Third Sunday After The Epiphany
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VII, Cycle C
Theme For The Day
The church as the body of Christ is dynamic, unified, and organic.
Old Testament Lesson
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Ezra Reads The Law To The People
Worship leaders who wish to show off their biblical pronunciation skills can read verses 1-10 as a complete unit; otherwise, it is well to follow the lectionary editors' lead and omit verses 4 and 7, which are little more than lists of names. This story is the high point of one of Israel's most significant religious reforms: the rediscovery of the law under Nehemiah, who was governor of Judah under the authority of the Persian emperor, Artaxerxes I. Nehemiah was a good ruler who restored safety and stability to Jerusalem, but the more significant religious figure is the scribe Ezra. This passage tells of the dramatic moment when Ezra, surrounded by the elders of Israel, publicly opens the Torah scroll for the first time and reads it aloud in the presence of the people. Although it is unclear to what degree the scriptures had literally been lost during the years of the exile, it is certainly true that they had been neglected. This ceremonial public reading, on a wooden platform constructed especially for the occasion, represents the people's conscious return to the ways of the Lord. It is an emotional moment: Nehemiah and Ezra must instruct the people not to weep (v. 9). They command feasting rather than sorrow (v. 10). Many today, informed by libertarian views, see the law as more of a nuisance than an asset. The tearful, penitent reaction of the citizens of Jerusalem gives us pause to consider the Jewish understanding of God's Law as a source of abundant life.
New Testament Lesson
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
The Body Of Christ
Here Paul introduces one of the richest and most meaningful metaphors in all of scripture: the church as the body of Christ. Using absurd humor, in which the various body parts argue amongst themselves as to whether or not they need each other, the apostle communicates the important point that the church's unity depends on each one of us. Hidden amidst the humor is an important principle for church life: "God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member" (v. 24). The healthy community looks after the welfare of its weakest members, sharing the burden of suffering as well as the joy of celebration.
The Gospel
Luke 4:14-21
Jesus In The Nazareth Synagogue
The lectionary continues its march through Luke's Gospel with this story of the beginning of Jesus' ministry. Verses 14-15 tell of his growing fame throughout Galilee, but when he reaches his hometown of Nazareth, things turn out badly. In the synagogue, he reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah a passage relating to the prophet's own commission from God: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news ..." (v. 18; Isaiah 61:1-2). This passage reminds us of Jesus' Jewish origins, and of his faithfulness to his own tradition. Luke relates how he reads from the scriptures and comments on them, "as was his custom." There is nothing unusual about that. Where Jesus diverges from tradition is his audacious comment, spoken from the authoritative rabbinical sitting position: "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." The lectionary passage abruptly ends here, but the story continues in next week's lection.
Preaching Possibilities
In 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, Paul provides his vision for Christian leadership. In last week's lectionary selection, he reminds the quarrelsome Corinthians how they have all received different gifts by the Spirit, to use for the common good. Now, as we continue on in the twelfth chapter, Paul illustrates his point with a very famous image.
It's a very common image, the image of the human body: "You are the body of Christ, and individually members of it." It's an image that's dynamic, unified, and organic.
First, Paul's vision for the church is dynamic. "Dynamic" comes from the Greek word dunamis, or power. Something that's dynamic moves; it accomplishes; it achieves; it makes a difference. If we call someone a "dynamic" speaker, or if we admire a friend with a "dynamic" personality, we mean the person is lively, always in motion, never boring.
They say that when Thomas Edison first demonstrated his new invention, the "motion picture," folks were amazed. Here, for the first time, was something that seemed impossible: photographs that moved. The pictures most people knew back then were stiff, formal affairs. The family in the portrait assumed a rigid, unsmiling pose, then held their breath while the photographer counted off the seconds for the exposure to take place. The last thing you wanted, in those old-fashioned photos, was someone moving. It blurred the picture. The very word "photograph" had become synonymous with "stiff," "still," "motionless."
