In the time when Paul was setting up these early Christian churches, including the one in Corinth, there was a common rhetorical image of a group of people being a single body. But it was always used to make it clear who was the head. Like, “we’re all one body and the Emperor is the one in charge. The army is one strong arm and the senate is the other.” And somewhere in that image was the idea that while the group was one body, there were definitely parts that were less important or we’d be better off without.
In some ways we still use that image. We say someone is the head of household or the head of a corporation. And we talk about something being at the tail end of an event, as if it were the least important bit. But everyone who has damaged their shoulder or replaced a knee or stubbed their toe knows that when some part of our body is hurting, it doesn’t matter how clever and strong the brain is. Don’t talk to me when I’ve bitten my cheek by mistake. I can’t hear you.
So by taking this image that says there is a hierarchy in the body and you definitely want to be the head not the earlobe, Paul was already shaking people up. He did something really unexpected with it and said that you need every part of the body to do the hokey pokey because the whole body is what it’s all about. And that’s a faithful reading of what he was saying. But there’s more to it.
In this passage Paul talks about God creating human beings, the kind of creating that happened in Genesis 1 and 2, where God starts with dirt and ends up with Adam and Eve. But Paul uses the same language to point out that God was also creating when God created the church as the body of the Messiah. The resurrection distills that moment of creation, like the image from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel when God’s about to touch Adam’s finger. Something wholly new was coming into the world, created solely by God and only God was capable of creating such a thing.
Humanity would never create a group of people where everyone is valued. The Corinthians were a church that were constantly bickering about everything. None of them was ever going to accept that everyone had a gift and that all gifts were valuable. The only gift that was really valuable was whatever they had, they were going to make everyone else in the church miserable until everyone else acknowledged that.
Paul was telling them, it certainly feels like Paul had to be really blunt and direct with the church at Corinth, that they were missing the new thing God was creating. There is no hierarchy of gifts where everyone wants to be the head and no one wants to be the left incisor. But right at the end, Paul says strive for the greater gifts. Which certainly seems to undermine his argument that there isn’t a hierarchy. We’ll see more of Paul’s argument next week, when he talks about love being the greatest gift, but for this week, think about the Annual Meeting of the Brookline Community Church that’s coming up.
We do all have gifts and we do try to bring them together. And we do try to support other people when they use their gifts to do something we can’t do. I can cook, but I can’t cook 120 meals in one go and Megan just laughs and rolls up her sleeves. I can’t read music, and every week Yifan sends a chocolate box of gorgeous treats for me to pick from. There was a problem with the elevator door and not only did Peter send an email saying it was fixed, but he sent an explanation with photos of the circuit board explaining what had gone wrong. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to look at a circuit board let alone repair it. So we all have gifts, and we all respect that. We might do a little better in some areas. We can all shovel the doorways of the church and not leave all the shoveling to Susan and Russell, but we can work on that.
What we have an opportunity to do today is commit ourselves to the work of exploring what new thing God is creating through the Brookline Community Church. The Vision Team has been working on that since roughly Easter of last year and we have some insights to share and some requests for further assistance. We will need everyone’s gifts and support for everyone’s gifts and we’ll need to take care of each other in a way that is not what humans normally do with each other, even in families.
Because that is part of the promise of today’s passage. God is still creating. God is still bringing new things into the world in the wake of the resurrection of the Messiah. And all those new things will shake us up and shake us loose from some of the old ideas we got stuck in our heads. Like that our heads were the most important. When what we needed to focus on is that we can improve the way we all work together, to forgive ourselves and welcome others and share the love we experience because we are a part of this new body
In some ways we still use that image. We say someone is the head of household or the head of a corporation. And we talk about something being at the tail end of an event, as if it were the least important bit. But everyone who has damaged their shoulder or replaced a knee or stubbed their toe knows that when some part of our body is hurting, it doesn’t matter how clever and strong the brain is. Don’t talk to me when I’ve bitten my cheek by mistake. I can’t hear you.
So by taking this image that says there is a hierarchy in the body and you definitely want to be the head not the earlobe, Paul was already shaking people up. He did something really unexpected with it and said that you need every part of the body to do the hokey pokey because the whole body is what it’s all about. And that’s a faithful reading of what he was saying. But there’s more to it.
In this passage Paul talks about God creating human beings, the kind of creating that happened in Genesis 1 and 2, where God starts with dirt and ends up with Adam and Eve. But Paul uses the same language to point out that God was also creating when God created the church as the body of the Messiah. The resurrection distills that moment of creation, like the image from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel when God’s about to touch Adam’s finger. Something wholly new was coming into the world, created solely by God and only God was capable of creating such a thing.
Humanity would never create a group of people where everyone is valued. The Corinthians were a church that were constantly bickering about everything. None of them was ever going to accept that everyone had a gift and that all gifts were valuable. The only gift that was really valuable was whatever they had, they were going to make everyone else in the church miserable until everyone else acknowledged that.
Paul was telling them, it certainly feels like Paul had to be really blunt and direct with the church at Corinth, that they were missing the new thing God was creating. There is no hierarchy of gifts where everyone wants to be the head and no one wants to be the left incisor. But right at the end, Paul says strive for the greater gifts. Which certainly seems to undermine his argument that there isn’t a hierarchy. We’ll see more of Paul’s argument next week, when he talks about love being the greatest gift, but for this week, think about the Annual Meeting of the Brookline Community Church that’s coming up.
We do all have gifts and we do try to bring them together. And we do try to support other people when they use their gifts to do something we can’t do. I can cook, but I can’t cook 120 meals in one go and Megan just laughs and rolls up her sleeves. I can’t read music, and every week Yifan sends a chocolate box of gorgeous treats for me to pick from. There was a problem with the elevator door and not only did Peter send an email saying it was fixed, but he sent an explanation with photos of the circuit board explaining what had gone wrong. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to look at a circuit board let alone repair it. So we all have gifts, and we all respect that. We might do a little better in some areas. We can all shovel the doorways of the church and not leave all the shoveling to Susan and Russell, but we can work on that.
What we have an opportunity to do today is commit ourselves to the work of exploring what new thing God is creating through the Brookline Community Church. The Vision Team has been working on that since roughly Easter of last year and we have some insights to share and some requests for further assistance. We will need everyone’s gifts and support for everyone’s gifts and we’ll need to take care of each other in a way that is not what humans normally do with each other, even in families.
Because that is part of the promise of today’s passage. God is still creating. God is still bringing new things into the world in the wake of the resurrection of the Messiah. And all those new things will shake us up and shake us loose from some of the old ideas we got stuck in our heads. Like that our heads were the most important. When what we needed to focus on is that we can improve the way we all work together, to forgive ourselves and welcome others and share the love we experience because we are a part of this new body