah even before he was born. Then the angels proclaimed to the shepherds that Jesus was the Messiah, after which the shepherds told everyone they knew that Jesus was the Messiah. Then we heard Simeon tell Mary and everyone within hearing distance that he was holding the Messiah when Mary and Joseph presented him at the temple. We heard the Magi proclaim him to be the Messiah. We heard Jesus, as a young boy, say he had to be about his father’s business. In other words he said he is the Messiah. Then God the Father at Jesus’ baptism declared him to be the Messiah when he said, “This is my son with whom I am well pleased.” Last week Jesus proclaimed to all, through his act of turning water into wine, the best of the best wine, that he is the Messiah. And this week in our Gospel we hear him say after he read the Isaiah text, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In saying that short sentence Jesus told the people gathered there that day that what the Prophet Isaiah spoke some 700 years earlier was talking about him. Jesus is the Messiah. And since we are united to him through our baptism into his death and resurrection we are the body of Christ on earth.
And since we are part of the body of Christ the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we all possess are not our gifts for us to use as we see fit, but belong to the body of believers for the use of the congregation. What that means is that when you are not using your gifts given to you for the good of the congregation you are hindering the body and thus the work of God in the congregation.
There is an old fable close to two thousand years old that is attributed to King Agrippa. It is told that he once quieted a troublesome Roman forum by telling them that there was once a body whose members charged the stomach with being lazy because it allowed itself to be nourished by other parts of the body. Some of the parts were so upset about the stomach acting that way that they rebelled. The hands refused to raise food to the mouth, the mouth refused to accept food, the teeth refused to chew it. They figured that that would bring the stomach in line. It would show the stomach who is the boss. Of course the result was that the entire body became emaciated and enfeebled. It was too late for the body before the hands, mouth, and teeth saw their mistake. The body died and they died with it.
We are the body of Christ; each one of us is a part of the body. That is what Paul in our Epistle reading is telling us when he compares the body of Christ to the human body with all of its wonderful parts. Paul is not trying to teach a biology lesson here, but a spiritual lesson that affects how we as Christians are to live our lives especially within the local congregation. Whether we believe it or not according to God’s Word we need each other.
I don’t believe that I need to go into great detail as to the analogy that Paul is using. It is natural for a foot to be a foot or a heart to be heart. You can train it thus improving and strengthen it, but you cannot change it from its purpose, for a foot can never become a heart or a brain, or a hand an eye. They are what they are and that is just the way it is according to God’s grand design. And when they don’t work properly all the body suffers. Just stub your toe and you will know what I mean.
What Paul is after here is that the body is not one member but many parts making up the one body. We who make up this congregation and are individually gifted by the Holy Spirit with gifts that are for the common good of the congregation must ever keep this great fact in mind. And by doing this we will avoid many of the problems that exist in so many congregations. The body, that is this congregation, is not one member but many. And the many form the one body in Christ.
While there are many areas in a congregation that can cause problems in the congregation I want to address two: They are envy and prideful disdain. Envy comes into play when another person or group of people seems more favored than I am. Disdain comes into play when there are those whose gifts and whose positions in the congregation seem to be much below mine.
As an example of this Paul lets the eye and the head speak. Because the eye is able to reach out to great distances in its sight it is the member which may scorn the hand which is able to grasp only nearby objects. Because the head is placed so high it is the member that may look down with disdain on the feet plodding away down in the dust. Those who are endowed with greater and higher gifts may thus foolishly think that they do not need those who have lesser gifts.
Paul wants us to know that because each of us are important to the body for it to function properly we should conduct ourselves as if another member who is also part of the body is of equal value even though they might not be equal to us in our sight. We must remember and rejoice that each member of the body has been given a specific function to perform in the body and since God, that is the Holy Spirit, is the one giving the gift, as he sees fit, to be used for the good of the congregation we dare not look down on anyone or become prideful.
Paul teaches in Romans and 1 Corinthians that the strong, honorable, healthy members of the body of Christ do not glory over those that are weak, less honorable, and sick as if they were their masters and gods; but on the contrary they are to serve them the more, forgetting their own honor, health, and power. In fact according to the analogy that Paul uses the weaker, the sicker, the less honorable a member is, the more the other members serve it. That is just the opposite of the world’s way of thinking, but why would it not be the opposite of the world’s thinking, for God through Christ turned the upside down world right side up.
To consider oneself, with each of our personalities and gifts to be one body does not come easily because of our inclination toward individualism. We strain against the idea of being a part of a larger whole. The atheist wants to be the lone definer of the universe. The fundamentalist wants to be the lone definer of the body. Those who want to be in power, to exert power over the body, want to be the lone definers of the course the body is to take.
We rejoice in our own lonely freedom. We shrink with horror at the prospect of giving up any of our freedom even if it is for the common good of the body, but that is exactly what God wants us to do, not for ourselves but for the body of believers because we are not our own, but Christ’s.
He died so that you can be part of the body, or it might be better to say, with the big game tonight, part of the team. And being part of the body or team, if you prefer you have been given spiritual gifts to use, so that we can do what God has given us to do. There are still opportunities to help. Just look at the table and see how you can use your gifts, the gifts God has given to you for the good of the body. Amen.
posted by Pastor Rhoads | 3:07 PM
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