All that changed with "the movies" -- as Edison's new invention came to be called. It hardly mattered, in those early days, what the "movie" was about. Edison's first feature, "The Great Train Robbery," is grainy and amateurish. As the desperados rob the train, the actors' motions are jerky, their expressions wooden, the stunts unrealistic. But, Americans packed theaters from one end of the country to the other to see it. The fact that those pictures moved at all was endlessly fascinating.
Paul's image of the body of Christ is equally dynamic. He could have described the church in any one of a number of ways, but instead he chooses an image that moves; that acts; that makes a difference in the world. Yet how often, instead, do we imagine the church as something whose whole purpose is not to move -- a rock-solid institution that stays eternally the same; a great stone dike, holding back the turbulent tides of change?
There are times when the church does need to be a fortress, an archive of tradition. That's what it was during the dark ages, and in eastern Europe in the late twentieth century -- but that can never be its primary purpose. Always the church needs to be out there ahead of the community, having an impact on the world.
Presbyterian missionary, Dick Gibson, tells a marvelous story from his days in Cairo, Egypt, in the early 1970s. On a street called "Alley of the Water Carriers" -- a desperately poor neighborhood, with few modern conveniences -- a church had requested a film on the life of Christ. The missionaries drove there, set up a screen in the sanctuary and turned on the projector.
That was when the fun started. As the church's neighbors in this poor Muslim neighborhood walked by, and saw the image of Jesus moving and speaking on the screen, there was pandemonium. It was the first movie most of those people had seen. One of the women, who had entered the church out of curiosity, came bursting out the door and down the steps, shouting to all her neighbors, "Come and see! Come and see -- they've got Jesus in the church!"
Although it was the technology that amazed those Egyptians, wouldn't it be something if the neighbors of every Christian church could say that: "Come and see -- they've got Jesus in the church"? That's one great hallmark of Paul's vision of the body of Christ: it moves, demonstrating that Christ is alive in the world today.
The second characteristic of the body of Christ is that it is unified. Paul makes a great deal of the fact that the body is made up of many members. Each one has its own function; but each one is also intimately connected to the others.
Can the eye say to the hand, "I have no need of you"? Of course not! It's an absurdity. Can the head dismiss the feet, saying, "I have no need of you"? If the head could do such a thing, how would it ever get around? Each of us have different gifts, but our individual gifts are of little value unless we use them in cooperation with others.
Too often, we think of the church not as a congregation, but as an aggregation of individuals. We assume (as did the Greek philosophers of old) that the basic building block of the body politic is the individual -- that, when it comes to human organizations, each of us is a free and independent agent, able to join or leave as he or she sees fit.
"Don't like your church? Is the preacher boring? Is the choir out of tune? Find another! Exercise your individual rights!" Paul could never think that way. To him, we are intimately joined to one another -- bound together at the joints and sinews, linked by networks of blood vessels, animated by neural energy that sparks across the synapses. Can one part of the body be excised, removed, set up in an independent existence? Of course not! In Christ we are all one (though we differ in talents and spiritual gifts).
The life of the body, therefore, is an exercise in unity. It isn't always easy to set aside our individual wants and priorities, to give ourselves for the good of the community. Yet that is exactly what Paul calls us to do.
The third characteristic of the body of Christ is that it is organic. We're not talking health foods and compost here; we're using the word "organic" in the technical sense, as something that lives and grows. In the church, we are about the business of nurturing new life -- of passing on to others the life we have received in Christ.
The southern preacher and social prophet, Clarence Jordan, speaks about Christian discipleship as the planting of seeds:
"We loose the seeds of mercy upon the world. They do the work. We are the bearers and sowers of the kingdom of God, not the architects. God has scattered us in the same way that we are to scatter His truth. But we also are the seed of the kingdom. The leaven that is placed within the meal is the leaven of our own witness. We are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.... So we do not merely observe the gradual process of the kingdom coming, we also participate by losing our lives."
The church of Jesus Christ is one great organism, a life-form reaching out to enfold the world in love. That means that, like any living thing, the church can suffer illness. If there happens to be an infection -- if one of our number is suffering -- we all suffer. From time to time, viruses -- conflicts -- can ravage our common life. Then we experience chills and fever (in extreme cases, maybe even hallucinations).
