The Body

1 Corinthians 12:11-31

Paul was not the first one to use the “one body, many parts” analogy. “The comparison between the body and societies was a rhetorical commonplace in the ancient world,” claims Richard Hays. But the way Paul uses the gospel of Jesus Christ to influence the meaning of this analogy was prior to unheard of. And it’s the power of the gospel that we’re interested in, right? So check this out: “this figure was ordinarily used to urge members of the subordinate classes to stay in their places in the social order and not to upset the natural equilibrium of the body by rebelling against their superiors.” So Paul’s audience has likely heard this analogy before, most likely in reference to Rome as the head over all other subservient members of the empire. Based on what we already learned last week--about the point that Paul is making in this section of the letter--we might be shocked that he would use such an analogy...until we see how he uses it.

He’s been talking about many gifts but one Spirit, many services but one Lord, many activities but the same God who activates all of them. In other words, he’s been talking about the importance of a diversity of gifts and the threat to healthy community that comes from assuming any of them to be more important than any other.

The New Testament lesson for this morning comes from the book of Luke, when Jesus returns to Galilee “filled with the Holy Spirit,” Luke writes. He starts preaching and teaching around the area and word about him quickly spreads. Then he returns to Nazareth, his hometown, and he goes to the Synagogue on the Sabbath and stands up to read Scripture from the scroll of 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."

Just like Paul is using an old analogy in a new way, Jesus decides to spice up these words of prophecy by looking up when he finished reading and proclaiming, “today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Gospel to the poor, release to captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed...this is world shaking stuff...to use Paul’s “body” language (no pun intended), Isaiah is speaking about the Spirit of God demolishing the inferiority complex of the previously termed “inferior members.” And then Jesus says, “yup, that’s what I am accomplishing here.” In less words, Jesus essentially tells the town who raised him about his goal to challenge their understanding of who is powerful, who is important, and who is in control. And these people chase Jesus out of town. They almost run him off a cliff, but it wasn’t yet his time to die.

Now, back to Paul’s use of this “one body, many parts” analogy. This analogy has been used by Rome to keep the poor in their place, keep the captives in chains, keep the blind in the dark, and oppress the ones who have always been oppressed. But Paul replaces the head. In place of Rome, Paul makes this bold claim: “you are members of Christ’s body.” In doing so, he transforms the function of the analogy to accomplish the very thing that Jesus told his hometown he had come to do. To steal some great words from Richard Hays, again, “[Paul] employs the analogy not to keep subordinates in their places but to urge more privileged members of the community to respect and value the contributions of those members who appear to be their inferiors, both in social status and in spiritual potency.”

Another thing I want us to think about in correlation with this: Caesar--the Emperor, the commander-in-chief of the Roman imperial army (or arms), the guy whose face was imprinted on money, which are the literal tokens of value for the empire--demanded to be addressed with the title of “Lord.” Last week’s text, which were the 11 verses immediately preceding today’s selection, included this line: “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” This was to say, in the midst of a military power and an economic structure that boasted otherwise, Caesar was not Lord. Caesar was not more important because he was wealthier and could tell the army what to do. Caesar sounds like exactly the kind of guy whose power and influence would have amassed a following of would-be loyalists whom he would want to be kept in the dark about this Gospel proclamation. Caesar sounds like exactly the kind of guy who wouldn’t want a lick of Isaiah’s prophecy to be fulfilled. Caesar was exactly the type of guy about whom Jesus said, “Give Caesar his due...but don’t give Caesar what belongs to God.”

And what belongs to God? The body. All of it. And unlike Caesar, God holds a different respect and value for each of the members. When I think of Caesar, I always think of Dr. Seuss’ “Yertle the Turtle,” whose definition of greatness had to do with just how many other turtles he could stack beneath himself.

"I'm ruler", said Yertle, "of all that I see. But I don't see enough. That's the trouble with me. With this stone for a throne, I look down on my pond But I cannot look down on the places beyond. This throne that I sit on is too, too low down. It ought to be higher!" he said with a frown. "If I could sit high, how much greater I'd be! What a king! I'd be ruler of all that I see!"

