Last Sunday I ran into a group of our high school Sunday
School students who were ranging the halls of the church on a class assignment.
Apparently they were supposed to look all around the church building and reflect
on what the church means to them. The three particular students I ran into were
especially curious about seeing a part of the church they’d never seen before:
the boiler room. They had walked past its unassuming, brown door dozens—who
knows…maybe hundreds?—of times, but they’d never had the chance to go in there and
see what it was about. Knowing I carried a master key, they prevailed upon me
to let them in. As I opened the door, they got instantly quiet. I don’t know
what they were expecting to see. For a few seconds, none of us could see
anything because I couldn’t remember where the light-switch was. I fumbled
around, flipped something I thought might be the lights, but nothing happened. When
I finally found the real light-switch, I realized that I had accidentally shut
off the master switch to the boiler…Oops!
You see, I rarely go in the boiler room myself. It remains
that damp, closed-off, room that is shrouded in dark…even for those of us who
work here every day. As they looked around, I wasn’t able to tell if the three youth
were impressed or not. I told them about the time the sewer lines got backed up
during one of the weeks we were housing the homeless and how the whole boiler
room flooded with raw sewage because that’s where the main overflow drain is
located. I showed them that the large ladders we use for hanging things on the
sanctuary cross are kept there, too. And then there’s the boiler, of course. I
guarantee we’d all notice it immediately if that stopped working properly, especially
on a week like this. It’s a crucial room for the church building—its existence
affects our everyday functionality in here, its upkeep is critical to our
mission, its proper usage costs us more money than just about any other room—and
yet the door stays locked and hardly ever has any visitors.
It’s the kind of room that the apostle Paul would have found
fascinating and probably would have used as an example in his letter to the
Corinthian church, if he could. “The body
does not consist of one member, but of many,” he says to the
conflict-ridden and often-divided congregation in Corinth. He goes on to say, “the members of the body that seem to be
weaker—or darker, or damper, and less often used, we might add—are indispensable, and those members of the
body that we think less honorable we
clothe with greater honor, and our
less respectable members are treated
with greater respect.”
Of course, Paul was not talking about a physical building and
its different rooms when he was talking about the body of Christ and its many
members. He was talking about people and their gifts. And if there were ever a
congregation who needed to learn to think of themselves in that way—that is, as
a body with many different members, some of whom seemed dispensable but, in fact, weren’t—it was Corinth.
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| map of the ancient Corinthian isthmus |
Corinth was a very diverse and cosmopolitan city. Because it
was situated right on an isthmus, a bridge between two major land masses with a
double harbor, it became a major trading and merchant center. A lot of commerce
flowed through Corinth, as did a lot of travelers. The result was a very
eclectic community that contained a strong element of social climbing. People
in ancient Corinth were easily impressed by signs of visible status and intellect
and usefulness. And so, even within the Corinthian churches, Paul found that
people were easily impressed by…signs of visible status and intellect and
usefulness. The people who possessed gifts, even spiritual gifts that, for
whatever reason, were viewed with greater respect were prone to try to dominate
and belittle the others. And, surprisingly, those who possessed lesser-desired
gifts would actually go along with it, to some degree. Gifts that the church in
this age doesn’t seem to have much use for these days, like speaking in
tongues, were held in high regard at Corinth. In fact, that gift in particular
seemed to be the one everyone wanted, and the way they were prioritizing it was
harming their entire community and mission. Things like this ne-e-ver happen in
the church nowadays, right?
Paul thinks the metaphor of the church as Christ’s body will
help them understand how they must function together, that the effectiveness
and success of the whole community is dependent on the participation of every
one of its members. Even though people in the church may look different and
occupy different roles, there is no one person or part that is more important
than any other. In fact, God has arranged the body that the greater honor is
given to the inferior member. Those who look and feel like a boiler room—dark,
locked up, never visited, never worshiped in—actually possess some of the most
vital functions of the whole church. In the end, however, no one is
indispensable.
Other than the naturally intuitive aspect of this image of
the church as a body that works together, Paul knew the Corinthians would latch
onto this metaphor for another reason. In ancient Corinth there was a large
temple to the god Asclepius, who was believed by many to be the god of healing.
