Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Somewhere in my college days I took a course in Botany. We studied plants: leaves, and stems, and roots; how plants feed, how they process carbon dioxide and turn it into oxygen - that kind of thing. On the last day of the course, as part of the last lecture, the professor said, "Well, there is a new field out there which we're beginning to hear about. Maybe it'll amount to something, maybe it won't. It's called "ecology," and it has to do with how plants and animals interact with each other." I had never heard the word. But soon, of course, ecology would become master of the natural sciences. People would no longer study plants in one course (botany) and animals in another (zoology), as if they had nothing to do with each other, but would focus on nature's interactions. And, within the old disciplines (botany and zoology), we would no longer consider hard woods as if they were unrelated to conifers, or coyotes as if they were unrelated to rabbits. The whole universe is knit together, we discovered, in wonderful and complex patterns. There is a unity that transcends the differences.

One benefit of this new insight was that we saw how everything had its place, its use, in the overall scheme of things. Nothing was without value. Nothing was too small to be important. Mosses and ferns, insects, the fish of the sea and the birds of the air (as the Bible might put it) - everything grew and flourished in its own ecological niche, and everything helped provide a niche for something else. There was an interdependence in nature: everything needed everything, and therefore everything was important.

St. Paul sits down to write to his little church in Corinth, a tiny beachhead for Christ in an evil place (a church too small to matter, maybe even too small to survive, and - of all things -- fighting among themselves), and to address their divisiveness Paul creates an ecological model. The church, he says, like the human body, though all its parts are different, needs each part to be complete, to be healthy, to function. "The eye cannot say to the ear, 'I do not need thee.'" "The ear cannot say to the nose, 'I do not need thee,'" and so forth. Actually, Paul knew far less about the interdependence of the body than we. He knew nothing of the nervous system which carries messages from one part to another, nor of the blood stream which nourishes the whole, but he was right on: each part needed every other part. He was right about the body, and he was right about the church. The church, he said, was the body of Christ.

Many Christians in those early days were Jewish, by background. The Jews were considered, by the rest of the world, to be religious fanatics and self-righteous prudes. And Jewish Christians brought that image with them into the church. To be a Christian, they said, you had to do this, and you couldn't do that. You had to be circumcised. You had to wash your hands ritualistically before eating. You couldn't eat pork. Jewish rules. Gentile Christians, whose numbers were growing, on the other hand, came to church uncircumcised, with dirty hands and bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. No wonder these people had trouble getting along! And that is not to mention humankind's more common divisions: Rich verses poor. Free verses slave. Man verses women. Old verses young. To be a church, Paul said, we have to appreciate how each is organic to the whole. Every type of person is needed. All are invited and made welcome.

Paul's not talking about goopy love, nor about the need for better communication. What Paul is recommending is a studied effort to overcome and appreciate our differences and work together in love, and thus to be different from the rest of the world. Ado Annie sings:

Folks are dumb where I come from, They ain't had any learnin'. Still they're happy as can be Doin' what comes naturally.

Well, this kind of love and cooperation, that Paul says should characterize the church, doesn't come naturally. Nature's way is only to love, and only to cooperate with, people who are like us: same social class, same color, same philosophies, same age, same tribe. That's nature's way, the easy way. So Paul is calling for an unnatural act, something very difficult. We must not simply tolerate but we must appreciate our differences in this body of which Christ is the head.

There is an old Hebrew legend about a man who looked up one day, and in the distance saw a bear chasing him. He turned and ran full speed the other way, but when he looked back he could see that the bear was gaining on him (although he did realize now that it wasn't actually a bear; it was a tiger. A minute later he looked back again, and the tiger was even closer - but now he saw that it wasn't really a tiger; it was a wild dog. Finally, when the dog almost had him, he turned and realized that it wasn't really a dog; it was his brother. And they greeted each other. Things look fearsome when they are far away. When we get closer to the people we fear, they don't seem so threatening.

Within the church of Christ, we sometimes say things like, "Look at those orthodox Christians! They stand up all through the church service, even wander around. They worship icons - light candles before them." But when we get closer to the Eastern church, we understand that their worship is a beautiful expression of our common faith, and considerably older than ours. "Look at those Catholics!" we say. "They worship statues. They confess their sins and then go sin some more." But when we get closer to our Catholic brothers and sisters, we learn that they don't advocate such things. No good Catholic ever worshipped a statue or took confession lightly. "Look at those emotionless Episcopals, in their stone cold churches singing, under their breath, those stuffy old English hymns. No compassion. No feeling." Get closer to a good Episcopal, and you will see that his or her traditions are rich and wonderful. "Look at those Pentecostals! They roll all over the floor." Get closer and you will meet people who understand the power of the Holy Spirit, and could teach the rest of us a thing or two. The body is made up of different parts, with different functions, but each part needs the other.

The same applies, of course, not just to denominations but also to individuals within the church. We need each other's gifts and graces. A missionary to South Africa, some years ago, visited a leper colony. He saw two men planting peas. One had lost his hands to that ravaging disease, the other had lost his feet. So the man with feet carried the man with hands, on his back, and together they planted. The missionary came back to his homeland, and used that picture to illustrate how Christians must work together, in spite of differences, if we, as the church, are to plant the seed of God's word effectively. Those who are of this world love to see the church divided. It keeps them from having to face the claims of Jesus. Notice the reporters. Whenever they are interviewing Christian leaders, they ask about abortion and homosexuality. Why? Because they know that good Christians are divided on these issues, are struggling over them, and a good fight makes a good story. So by our divisiveness we ruin our witness to the world.

Our relationship to each other in the church is a very special and very different relationship. We do not paper over our differences, but appreciate the roles played by people of gifts and graces different from our own. If we are all being directed by Christ, who is the head of this body, all the parts of the body will be healthy in spite of our differences. May it be so in our church, and in the Church around the world!