From our Psalm: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? … If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." … But God has so arranged the body, [that] the members may have the same care for one another.
Most years, on the day when this reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians comes up, our Annual Parish Meeting takes place. It’s a perfect companion reading for a day when we review and celebrate all the different ways people serve in our parish. This year’s annual meeting is next Sunday, not today. This coming Thursday you’ll receive the annual meeting booklet in the parish email, which contains all the reports from various committees. It never ceases to amaze me the diversity of things people are engaged in here, and to see it all in one document, really shows how the parts work together as a whole. I’ll remind us again of that next week. In fact, I’ll do what I did three years ago when this reading and that event coincided; I’ll put it on the cover of the annual meeting book.
Paul wrote these words for a church. One of the earliest churches, in the Greek city of Corinth, sometime around the year 50 AD. Today, we hear it still, as a message to the church. Timeless, it never fails to amaze me how much it continues to apply to all the diverse communities of Christians that make up our parishes. I’ll come back to that.
But Paul’s reading is useful in other contexts, too.
Consider these words in the context of our present national life. We’re reaping the consequences today of decades of saying to each other, to quote Paul’s eye to the hand “I don’t need you.” You don’t look like me, you don’t sound like me, you don’t think like me, I’m going to get as far away from you as I possibly can. We’ve been at this as a country long enough that our geography has been shaped by it, a whole population clustered according to our views. Someone I was talking to this week referred to the political map of our country, rimmed in blue and filled in with red. She said it with a note of despair in her voice. I feel that way, too, when I look at those maps. That’s the real effect of years and years of distancing and removing ourselves from each other. Sometimes I think how amazing it would be if somehow someone just shook the whole map and rearranged us, and we all had to live among, and cooperate with people unlike us. We’ll find we barely know each other. But living side by side might change that pretty fast, and for the better.
Paul didn’t write this for states or countries, but it could be a powerful metaphor for them.
Marcus Aurelius, who predated Paul and actually used this same metaphor in his Meditations (it was a popular metaphor in the ancient world, not originating with Paul), Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations took this tolerance of difference to an extreme. Everyone works together to one end, even those who are intent on working at cross purposes with us. It really stretches the limits of Paul’s vision and our tolerance. This isn’t the passage where he uses the metaphor of the body, but here’s what Marcus Aurelius says (and sorry--this is kind of an old translation):
“We are all working together to one end, some with knowledge and design, and others without knowing what they do; as men also when they are asleep, of whom it is Heraclitus, I think, who says that [the asleep] are laborers and cooperators in the things which take place in the universe. But men co-operate after different fashions; and even those cooperate abundantly who find faults with what happens, and those who try to oppose it and hinder it; for the universe has need even of such men as these.”
So, as I read that: If you’re progressive, the universe has need of you and your conservative counterpart. If you’re conservative, the universe has need of you and your progressive counterpart. That’s not how we think of it, but maybe we should. We’re all working together to one end.
Similarly, you can apply Paul’s metaphor to our world. We do the same thing globally we do within our own country. If we’re not careful, we alienate ourselves from people who’ve defended and protected and worked with us for decades. Martin Luther King preached often about our interrelatedness to those around the world. Some of us in last Wednesday’s Bible study recalled this passage from one of King’s sermons. He said:
“[This] tells us something basic about the interdependence of men and nations. Whether we realize it or not, each of us is eternally ‘in the red.’ We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women. We do not finish breakfast without being dependent on more than half of the world. When we arise in the morning, we go into the bathroom where we reach for a sponge that is provided for us by a Frenchman. The towel is provided by a Turk. Then at the table we drink coffee that is provided for us by a South American, or tea by a Chinese [person], or cocoa by a West African. Before we leave for our jobs we are beholden to half the world.”
And then he continues, and this is the part you might have heard before, “In a real sense, all life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be unless you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
On a much smaller scale, Paul’s metaphor about the different parts of the body working in cooperation with each other is a lesson for families. Every family is dysfunctional in its own way, so you know how it fits into your own family context. I know that in marriages, we often want our spouse (or think we do) to be more like us. Good at the things we’re good at, discreet in the ways we’re discreet (or fill-in-the-blank). Eye, arm, leg, head, heel, finger: it’s all part of the whole and everything, though different--because different--makes the whole body work.
But getting back to where I started, Paul wrote this passage to a newly formed church long ago, and we read his words again now, as a church community.
We’ve just finished the ecumenical Week of Christian Unity, which was established in the early 20th century and takes place every January. I hope you saw the service in our National Episcopal Cathedral on Tuesday. It’s rare any more that you see people of so many different religious and political persuasions under one roof. I know it got tangled up in politics as soon as it was over, the service on Tuesday. The fallout, though, was a reminder of just how much we need Paul’s teachings on interrelatedness and mutual appreciation. (I should add: I thought Bishop Budde’s words were beautiful, and moving, and entirely reflective of Jesus’ teachings. And if you go back and listen to her sermon, please be sure to listen to all fourteen minutes of it, not just the last two.)
Closer to home, in our Diocese of New York, we struggle sometimes to appreciate each other. Urban churches are suspicious of suburban churches, suburban churches frown on rural churches. Churches in the Bronx feel looked down on by everyone. The Staten Island churches just feel forgotten, but not as much as those in Ulster County. The best bishops and leaders are those who can help us to see ourselves as one body, engaged in one common project. That isn’t easy, but it’s important, and possible.
And finally--St. James the Less. We have many different types of people, from various backgrounds, of different means, and with different passions. Our many ministries here reflect that diversity. We’re not all drawn to the same things. We don’t all spend our time engaged in the same projects. And yet somehow, I think, it works. Eye, ear, hand, shin bone to the knee bone--we’re all connected, part of this body, us, our church.
Learning to practice this cooperation on our small local level here, may be the best thing we can do for our world. Change begins at home. And it spreads out from there. Our efforts here, at St. James, are about making a better world, no less than that. [Because] God has so arranged the body, [that] the members may have the same care for one another. May we have the faith and courage to live out these teachings in all times, and in all places. Amen.