God created us to be in community with one another, to be in relationship with each other. Our faith story even tells us that when God was creating the world, God realized that it is not good for humans to be alone.
November 3, 2024
Love… It Might Just Be Crazy Enough to Change the World
“What if We Support Each Other in Community?”
1 Cor 12: 12-26
Rev. Dr. Heather W. McColl
1 Cor 12: 12-26
You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so? If Ear said, “I’m not beautiful like Eye, transparent and expressive; I don’t deserve a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.
But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn’t be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, “Get lost; I don’t need you”? Or, Head telling Foot, “You’re fired; your job has been phased out”? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the “lower” the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it’s a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn’t you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?
The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance
What if We See Support Each Other in Community? 1 Cor 12: 12-26
This bears repeating… If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt and the healing. Usually, we stop at this part of the line, this notion of the Body of Christ hurting part. As people of faith, as a culture, as a society, we don’t really talk about what is needed, what true support during the healing process is for people, meaning that because we don’t talk about it, we usually leave it up to the individual to figure it out on their own. Maybe that’s because the grief is too much. Or maybe it’s because if I recognize your grief, your pain, your hurt, then I will be confronted with my own grief, my own pain, my own hurt. And doing so would be uncomfortable. Doing so would require me naming some pretty harsh truths about myself and our world. So instead of doing that, we choose to ignore the pain. We choose to ignore the hurt. We choose to ignore the brokenness. We choose to go through life, pretending that none of it exists.
Or maybe the simple truth is when we see someone hurting, we don’t know where to start. We worry we will say something wrong and cause more pain. Or we see the person hurting and we don’t know how to help. Or maybe it is because we as individuals, we as communities, are so overwhelmed with all the hurt, pain and brokenness that constantly fills our lives, fills our world, that we just don’t have the capacity. We don’t have the energy physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally. So, we offer thoughts and prayers but nothing else really supportive.
But what if…just hear me out…what if we as ones who say, who believe that God’s love is crazy enough to change the world, what if we truly supported each other in joy and in sorrow? What would it look like if we embodied this notion that we need each other to thrive? What would it look like if we took Paul’s words to heart and embraced the notion that the way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a community of faith?
Now I fully admit and know that there are parts of grief, parts of the healing process that can only be undertaken by the individual, but I would argue this undertaking might be easier for us to embrace if we knew that there is a group of people loving us, supporting us, crying with us, even just willing to sit with us in silence. Not fix it. Not give us platitudes. And yes, I may step on some toes with this one but not dismiss our experience just because someone’s cousin’s friend’s brother’s mother in law’s father went through the same thing and they are fine now. I say this tongue in cheek but for us, as people of faith, if we truly believe that God’s love is crazy enough to change the world, the world which ignores pain, the world which glosses over brokenness, this world which tells us to pretend that everything is fine when in reality sometimes it feels like everything in our lives at any given moment is a dumpster fire with no hope of it ever being put out. If we truly believe that God’s love is crazy enough to change the world, then we know that there has to be a different way to be, a way which brings healing, a way which brings wholeness.
Please don’t hear me say that I get it right every time or that I have all the answers but here is what I do know…my faith, our faith teaches us that when we truly support one another, we aren’t looking to fix anyone’s problems. We are simply letting them know that they are not alone. They are not alone in their sorrow, that they are not alone in their joy, that they are surrounded by people who love them, who pray for them, who reach out to them, who check in on them…because simply put…we know that life with all its beauty, wonder, worry, fear, anxiety, tragedy, grace, heartache and hope is too much to bear alone. Because as people of faith, we know, we embrace, we believe, we practice the understanding that God created us to be in community with one another, to be in relationship with each other. We know this to be true because at the very beginning of our faith story, when God was creating the world, we are told God saw humanity. God saw Adam. God saw God’s children and realized that it is not good for humans to be alone.
Or let me say it this way…I often take for granted the gift that is ministry. I often take for granted the sacred invitation I am given to be a part of people’s lives in some of their best and worst moments. But this week felt different. Maybe it was because of the Scripture. Maybe it was because of the question we are exploring this week, the question of what if we support each other in community. Or maybe it was where I am in my own life and faith journey but this week, I noticed…I noticed people gathering around the table, talking and sharing stories. I noticed at those same tables people who were somewhat standoffish or people who had their public persona firmly in place, they were transformed into their authentic selves simply because someone invited them to tell their story. Someone invited them to tell their connection to the community, to share their passion about why they do what they do.
This week, I noticed that in my circles of connections, whether that be school, scouts, church, friends, family, I noticed that there is so much going on right now. From sickness, to worries about children, to fears about what the next few weeks will bring, in all my circles of connection, I kept hearing stories of pain, hurt and brokenness, to the point where I wondered where was the joy in the world. This week, I noticed in all my circles of connection, it seemed like people were simply reaching out, needing to know that someone cared, that someone was listening, that someone knew what was going on in their lives.
This week, I noticed a change, in myself and in others. A reaching out for connection and community and it gave me hope, a hope which is grounded in the knowledge of God’s love, hope that knows this world does not have the last word, “hope that is Able to find a way to go on When nothing else can even find a way in”. This week, I noticed a change, a reaching out for connection and community and it gave me hope. It reminded me that no matter what, that “life and love has already and will continue to overcome every form of death.” It reminded me that no matter what may come this week, we know that God is in this world bringing about God’s Beloved Community for all of God’s people. This week, I noticed a change, and it reminded me no matter what this week brings, we are not alone. Amen.
See also: Theology Tuesday for November 3, 2024 – What if We See Support Each Other in Community? 1 Corinthians 12: 12-26.
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