Lectionary Reflection for Epiphany 3C on 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

A BATTLE-SCARRED BRIDE

I was just one of a large group of people gathered for our annual synod in one of the largest churches in South Africa. The preacher was one of the best known and loved in our country, and he was speaking with great passion as he painted a picture of a wedding.

Imagine that we are gathered at Christ’s own wedding. Jesus is standing here at the front awaiting the glorious entrance of his beautiful bride. Excitement mounts as the bells begin to ring announcing her arrival. Suddenly, the doors burst open and the bride stumbles in. Her wedding dress is torn. She has bruises everywhere and blood is dripping from her nose. The bouquet of flowers in her hand is shredded, and her other hand is still closed in a tight fist. Tears begin to form in Jesus’ eyes as he looks at her in dismay and cries out in a loud voice, “My God! They’ve been fighting again!”

Almost as one, the congregation responded with gasps as the truth of this image hit home. There were prayers of repentance. Liturgies of unity and the sharing of the Eucharist. Then, when the service was over, we returned to the business of our synod—and the fighting which no sermon seems able to overcome.

The history of the Church is, at least in part, a history of conflict, division, and hatred—and our period in history is no different. Even just a cursory glance at social media reveals the intense hatred and violence of Christians toward one another—and even to people who have no connection to the Church in any way. In almost every church I have served over my decades of ministry, most of my time and energy was taken up with trying to resolve petty squabbles, turf wars, and power struggles that, like a game of whack-a-mole, kept popping up over ridiculously insignificant issues. How is this possible in a faith which is supposed to be founded on Jesus’ Great Commandment to love God and people?

THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

It seems that the problems of conflict and division have always plagued the Church, because much of Paul’s writings to the Corinthian community addressed their judgement and rejection of one another over trivial things. In an attempt to bring unity and peace into the church, Paul offered a metaphor that encapsulated the vision of a unified, Christ-following community. Sadly, the apostle seemed to have been clinging to an impossible dream. Yet it remains one that we must continue to work to fulfil. It is not just our church communities, but the world that needs us to find a way to live in peace and love with one another. And so, in hopes that we may be able to take one more small step forward, we explore Paul’s teachings again.

As we noticed last week in the Lectionary, Paul speaks of the Church as the body of Christ. But this is not just a nice picture. He uses the image in ways that have startling implications for how we live together with our neighbours. Christ—not just the community of followers of Christ, but Christ himself—is a single body with many parts. The word here can also be translated as members or limbs.¹ There is an almost literal sense in which Paul seems to be saying that we are inseparable from one another. We are interconnected and interdependent to the same radical extent that the different parts of our bodies are joined, united, and function as a single being.

Of course that is not how we experience our relationship with one another in our hyper-individualistic world, but as the sciences have now shown beyond doubt, it remains the simple truth of our existence. Our task, then, is to learn how to live into what we now know is true about ourselves and our world. We really do belong to one another even as we belong to Christ. There is no “Just me and Jesus.” We are keepers of one another. And until we learn this, our world will continue to burn. The only way to eradicate unnecessary suffering in our world is to recognise our interdependence and belonging to one another and to our Earth. The same is true in families, churches, neighbourhoods, and nations.

YOUR WORSHIP DEFINES YOUR LIFE

The context of Paul’s teaching about the Body of Christ is significant. From the beginning of 1 Corinthians 11 to the end of 1 Corinthians 14, Paul is speaking to the worship life of the community. He begins by addressing the abuses that happened in Corinth around the celebration of the Eucharist—and he warns his readers that they need to “discern (or understand—CEB) the body.” (1 Corinthians 11:29). This is not just about recognising and experiencing Christ’s body—Christ’s presence, life, and being—in the bread and wine. It is also about recognising and experiencing that Christ is embodied in our shared life, our commitment to one another, our love for each other, and our unity with all of Creation.

Worship is what happens when the Church gathers. It is also, as Paul noted and as Martin Luther King Jr. famously observed, when our division and conflict is most clearly on show. When we fight about who gets to sit in a particular seat, what temperature the air conditioner should be set at, whether children should be allowed into the sanctuary or not, what songs we should sing or musical instruments are acceptable, and who is welcome or not, we reveal our failure to love as Jesus did. And these “little” conflicts in our communities, like a pebble in a pond, send ripples of conflict and polarisation out into the world. Make no mistake: we have the world we have because we live the way we live. And we live the way we live, because we worship the way we worship. As long as our worship is allowed to be a breeding ground for our disdain of one another, our world will never be at peace.