Lectionary Readings
Gracious God, thank you for making us into
one Body in Christ, strengthen the ligaments that connect us to you and to one
another ✠ in the name
of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
“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.” This may be one of the most
well-known metaphors in the Bible – that the Church is the Body of Christ. In
the same way that though our bodies have lots of parts, the body can only
function as a unit. An arm, by itself, is nothing and a body without lungs is
just a collection of tissues, not a living thing. It’s a fairly good description
of how the Church is to function – valuing and appreciating all, and recognizing
our mutual interdependence. But what if this is more than a metaphor, but
actually a description of a truth deeper than we might realize?
When I was a kid, I learned
the largest living organism was something like a giant Sequoia tree or a blue
whale. To be sure, those are big. But in Utah, there is an aspen forest called “Pando”
that is even bigger. It’s not actually a forest in the usual sense of being a
collection of trees. No, Pando is one massive Aspen tree that is a single
organism sharing a massive root system. This organism has about 47,000
different trunks, each appearing to be a different tree, and spreads over 100
acres. Or, if you want to go even bigger there is what is called the “Humongous
Fungus” in Oregon, widely considered to be the largest organism in the world at
over 8,000 years old and spread out over 2,400 acres. Throughout the region, there
are mushrooms that appear to be just patches of fungi, but genetic sampling has
shown that they are the same organism, all connected by an underground and
otherwise invisible root system.
I
think you know where I’m going with this – things can appear to be individuals
when, in truth, they are all are part of one Body. And so I would argue that it’s
not Pando or the Humongous Fungus that is the largest organism in the world, it’s
the Body of Christ, which has branches in every single continent of this
planet. What connects us is not a root system, but rather the Holy Spirit,
given at Baptism. As we’re continuing a sermon series on these Sundays after
the Epiphany, this is the aspect of the Holy Spirit that I want to draw our
attention to today – that the Holy Spirit makes us one body, that the Holy
Spirit is the glue that makes us one, that there is but one Holy Spirit and that
is who gives us our life, our breath, our connection to God and one another.
If
it is true, and I am claiming that it is, that the Body of Christ, is really one
organism, then that means a few things. First, it means that God trusts us, a
lot. We are the Body of Christ. We are the physical manifestation of God in the
world. To be honest, I’m not always thrilled about me being my own
representative. We all make mistakes and defend ourselves by saying “That’s not
the real me.” But how amazing that God has chosen us and said, “That’s who I
want to embody me in the world.” And secondly, it means that our Baptism is the
strongest bond in the world – more than friendship, more than marriage, more than
family, Baptism conveys the strongest force in Creation. Because unity comes
from God, there’s nothing we can do to dissolve the fact that we are forever
and permanently bound to one another through the sanctifying, loving, and
animating Spirit of God.
And
what impact does this reality have on us? How does the fact that we are one
organism manifest itself in our lives? One lesson from the pandemic is that we
are only as strong as the weakest part of us. People who were taken for granted
and underappreciated for doing low-wage work are now seen as invaluable parts
of our society. Countries that do not have good medical infrastructures will be
places where new variants will potentially develop and spread to other nations.
Small components, like microchips, can cause significant supply chain issues.
The world is more connected than we might have realized. Perhaps we used to say
“I have no need of you,” but we do so only in ignorance and at our own peril. When
we ignore the needs of others, we are looking at our own fate if we do use our
strengths to help those who are weak. Likewise, when we are in need, it isn’t
the time to insist on pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. Because if you
think about it, it’s absurd. You can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Next time you’re down on the floor, try tugging on your shoes and see if it
lifts you up. We need one another.
Just
as is true for the body, diversity is a gift. As St. Paul writes, the body
would be fairly useless if it were all eyeballs and no ears. And it’s the same
truth in the Church and the world. Appreciation of diversity is not some
liberal value, it’s absolutely necessary and we seem to get that with everything
about life except for people. Imagine if music only had one note. If food had
only one flavor. If light had only one color. Without that diversity, life
would be utterly boring. And yet when someone has a different opinion than us, wears
a different style of clothing, talks with a different accent, or has a different
personality, we immediately “other” them with labels, with prejudices, with
exclusions.
Diversity
is not something to overcome, it is a gift from God. It’s one of the things
that I love so much about being a parish priest – having to take into consideration
the needs, opinions, and thoughts of others. The result is always better than
what I could have come up with on my own. It’s why committee work and small
groups are important – we gather a diversity of perspectives and talents and
end up in a place far better than any of us could have arrived at alone. And
whether we want to acknowledge it or not, the same thing is true in the wider
Church and society – the left side is just as necessary as the right side; the bottom
is just as integral as the top.
