Homily for The Third Sunday after The Epiphany/Rite-13 Sunday
by Rebecca M. Taylor,
Director of Children's, Youth & Family Ministries
All Saints Parish, Brookline, MA
January 21, 2007
Lectionary:
Nehemiah 8:2-10 1
Corinthians 12:12-27
Luke 4:14-21
Psalm 113
"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. 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." (1 Cor 12.12-13)
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable to you, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
I want to take a quick poll this morning.
Raise your hand if you've ever been sick.
Raise your hand if you've ever had to wear a cast or some sort of brace or bandage because of a broken bone or a sprained muscle.
Raise your hand if you've ever had to have an operation - a time when a doctor had to fix something in your body that was broken or worn out or sick.
Just what I thought: everyone in this congregation today knows what it feels like to have your body not work right. Some of you know it more intensely than others, but everyone here knows what it feels like to be sick or in pain or limited in some way because of a problem somewhere in your body. When your body is sick or broken, you don't feel like yourself. You can't do the things you like to do. You get tired. And usually you get cranky.
Let me ask you one more question: Have you ever been in a group of people that wasn't getting along with each other? Maybe it was your family, or a group of friends - people in your class or on a team or at work. If you've ever had that experience, be honest: raise your hand.
Just what I thought: almost everyone in this congregation knows what that feels like, too. When you're in a group that's not getting along, it can feel a lot like being sick: you can't do the things you want to do, you feel less and less like yourself. You get sick and tired of it, and you start to get cranky. Am I right?
Well, you know what? Almost 2000 years ago there was a small group of Christians living in a place called Corinth who were struggling with one another and getting pretty sick and tired of it. So they wrote to St. Paul, asking him for advice and he wrote them back, and this morning Elizabeth read us part of his letter.
2000 years ago, Corinth was an exciting place to live and work! It was a large port city on the southern tip of what is now Greece today, right on the Mediterranean Sea. People came there from all sorts of different places to live and work. Corinth was a lot like Boston: it was full of people of many races and cultures and life experiences.
Some of the people who lived in Corinth were Christians, just like us. Also like us, none of them had ever met Jesus face-to-face when he was alive on earth. Instead, they knew Jesus through the stories they had heard. Paul had told them about Jesus - what he had done, what he had said, how he had treated people when he was alive on the earth. Paul told them about how Jesus had been arrested and killed and then had come back to life. Paul told them how Jesus' resurrection had brought new hope to those who had known him and worked with him. They began to believe - really believe - that with God, anything was possible.
Paul told the Corinthians that even though people couldn't actually see Jesus anymore, he was still very much with them. He told them it was possible to feel very close to Jesus when they prayed, when they shared a meal together, and when they reached out to those who were forgotten or rejected or all alone.
Paul told his friends in Corinth that his own relationship with Jesus had made him feel very close to God and had completely changed his life. He told them it could change theirs, too. And so, about 20 years after Jesus' death, a small group of Corinthians had decided to become a community of Jesus-followers. They had all been baptized, to show how much they wanted to belong with Jesus and with one another. That baptism had made them all members of God's family. They could feel God's Holy Spirit in their midst, binding them to each other, blessing their life together, and empowering their ministries. Through prayer and ritual and acts of justice and mercy, they formed such strong bonds with Jesus that they began to think of themselves as the "Body of Christ." They were Jesus' hands and feet and voice in the world.
Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?
The problem was that, after a little while, the folks in the Corinthian congregation forgot that living with each other in Christian community was different from living in the regular, day-to-day world. In the regular, day-to-day world, people who are rich or smart or grown-up usually get to make the rules for everyone else. Sometimes people who are loud or physically strong or even sneaky get to have their way. In the regular, day-to-day world, there are people who have a lot of power and those who have hardly any. This can cause a lot of problems, as you all know. People start to fight with each other, or boss each other around, or ignore one another. And that's what happened in the Corinthian Church.
It started to feel like the Church was sick. It started to feel like the Body of Christ was sick. That's why the people wrote to Paul, asking what they should do.
So Paul wrote to his friends - his "brothers and sisters in Christ," as he called them. "Remember," he told them, "with Jesus, life is special. In the Church, things are different: everyone matters; everyone is important; everyone is necessary. You may look different from one another. You may know different things and be able to do different things from one another. But you're still one group - one body - Christ's Body. For the Church to be healthy and make a difference in the regular, day-to-day world, every member of Christ's Body is necessary - every member is needed."
These are Paul's words from his first letter to the Corinthians: "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. 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." (1 Cor 12.12-13)
By the grace of God, we are all different. By the grace of God, we have an enormous amount of skills and talents and life experiences to bring to the work of the Church. Jesus needs all the different skills that we offer in His Name. Bound to one another by God's Holy Spirit, we work together to ensure that Christ's ministry continues - the ministry of bringing good news to the poor; the ministry of proclaiming release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; the ministry of offering freedom to the oppressed; the ministry of proclaim the year of the Lord's favor (Luke 4.18-19).
Paul's message to the Corinthians is the one I want all of us to hear loud and clear this morning: By the power and wisdom of God's Holy Spirit, there is unity in our diversity. In the Body of Christ, everyone has a role to play. Everyone is needed. Everyone.
We lift that truth up with prayers of thanksgiving and praise this morning, as we celebrate the important places that Elizabeth, Grace, Tom, and Marie occupy in our own Christian community. We celebrate and give thanks for the variety of gifts they bring to our shared ministry in Christ's Name. We celebrate and give thanks for the gift of God's love that bind us to them and them to us.
Elizabeth, Grace, Tom, and Marie: we need you. All Saints Parish can't be what it's being called to be without you. We need you to help us be Christ's hands and feet and voice in the world. Each of you has amazing gifts to offer. Each of you is an amazing gift to us and to the world! And for that we give God thanks and praise and pledge ourselves to you - our brother and sisters in Christ.
Let the people say AMEN!