Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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On this day, when the Super Bowl is being played without our beloved Redskins.  In this week, talk of immorality rocked the White House.  But in this week, also, our persecuted Christian brothers and sisters in Cuba were permitted, for the first time in forty years, to receive the blessed sacrament in public -- at the hands of the Pope, no less.  And once more, in one small corner of the earth, religion triumphed over barbarism.

In the Body of Christ, We are All Different, and All Necessary

On this day and in this week, we open our Bible to the appointed text and find Paul's great picture of the Church.  He describes us as "the body of Christ."  In this way, he recognizes that, just as there are many different types of cells in the body, there is diversity among us.  At the same time, he emphasizes that just as the cells of the human body need each other to live, the church needs each of us to be fully alive. "If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?" What does this old analogy, so well-digested in Western thought, say to us and to our world?

In the Church, We Struggle to Resolve Divisive Issues

Let's remember the context: the tiny church which Paul had established earlier, at Corinth, now apparently has grown and prospered. It is a toehold for Christ in the pagan world. Paul, himself, has gone on to establish other beachheads, in other places, writing back now and then to Corinth to encourage his old friends in their faith. (Thank God they saved his letters!) Like all churches, the church in Corinth struggled with very real problems. They struggled not only with the outside world. (Christians will always fight that fight, and will inevitably win it.) But, far more serious, they struggled among themselves. The Jesus faith was new. Each divisive issue (that is to say, each human issue) had to be faced for the first time. There were no precedents to rely on, no Christian scriptures to refer to, no church next door where Christians could go and ask how they had handled this problem. Lots of internal issues to work out. How, for example, can Jews (puritanical, pietistic, kosher Jews) live under the same spiritual roof with the far more liberal living Gentiles -- with their bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches? How can a master worship with his slaves? What should the place of women be? (Still struggling with that one.)

We Bring to Our Church Different Gifts and Graces

And even if we get around these outward differences (differences of race, and class, and gender) what about differences within the faith? For no two people are found by Christ in exactly the same way. Nor is our response always the same. We bring to our church different gifts and graces. Some become teachers, some preachers, some speak in tongues, some heal. And (being human) there is the tendency to think of our way as the right way. Paul does not take sides. Instead, he insists that the church (which is the body of Christ) is a different kind of fellowship -- different from other earthly organizations, and full of differences within its own body. And that is not only o.k. -- it is good.

We are Brought Into the Church by Christ and are Led by Christ

Worldly organizations, other bodies, are usually based on common interests. Political parties, service clubs, trade associations, advocacy groups -- we form them to protect and advance certain shared values. There is strength in numbers. We join up and pay our dues. But we belong to this body (the body of Christ) not by paying dues but by baptism, and not because of common interests to be protected but because of common experiences and a common hope. And the head of this body, giving direction to the whole, is Jesus Christ. A different fellowship.

Suppose a large hospital were suddenly cut off from the rest of the world, say by some natural disaster. Patients of every stripe would be caught inside. Rich and poor would be there. Young and old. Male and female. Black and white. Jew and gentile. People who, in the work-a-day world, might not naturally associate with one another. They would have as their common bond not sameness but sickness, a need for wholeness and health. That is like the church. But there is a difference, also.  In the hospital, many of the key decisions are made by the doctors and nurses.  In the church, unlike the hospital, Jesus Christ helps us to build on our common bond and to learn to work together, utilizing and appreciating each other's talents and gifts. That is the church.

Christ Celebrates our Differences and Leads us into Harmony

It was Paul's genius to celebrate diversity -- not pandering to differences, not seeking to divide. No. He refers to differences as "gifts." (What a blessing it would be, today, if Americans would stop thinking of our differences as problems and begin thinking of them as gifts.) He said different types of Christians are like different body parts: eye, ear, hand, foot. All work together, directed by the head, which is Christ. If the game this afternoon is better than most Super Bowls, the teams will play as units, and all players will obey the commands of the coach. The tackle will not say to the center, "I do not need thee." Nor the passer to the kicker. Each has a different role, but there is unity of purpose. That makes a good football game. It also makes a good church, and a good world.

We are One Church, Even When Seemingly Divided by War

We're not even close to achieving that ideal (which is why we keep returning to Paul's analogy), but it does always amaze me how Jesus Christ is able to overcome so much human difference. David Lowe Watson, until recently a professor at Wesley Seminary, spoke to the members of our Covenant/Discipleship group. He told of a Sunday School teacher, back in his native Scotland, and of the great influence that simple Christian man had upon his life.

 "His name was David Turner," Watson told us, "and he had fought in the First World War." Now the First World War, you remember, was a long, bloody, in many ways senseless struggle. The suicide of Victorian Europe. The flower of each nation's youth, living in muddy trenches, a few hundred yards apart. When either army moved, a great slaughter would ensue. "At night the boys were given sentry duty, and that was the most dangerous of all, because the lines were very close, and the Germans were also sending out sentries in the dark. And if we met one we had to kill him before he killed us. One very foggy night," David Turner told his Sunday School class, he was on sentry duty when suddenly before him in the fog, close enough almost to touch, was a German officer with his pistol drawn. The German said, "My name is Hans Krug, I have a wife and three children, and I attend the Lutheran church in Hiedelburg, which is my home." Turner, too afraid even to think, answered almost automatically, "My name is David Turner. I have a wife and a young son. I go to the Wesley Chapel in Glasgow." And the German said quietly, "Well, then, my Christian brother, I suggest we say goodnight and agree that this meeting never took place." And he disappeared into the fog. The Lord overcomes differences. 

O where are kings and empires now,
Of old that went and came?
But, Lord, thy church is praying yet,
A thousand years the same.

Among the most moving stories of the American Civil War are recollections of Sunday mornings when, on one bank of a river, Union troops would be singing a hymn, and on the other bank Southerners would join in. Jesus overcomes. Today in Cuba. A few years ago in Poland. The overwhelming flood of world anger cannot wash away the waters of baptism. Different political parties, the same king. Different denominations, nationalities, races, genders, ages, the same Lord. Different Members of the Same Body

The Bible says that the soldiers who crucified Christ divided his possessions, but, coming to his robe and finding it to be of one piece, they cast lots for it. Sometimes the seamless robe of Christ is offered as a beautiful picture of the church. How wonderful it is to think of the church, and the world, as seamless. But, in truth, we are not all made of the same cloth. Paul's picture is even better: different members of the same body, which is the body of Christ.