1 Corinthians 12:12-27
Presented May 4, 2008, by J.D. Kline
The Seventh Sunday of Easter
The New Testament writers, with some frequency, remind us that we are given a high responsibility when we embrace life with Christ at the center. Indeed, the apostle Paul speaks of us as being “servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries” (1 Corinthians 4:1), “partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 3:6 RSV), “children of light” (Ephesians 5:8), “imitators of God” (Ephesians 5:1). The writer of the letter to the Hebrews asserts that we become “partners of Christ” (3:14), a phrase Eugene Peterson paraphrases in The Message, “We’re in this with Christ for the long haul.”
Given the fickleness of human nature, it’s really quite remarkable—isn’t it?—just how much trust God places in us, just how vulnerable God becomes in entrusting to us the proclamation of something markedly new unfolding in human life. Indeed, the poet W.H. Auden once questioned, “May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in God, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that faith is even more difficult for God than it is for us?” Nevertheless, this affirmation stands at the heart of the gospel—that you and I have been entrusted with a treasure, that you and I are in fact invited to be co-creators of God’s kingdom. You and I are called to live and proclaim a new reality of life in God’s realm; you and I are challenged to join with God in the ushering in of an age of peace and compassion, mercy and grace, justice and new life.
A little more than 2 months before being tragically assassinated, Martin Luther King, Jr. preached a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta entitled “The Drum Major Instinct,” in which he laments the very human tendency to use our gifts selfishly, concerning ourselves more with our own status and position in life than with how we might best serve our fellow human beings. King goes on to remind us that Jesus introduced a new definition of greatness, a new norm for our living based upon servanthood. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,” says Jesus, “and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all” (Mark 10:43).
“Everybody can be great,” preached King, “because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.”
The early Brethren emerged out of a time in church history when much of the church had grown sterile and cold, a time marked by theological rigidity and moral decay. Not surprisingly, then, voices began to be raised, yearning for more vital expressions of piety and spirituality. The Pietist movement urged many of the kinds of things we would now consider normal, but in the climate of that day, the Pietists were seen as threatening and radical in their call for gathering together in small groups for prayer and more intensive study of the Scriptures, for putting faith into practice in daily living, for greater involvement of laypersons in the life of the church, and for a focus on preaching that centers, not just on matters of doctrine, but on deepening the spiritual life and living faithfully as disciples of Jesus. Early Pietists focused significant attention on developing the personal aspects of spirituality, while also recognizing that the inner journey is to be lived out in a life of servanthood. One of their primary leaders, for example, a man named August Herman Francke, helped to institute orphanages, hospitals, schools, and mission societies.
Yet today, our faith is most alive as we seek to use our gifts in service one to another, as we seek to discern how it is that God is calling us to live and work for God’s glory and for the good of our neighbors. Psychologist and theologian John Neafsey, in his book A Sacred Voice is Calling, reminds us that the Latin root of the word obedience is audire, which means “to listen,” and then he goes on to assert,
In matters of conscience and calling, everything depends on our capacities to listen, discern, and follow the Voice [of God] . . . . Taking the risk of saying Yes to a call is itself a form of obedience, in the sense not of submitting to a law or expectation imposed upon us by external authority but of surrendering ourselves to the internal authority of our true self, our conscience, our secret heart.
It is a matter of training ourselves to listen to the right voices, those voices in the faith community and beyond who direct us toward the very Voice of God. Presbyterian author Frederick Buechner laments,
The world is full of people who seem to have listened to the wrong voice and are now engaged in life-work in which they find no pleasure or purpose and who run the risk of suddenly realizing some day that they have spent the only years they are ever going to get in this world doing something which could not matter less to themselves or to anyone else . . . work that seems simply irrelevant not only to the great human needs and issues of our time but also to their own need to grow and develop as humans.
A primary task of the church is to help one another recognize the gifts with which we have been blessed—gifts to be used not merely for our own sake, but for the good of the body. One of the apostle Paul’s favorite images for the church is that of the body of Christ, and in this morning’s lesson from 1 Corinthians 12 the apostle reminds us that there is no room in the body for elitism or spiritual snobbery, no place for believing that your gifts make you any more important than am I, nor that my gifts make me any more important that are you.
In his biblical commentary Paul for Everyone Tom Wright reminds us that Paul has borrowed a well-known image in the ancient world—this picture of the body as descriptive of a civic society, a living organism. But Paul makes the image dance to a different tune. Whereas Roman orators, in defining society as a body, used the image to suggest that different tasks and jobs carry different status levels, Paul, to the contrary, asserts that every single member of the body of Christ, whether their calling is high profile or low profile, whether their task appears more honorable or less honorable—every member is just as indispensable as any other. We need one another; we were created for relationship with one another; and each task is critical in enabling the body to function at its best.
Writes Paul, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:12-13). As a church body touched and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we are in the business of supporting, encouraging, strengthening, and challenging one another, drawing forth the best from each other. The church is to be a gift-evoking, gift-developing, gift-affirming community, a place where together we listen for the Voice that leads to the life that really is life—to life rich and abundant and full, life purposeful and grace-filled.
If we are to live out such a calling, the church’s task will never be simply to fill a ballot or a slate of positions. Much more, our task will be to assist one another in pondering the needs before us and asking how each one of us might more fully ready ourselves for the works of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, for embodying and proclaiming Christ’s new way of living. It is a matter of aiding one another to so discern the Voice of God, that we invest our energies and skills in those tasks that serve and enrich community life, even as they bring a sense of purpose and fulfillment to our own.
The early Christian leader Irenaeus once observed, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” Drawing upon that quotation, William Sloane Coffin laments those within the church body who “are more intent on quenching the bonfires of sin than on fanning the embers of creativity.” That is to say, our calling is not to lash out in judgment against one another, but to draw forth creative gifts that enrich and build up the body of Christ.
There’s an old story told of the sculptor Michelangelo pushing a huge rock down a street, A curious neighbor idly sitting on the porch of his house calls to the sculptor, asking why he would expend so much labor over an old piece of stone. Reportedly, Michelangelo responded, “Because there is an angel in that rock that wants to come out.” As members of the body of Christ, we are to be in the business of calling forth gifts from one another, discerning angels and artists, poets and organizers, leaders and prophets, pray-ers and servants among us. As Paul concludes this morning’s Scripture lesson, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (12:27)—members listening for those voices that direct us toward the Voice of God that leads to life, members discerning new purpose and direction for our living, members supporting, encouraging, upholding, challenging one another.
With the hymn writer let us pray to the living Spirit of God,
Now with the mind of Christ set us on fire,
that unity may be our great desire.
Give joy and peace, give faith to hear your call,
and readiness in each to work for all.
Amen.