Being
a part of the Body of Christ also means that we are part of something bigger
than ourselves. One modern theologian has said that a part of the problem with us
is that we think that the story we live by is the story that we chose for
ourselves when had no other story. In other words, society tells us that we are
blank slates at birth and we have to discover our identity, our meaning, our
purpose. Just look at most movies – they are about characters “finding themselves.”
Simply put, that’s a recipe for disaster. What happens when we look inward for
truth and meaning? Literally, we become crooked from all the navel-gazing. The
journey of life is not inward, but rather the journey that motivates our lives
isn’t even ours. It is the story of God turned towards us that is most foundational.
No,
I’m not saying that you, the individual you, don’t matter. As I’ve just said
about diversity, each of us is uniquely and wonderfully made. God knows us individually,
loves us individually, and relates to us individually, it’s just that we aren’t
individuals; we are a part of the Body of Christ. We are a part of a bigger
story, part of a larger whole. Meaning and purpose aren’t things we have to
discover, rather they are gifts we are given in belonging. The story of faith
doesn’t diminish our individually, rather it enhances it by giving something to
belong to. It’s like a fingernail. Not attached to the body, a fingernail is
sort of useless, even if it is completely independent. But attached to the
body, well, there, as a part of something bigger, it finds its truest
fulfillment.
Now,
the problem with all of this Body talk is that it can come off as rather trite
or pollyannish. In a recent op-ed, David Brooks writes about his assessment
that America is coming apart at the seams. Agree with him or not, here are some
of the data points: in 2020, due to the pandemic, Americans drove 13% fewer
miles, and yet traffic fatalities were up 7%. In 2021, they were up 18%. This
is due to a rise in reckless behaviors such as DUIs, speeding, and not wearing
a seatbelt. We’ve all seen the reports in the news and the data backs it up:
nurses report more argumentative patients, airlines are having unrulier
passengers, overdoses are up, alcohol sales are up, the murder rate is higher, disruptive
behavior in schools is more common, hate crimes are up, gun purchases are up, the
US leads the world in single-parent households, charitable giving is down
across the US, and for the first time ever, church affiliation dropped below
50% in 2020. Now, one easy explanation would be that we are all anxious because
of the pandemic and that is showing up in all of these data points. There’s certainly
some truth to that. But these trends were all in place before March 2020 – the pandemic
just revealed them in more profound ways. Embedded within all of this data is the
reality that, as a people, we are growing more reckless, hostile, and narcissistic.
In
this article, Brooks says that while he knows the situation is dire, he is at a
loss for what the answer is. I have no desire to be a newspaper columnist, but
it’s pretty clear what the answer is, at least for those of us in the Church –
we have to remember that we are the Body of Christ. We belong not to ourselves,
but Christ. When Jesus said that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, we
misunderstand him if we think he’s saying that we have to love others in the
same way or amount that we love ourselves. No, we love them as ourselves because
they are ourselves.
The
danger and the problem is that we conceptualize this. We like to talk about we “love
everyone.” That’s too abstract. It’s worth noting that Jesus never told us to “love
everyone.” No. He tells us to love our neighbor – not theoretical people over
there, but our very tangible neighbors. That’s the problem with our media and
politics today – none of it is personal. It’s all about amorphous groups of
people like the Millennials, or the unvaccinated, or those without college
degrees, or Boomers, or African-Americans, or the police, or those who didn’t
vote. It’s easy to demonize groups like that, and even harder to love them. But
Jesus never asked us to love categories of people. He tells us to love our
neighbor. If you’re an elbow, maybe don’t worry about what’s going on over by
the ear, but look out for the forearm. If you’re an ankle, focus on the toes,
not the fingers.
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer wrote, “Innumerable times a Christian community has broken down
because it sprang from a wish dream… One who loves the dream of community more
than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of community.” If we
make beloved community about something other than the people in the pews next
to us, as something more abstract from the people who live across the street
from us, as something less real than the people who sit at our lunch table then
we’ve already lost the thread. Beloved community is not a goal, it is not a metaphor,
it is reality. It is, as King said, “We must learn to live together as siblings
or perish together as fools.” Beloved Community isn’t some aspirational pipedream,
it is the only alternative to the mess that we’re in.
Beloved
Community is a way of describing the reality that we are connected in very real
and tangible ways as the Body of Christ. The same Spirit that gives us life is
the same Spirit who breathes through others and Baptism is what makes a part of
the largest organism in the world. And right now, the world desperately needs
beloved community, which, thanks be to God, is exactly what we are created to
be.