People would come to the temple of Asclepius there in Corinth to pray for
healing and cures for different diseases and injuries. Archaeologists have
unearthed hundreds of clay body parts in the area where that temple stood. Noses,
arms, hands, feet…worshippers either bought or made themselves clay replicas of
whatever part of their body needed healing and offered it to Asclepius there at
the temple. In the shops that surrounded the temple, these earthen body parts
could be purchased for worship, and historians imagine that the inside of the
temple of Asclepius was typically littered with hundreds of disconnected clay
body parts haphazardly strewn everywhere.
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| body parts excavated from a temple of Asclepius |
You see, for the Christians in Corinth, that disconnected
mess in that pagan temple would have been one of their main associations with
the body. Paul means to tell them that they are a body, too, with many
different parts, but put together in a whole, arranged carefully so that
everyone can see their functioning depends on everyone else’s full
participation. Can everyone have the same gifts, or occupy the same position in
the congregation? Naturally, no. But that is not all. Another important end
result of this body image is that each member’s well-being is somehow
mystically connected to everyone else’s. “If
one member suffers,” Paul goes on to say,
“all suffer together with it; if one
member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” Just as the pain of a
wounded or injured hand would radiate throughout the rest of the body, so
should the hurt and pain of one church member be felt and borne by everyone
else. And, by the same token, joys are also shared. A healthy and
well-functioning congregation is not only one where all people are present and
sharing their gifts for the good of the whole, but one where prayers for each other
and service to each other, especially in times of hardship, are flowing like
the blood of a circulatory system. Paul’s image does not mean that the church
exists to make members feel appreciated.
We should pause to notice that nowhere in this letter’s
twelfth chapter does Paul mention feelings, and yet so much of our modern-day
participation in and commitment to the body of Christ seems to depend on our
feelings about it. While feelings of worth are important, they are not the sole
reason for the church’s ministry. Paul is more concerned here with the fact that
the body is learning to understand and assimilate the contributions of each and
every member for the mission of the church. Whether or not you feel you are
important doesn’t mean you aren’t, and each member bears some of the
responsibility for contributing even when they have not been properly
appreciated. Interestingly, Paul does have quite a bit to say about certain
gifts that are greater, gifts that do have a lot to do with making sure
everyone is taken care of and functioning at their best. Paul will want members
of the congregation to strive for those particular gifts…but we’re going to
come back to that next week.
I ran across a video clip the other week about the pair of
brothers who have been recognized by Sports
Illustrated as the 2012 Sports
Illustrated Sportskids of the Year who I think do an excellent job of
illustrating Paul’s lesson to the church. Conner and Cayden Long, both in
elementary school, compete in triathlons. Cayden, who is seven, was born with a
severe case of cerebral palsy and is unable to walk or talk. His nine-year-old
brother Conner had the idea to enter themselves as a team in a triathlon event
in order to connect better with his brother. When Conner swims, he pulls his
brother behind him in a raft. They’ve devised a system, of sorts: when Conner
bikes, he pulls Cayden behind him in a trailer, and pushes that trailer in
front of him when he runs. It may seem
that Cayden doesn’t contribute much to the effort, but when you watch them even
for a second, you’d see that really isn’t true. He clearly enjoys it. One of
his gifts is his smile and his laughter. Another is his bravery at undergoing
such a potentially dangerous situation for someone who isn’t really mobile.
At one point in an interview Conner says concerning Cayden: “He’s
the same inside as you or me…and he understands what you say about him…and if
people could race with people who can’t walk or talk or have any kind of
autism…it might open the eyes of people” who need to learn to care more. The
brothers never really cross the finish line first, but they finish first in
another sense, an unlikely lesson to the community of Christ’s followers about
sharing one another’s burdens, about honor and function within the body, and
about the true growth that comes from including everyone’s gifts within the
accomplishment of the whole.
Well, I’m pretty sure that’s not the exact lesson that the
high school Sunday School teachers were attempting to teach last Sunday as they
sent the students out to roam around the church building, but it is
nevertheless what I ended up getting out of it after I bumped into Mark, Amanda,
and Emma in the hall. It was a gift of happenstance, planned by the Spirit and
enabled, quite frankly, by our communal life together—bone to bone, flesh to
flesh, heart to heart—designed, you see, to bump into one another and learn
from one another on this great big triathlon because we are, after all, one
body. And individually members of it.
Boiler room.
Or Sunday School classroom.
Or sanctuary.
Or Cayden’s triathlon trailer.
All a part of Jesus Christ.
Thanks be to God.
The Reverend Phillip
W. Martin, Jr.
