The following sermon is exploration of I Corinthians 12:12-31a.
I heard a story once that I hope is true. In a room full of violins, when one violin is struck all surrounding violins will sound the same note without being touched. Maybe you are like me and this story gives you hope.
It gives me hope because it tells me what you and I do has an impact on others. It tells me that when people stand up for what they think is right, when people reach out to help others, when people live in a way that gives glory to God, something can happen in the lives of others. It tells me that my ability to affect change, to impact the world and the people who occupy it just by what I do, how I live my life means that we are connected. You, me, our neighbors, our brothers and sisters in Christ all the world around are connected, linked in a way that makes me pause & take seriously the call that I have, the commitments that I live by, the truth that orders my days and carries me through my nights. It makes me consider the gifts that God has given me not for my own benefit but for the building up of the body of Christ. It makes me consider the gifts that God has given you too. Paul understood this better than just about anybody.
Paul writes that together we form the Body of Christ. Like a real body we are diverse in our make up, our utility, our placement in this world, yet we all have gifts, we all have jobs and calls that are required to work in harmony for this body to survive. If I, blessed with talents of hospitality, do not show welcome, then you with your gifts of compassion will be impacted. If you with your gifts of compassion cannot show love and mercy to the world because I did not provide welcome to those who needed it, then like Painter with a broken hand, we cannot be about the task before us. Paul’s complaint against the Corinthian church was that they understood gifts like we understand talents. While we may all be talented in some way, my talent for packing a suitcase cannot even begin to rate against Eric Clapton’s talent for music, or Einstein’s talent for thinking outside the box. The church thought that despite us all being blessed with gifts there were some better gifts and some inferior gifts and who got what was the providence of God. The danger here far surpasses who got the ability to speak in public, compose beautiful music, or something equally wonderful. The danger found in the Corinthian understanding is in the equating worth of gifts with worth of people. Lesser gifts, lesser people; inferior gifts, inferior people leads far away from the Kingdom of God causing Paul to point out that the gifts of those who face hardship are some of the most necessary for the Body. The poor must be our eyes showing us the face of Christ today. The oppressed must be the tips of our fingers, touching the bars that keep them at bay so that we may all know. Those who thirst must be our tongue, dry and cracked yearning for something that quenches. So it is written, “one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” Brothers and sisters, today the Body is suffering. Like bird with a broken wing, because some suffer, we all suffer.
The visuals emerging from Haiti have made it impossible to escape the truth that today and for some time now the Body of Christ is suffering. The Earthquake, the pain, the destruction, the orphans, the widows, the death and the trapped - all of it paint a picture that cannot be denied: though we live many miles away, though we didn’t feel the rumble, or lose our home, we are suffering all the way up here in cold, wintry Ohio because our eyes have seen collapse, our fingers have felt the broken concrete of a fallen nation, and our tongue is parched. We are suffering because our Haitian brothers and sisters are suffering . Yet the truth is that there are members of our body who are suffering in places where there have been no earthquakes or floods. They suffer in places of different disasters. Disasters of Human and Civil Rights, collapses of peace and security, and not unlike hurricanes, floods and earthquakes people will and continue to suffer, lose everything and some will indeed die. For as our scriptures tell us that when part of the body suffers we all suffer. Made one in Christ, connected by the Spirit, when the poor cannot find shelter we all suffer. When young girls are sold into sexual slavery we all suffer. When a partnership is broken because of domestic violence we all suffer. When the love shared between two people is called wrong we all suffer. When the elderly are neglected and the young exploited we all suffer. When the Body neglects the suffering of its members we all suffer. This is the hard work of unity.
On October 17th, 1989 I was at my childhood homes playing outside before the World Series was to begin. Neglecting my chores for too long I was called into the house to unload the dishwasher before the start of the game. Making a snap decision on how to expedite the process I opened up every cabinet we had that housed our dishes, glasses, and the like so that I might speed through the chore and get back outside. At 5:03pm this was a great idea, but one minute later when the 7.0 Earthquake now known as the Loma Prieta Quake hit the plan showed its obvious flaws. For 15 seconds my whole world rolled and rumbled as plates, glasses, and the like rained down upon me breaking over my head, arms and hands. When the shaking stopped & I had the wherewithal to look around at the sea of broken dishes and shake the glass from my hair, I noticed my hand was bleeding. There in the flesh between the thumb and the finger was a small but pretty good cut. It bled some but nothing a wad of paper towels and a little water couldn’t took care of it. My hand was bleeding - it was minor - a bookcase fell over - not a big deal. I thought that was it. It was only then that I turned on the TV and came face to face with the collapsed bridges, the crushed cars, the sink holes, the broken buildings & pain. Trying to wrap my then 11 year old mind around the destruction that I saw unfolding on the TV screen I wondered how my toppled bookcase and small cut could be my shared experience with those who lost everything. How was it that I shared in this experience with those who were trapped on the bridge or buried in buildings when I have only this small scar? Standing there watching TV, struggling with what I was witnessing, I saw men and women, some cut just like me, running not from the rubble but into it. They pulled people from their cars, they helped put out fires, they drove people to the hospital, and when they had no car they carried those far more injured then themselves to a place of safety and care.
20 years later seeing the same events play out in Haiti, I see the injured, the suffering themselves carrying those who cannot walk, liberating those who are trapped, fighting for those who cannot lift their own heads. Seeing these men and women, I am reminded of the story of the friends who carry the paralyzed man to see Jesus. They carried their friend when he could not walk. It is our job to now carry, to support, to liberate those who are trapped, injured and suffering. It is our job to carry the load so that we may rejoice when the whole Body is at peace, free to live into the call set upon our hearts, and free to be the children of God, the Body of Christ unified in the Spirit.
Let us all work to end suffering in our time. AMEN
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