I Corinthains 12:12-31
Luke 4:14-21
Epiphany 3 / Year C
In our reading
from I Corinthians, St. Paul continues to address a serious problem in their local
church. Today we would say its
membership is multicultural. A huge
variety of people have responded to the Gospel and are bound together as a
family in Christ. Some are Jews, others
Greek. Some have been free all their
lives, others are slaves. Within one
congregation there is tremendous diversity around ethnic origin, social status,
economic prosperity, and life experience.
From what Paul
writes, we can deduce three things he believes about their situation:
First,
diversity in a congregation is to be expected.
Using the metaphor of the human anatomy, Paul says a body of people
consists of different parts. The hand is
not the foot; the ear is not the eye.
Each is different, distinctive, unique.
This was their reality then; it is our reality today; more so in society
as a whole than in our parish.
Second, Paul
acknowledges diversity is a challenge.
We gravitate naturally to people who look like us or act like us or
think like us or earn like us.
Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, powerful and powerless, young
and old, high-tech savvy and no tech ability, rock and rap, evangelical conservative
and mainline liberal, Hokies and Hoos: we all have to learn how to get along…
and this can be a real challenge. In
fact, even in a homogenous group, people sniff out differences and divide
accordingly.
So here is the
third thing Paul says about the challenge facing the church in Corinth:
Diversity, which is a reality and a challenge, is also a blessing. Within their wide variety of people and experiences
there is an incredible array of gifts and abilities. Just as the human body needs individual parts
to carry out distinctive functions, so too does a community of faith, and so
too does our country, and so too does our world.
This giftedness
in diversity does not happen by accident.
Paul states it is a direct result of the intentional work of God’s
Spirit. In fact, we can say a lack of
diversity within a group or within society is an indicator God’s Spirit is
being withheld or ignored or frustrated.
In our Gospel
reading, we hear of a time when Jesus returns to his hometown and goes to
church on the Sabbath. In our parish,
various trained members of the congregation read assigned lessons and the
ordained professional – me – comments on them.
We don’t know if in the synagogue
individual members are assigned to read and comment on a specific day and we
don’t know if the readings are assigned by something like our lectionary or if
they are chosen by the reader, but in any case, on this particular day Jesus is
the reader and the lesson comes from the prophet Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the
captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the
year of the Lord’s favor.
The poor, the captives, the
blind, the oppressed. These people, be
they spiritually poor or financially poor, captive in a literal sense or in a
figurative one, lacking vision or lacking insight, oppressed from without or
oppressed from within, are a part of the diversity of a community. They are a part of our reality, our
challenge, and our blessing. That Jesus
claims them to himself in the inaugural moments of his public ministry says
something important, doesn’t it. He is
not willing to forsake a single person, especially a person who the rest of the
group might consider to be dragging them down or holding them back. Jesus sides with the most vulnerable members
of the group specifically because they are the ones at risk. They are the ones in peril.
I used to carry in my
prayer book a post-it note on which I had written a quote by Evelyn Underhill,
the English writer and Christian mystic.
I put it in my prayer book in order to see it every time I opened it at
the beginning of a service. Here is what
the note said:
“In the Kingdom of God,
no one is
adequate, but everyone is dear.”
I wanted to remind myself
my own shortcomings in no way removes me from God’s love and keep. I also wanted it to define how I looked at
each person attending the service: the acolyte who can’t remember what to do,
the altar guild member who is obsessing about a wrinkle in the hangings, the
usher who seems oblivious to the visitor, the choir member whose not-so-alto
voice is giving me a spitting headache, the parishioner who visits the land of
nod during the sermon, the person poised to point out a typo in the bulletin,
the small child who, noisy, squirming, proclaims “I have sat still long enough”:
none – starting with me – is adequate, but each – including me – is dear. To use some common slang, this is how we roll
as the body of Christ.
Every faith community is as
strong as these four elements:
The
faith and faithfulness of its members.
The
quality of the relationships within the faith community.
The
care and concern it expresses for those outside the faith community.
The
level of leadership rising up within the community.
Each of these four is
essential. If one is lacking the
effectiveness of the faith community is diminished and its future vitality is
in peril. Today’s readings remind us to
focus on the quality of our relationships: to value and build on our diversity
and to recognize a telling mark of our common life is seen in our acceptance of
and our compassion for the least and most vulnerable in our midst.