So Yertle stacked turtles and built up a throne, built up an illusion of power and importance, and he loved it...until the stack beneath him started to groan. Particularly through the voice of one plain little turtle named Mack who was:

Just a part of his throne. And this plain little turtle Looked up and he said, "Beg your pardon, King Yertle. I've pains in my back and my shoulders and knees. How long must we stand here, Your Majesty, please?"

"SILENCE!" the King of the Turtles barked back. "I'm king, and you're only a turtle named Mack."

See what Yertle implied is what Paul was fighting, this notion that those on the bottom belonged there because they were less important. He had no qualms with crushing them beneath his illusions of greatness because he didn’t regard them as valuable. But when God builds something up...well let’s wait, because Mack isn’t done, and I like what Mack does…

"Turtles! More turtles!" [Yertle] bellowed and brayed. And the turtles 'way down in the pond were afraid. They trembled. They shook. But they came. They obeyed. From all over the pond, they came swimming by dozens. Whole families of turtles, with uncles and cousins. And all of them stepped on the head of poor Mack. One after another, they climbed up the stack.

[Long story short, still that wasn’t enough.

Mack voiced a complaint, but soon was rebuffed…

By Yertle, or Caesar...whatever his name,

Who issued an order for more of the same:]

But, as Yertle, the Turtle King, lifted his hand And started to order and give the command, That plain little turtle below in the stack, That plain little turtle whose name was just Mack, Decided he'd taken enough. And he had. And that plain little lad got a little bit mad. And that plain little Mack did a plain little thing. He burped! And his burp shook the throne of the king!

Just as Yertle reminds me of Caesar, this “plain little turtle below in the stack” also jogs my memory. Jesus, God incarnate. The belief in ancient Rome was that god was incarnate in Caesar. The thought that God would choose to become incarnate in some poor Nazarite born out of wedlock was a vulgar suggestion...almost as vulgar as, say, a burp. To claim that Jesus is Lord, that Jesus is the head of the body, is to belch in the face of Caesar’s claim.

Have you ever considered, “Jesus is Lord!” to be a vulgar claim? Well it absolutely is. This quote of Richard Hays’ particularly challenged me: “The danger in the church today is that we will slide imperceptibly into a generic, self-indulgent religiosity in which anything that comes to us under the guise of ‘religion’ will be uncritically embraced.” This enables complete jerks to claim to be Christians, but as I said last week...our Christianity is authenticated by the love we show to others, not by the claims we make about it. Yertle made lots of claims about his greatness from the top of the stack...on account of what he could see. Jesus made lots of claims about greatness from the bottom of the stack where Yertle/Caesar had nailed him to a cross to make himself feel less threatened. But Yertle ended up king of the mud and Jesus ended up to be revealed as the true King of everyone who had been oppressed down on the bottom:

The poor and the captive, the blind and oppressed,

The sick and the lame, the outcast and depressed,

The sinners, the folks just like you and like me.

The folks who, by “burping”, Christ Jesus set free.

Jesus was revealed to be the Christ, not because he spent all his time at the top of the stack, not because he had made himself second in command to Caesar, but because Jesus spent all his time at the bottom. And Jesus burped...or did something just as crude...he revealed himself as God incarnate. God became human, lived out his life on the bottom of the stack, was crucified and resurrected. What a revelation!

This is not something that gods are supposed to do.

But the one, true God did it.

And by doing so, God brought good news to the poor, proclaimed release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, let the oppressed go free, and proclaimed the year of the Lord's favor...in order to demolish the inferiority complex of the previously termed “inferior members.”

God doesn’t create “inferior members,” we do, by buying into the hype of the stack and believing that greatness is a function of how high we can climb. Jesus redefined greatness as service to our neighbors, especially those whose health and happiness are snubbed by the stack. Don’t think that this just involves suffering with those who suffer, it also includes rejoicing with all who rejoice. This is Paul’s way of saying, “there’s still work to do, and it won’t always be easy...but it also won’t always be miserable.” When the gifts of the Spirit are allowed to be repressed by the will of any head other than Christ, there will be much suffering and misery. But when Christ is the head, when we strive for the greater gifts (that is: gifts which are being used to fulfill Jesus' definition of greatness), the body will be set free to exercise the gifts of the Spirit for the good of the whole, and there will be so much more to celebrate, and so many more with whom to rejoice. May it be so. Amen!