The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
January 25, 2004

If We Are the Body
I Corinthians 12:12-27

I have a favorite prayer that I would like to share with you. It is a traditional Jewish blessing. You should first know that in Judaism, there are blessings for everything and this is the blessing that proves it. Here is the blessing to be recited on going to the bathroom: 

“Blessed are you O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who formed man with intelligence, and created within him many openings and many hollow spaces; it is revealed and known before the Seat of You Honor, that if one of these would be opened or if one of these would be sealed it would be impossible to survive and to stand before You even for one hour. Blessed are you, O Lord, who heals all flesh and does wonders. Amen.” 

I love that prayer because it deals with a fundamental reality that is easily overlooked. Until illness wakes us up to reality, we take our bodies for granted. And in this prayer, thanks is given that our bodies work properly without us even thinking about it. We need all the various parts of our bodies and we need them working properly. For if the parts of a body meant to be closed were opened and the parts meant to be opened were closed, we could not stand for even one hour. 

This sort of earthy understanding of the workings of a body is essential to understanding our reading this morning from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Paul gives in today’s reading his great metaphor for the church, saying that the church is the Body of Christ. For Paul this is both metaphor and mystical reality.  

Paul uses the Body of Christ image to show that within the church we need diversity as well as an understanding of our interdependence. 

Paul uses the body to show how ridiculous it is to think that all Christians should be just alike. We are the Body of Christ and a body must have different parts. If the parts of a body were identical, the body could not function properly. As Paul writes, “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If all were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?” 

“As it is, there are many members, yet one body,” Paul writes. He wants the Christians in Corinth to understand that diversity within their church is to be valued, for they could not exist without it. The various Christians in Corinth depend on one another. 

At a practical level, everyone cannot preach in a worship service. It just wouldn’t work. It would be noisy if everyone preached at once and boring if everyone preached in turn, one after another. Someone has to lead worship. But Paul would caution that leading worship, preaching and teaching do not make the pastor more valuable to the church than anyone else. The congregation needs the pastor and the pastor needs the congregation. Then within any congregation, there are people with different gifts, all of which are needed. 

Try to decide that someone does not matter in the church and you disable part of the body. For example, the Americans with Disabilities Act notwithstanding, many churches are not accessible to those with physical disabilities. Those churches are cutting themselves off from part of their own bodies as they are telling some Christians that they are not welcome in worship. Or if a church discourages children from attending through not making any accommodations for kids, then that church is cutting itself off from the gifts that children bring to the Body.  

And on and on we could go. A body needs diversity. Without diversity of members a body could not function. Paul tells us that a church must have diversity as well. If we are all the same in race, or gender, or ethnic background, or socio-economic status, then we are a poor representation of Christ at best. 

And this is where the deeper meaning of this passage lies. In understanding that Paul does not describe what he wishes were so. Paul does not write, “You should be the Body of Christ,” or “Why can’t y’all get your act together and be the Body of Christ.” Paul writes, “You are the Body of Christ.” For Paul, it is not a suggestion, or an ideal for which to strive. That the Corinthian Christians are the Body of Christ is a simple fact. 

Paul wrote at the beginning of our reading, “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.” He is letting you know that by virtue of your baptism, you were grafted in to Christ’s body. Those initiated into the church through baptism are the Body of Christ. This is where Paul goes beyond metaphor to describe a mystical reality. And this mystical reality does not just apply to those of us who are King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland, Georgia. That would be a very narrow picture of the Body of Christ. 

Saying that all baptized persons are part of the Body of Christ, means that we are connected to that diverse yet interdependent group that goes back through all of church history and forward to the coming of Christ in glory. We are interdependent on Christians through time, for we would not have the faith at all if it had not been carried through the generations leading to our own. We are also interdependent with Christians around the world, including the persecuted churches in the Sudan, Indonesia, China and in all places where Christians are killed for their faith in Jesus Christ. 

We cannot say to the Pentecostals, “We have no need of you!” We cannot say that to the Baptists, Methodists, Roman Catholics or any other part of the Body of Christ. We are in communion with everyone that God is in communion with. We share the Body of Christ with all of them. That sounds messy because it is. We are one in the Spirit with Christians we don’t see eye to eye with as well as those with whom we wholeheartedly agree. And it is the Christians and Christian groups that seem the most unnecessary to us that are the most needed. For there is no appendix in the Body of Christ. There is no part that can be cut out without harming the whole body. 

The part of that mystical reality that applies to us is that we must do everything in our power to see that this little part of the Body of Christ that is King of Peace reflects the diversity and interdependence that exists elsewhere. 

We need the visitor and the newcomer for we are not yet whole without them. And to make matters worse, we need the people who will come and change our church in some ways as they use their gifts for ministry or call on us to use ours. And looking beyond the baptized, we need, desperately need, those who do not yet share our faith, for the Body of Christ may well not be complete without them.  

The Christian music group Casting Crowns has a song, “If we are the body” which says, “Jesus paid much too high a price for us to pick and choose who should come.” Remember that if we created high standards about who could and could not be a member of the Body of Christ, then we would likely remove ourselves as well as someone else.  

The same song tells this story, “A traveler is far away from home, he sheds his coat and quietly sinks into the back row, the weight of their judgmental glances, tells him that his chances are better out on the road.” 

How many churches have dismembered themselves, by chasing people away who seemed different? How many people have we casually caused to feel unwelcome at King of Peace? I have no idea. Hopefully none. Perhaps a few. 

But our life in Christ is not the TV show Survivor, we can not vote one another out of the Body of Christ, and that’s a good thing, because you and I might have been voted out already. Not a single one of us can say to another, “I have no need of you!” To make a statement like that is to lie to yourself. 

As the prayer I read at the start of this sermon says, without the whole body functioning properly, we could not stand before God for even one hour. I am not attempting to describe the way things should be or the way things would be in a perfect world. I am describing the reality that exists within the very life of God. We are members one of another. We are the Body of Christ. 

Remember that Christ needs you and so do we.  

Amen.