January 23, 2022 - The Third Sunday after the Epiphany

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.