If we are to enjoy good health as a living organism, there are certain things we need to do. We must take care, for example, not to neglect our spiritual exercise -- worshiping regularly, cultivating disciplines of private prayer. A proper spiritual diet is essential -- neither gorging ourselves on the saccharine sweetness of overly sentimental, "feel-good" religion, nor on the junk food of "gospel of success" preachers (who whisper seductively that if we but send in a contribution, God will reward us with material prosperity).
You and I must, in short, pursue the things that make for health. If we find ourselves, as a church, in ill health, there is no magical pill or gimmick that will put things right. It is the basics of worship, fellowship, mission, education that make the difference.
The organic nature of the church also means that death is a part of this bodily life of ours. In the human body, cells are constantly dying and being replaced by new ones; so the individual members of the body of Christ rise up and pass away in their time. When one of our number enters "the church triumphant," you and I may mourn their passing -- yet at the same time, we can rejoice in the truth that the body of Christ lives on -- and that, in the love of Christ, the individual lives on, too, in the heavenly places.
Dynamic, unified, organic: such is the body of Christ, which is the church.
Prayer For The Day
Lord, we are fearfully and wonderfully made:
not only we ourselves,
but also we as the church,
the body of Christ,
the community of those who are called out
and sent forth to serve.
Help us to remember
to look not only to our own interests,
but also to the interests of those
beside whom you have called us to live in community.
In the name of Jesus,
to whom we are connected:
bone and sinew,
nerve and muscle,
heart and hand. Amen.
To Illustrate
Here's one for the sports fans:
For the team is one and has many players, and all the players of the team, though many, are one team ... Indeed the team does not consist of one player, but of many. If the defensive end would say, "Because I am not the quarterback, I do not belong to the team," that would not make him any less a part of the team. And if the right tackle would say, "Because I am not a wide receiver, I do not belong to the team," that would not make him any less a part of the team. If the whole team were tackles, where would the running backs be? If the whole team were running backs, where would the kickers be? And if the whole team were kickers, where would the cornerbacks be? But as it is, the coach has arranged the players of the team, each one of them, as he chose. If all were quarterbacks, where would the team be? As it is, there are many players, yet one team. The quarterback cannot say to the tackle, "I don't need you." Nor can the defensive ends say to the running backs, "We don't need you." On the contrary ... if one player suffers, the team suffers together with him; if one player is honored, the team rejoices with him.
***
Anyone who's been in parish ministry any length of time has learned to appreciate the wonderful impact of common, everyday tasks, performed by ordinary people. So did the American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson and his son found themselves occupied one day, for a half-hour or so, trying to force a calf into a barn. Not being from the farm, they struggled and wrestled, they pushed and shoved -- but no way, no how was that calf going into the barn.
Finally, they gave up. A farmhand (who had been watching the whole scene with barely concealed amusement) walked over, stuck his finger in a pail of milk, and placed it in the calf's mouth. Without so much as a "moo" of objection, the calf cheerfully followed the man right into the barn.
Emerson walked back to the farmhouse, washed the barnyard smell off his hands, and wrote in his diary: "I like people who can do things." Belonging to the body is about doing things, according to the gifts we have all been given.
***
Once there was a church that decided to have a "work day," on which members showed up to do heavy cleaning and light maintenance on the church building. A general call went out for volunteers. "The usual suspects" showed up, of course -- the ones who had performed that project year after year, time out of mind.
One other person showed up, as well -- a new member. She brought with her the mop and bucket of cleaning supplies that volunteers had been asked to bring. The newcomer announced her presence, saying to the ones who appeared to be in charge, "Here I am, what do you want me to do?"
No one paid her much attention, beyond the superficial greetings. The longtime members went about their accustomed tasks, laughing and socializing with each other, but no one went out of their way to welcome the newcomer, to put her talents to work. She went home that day wondering if there was a place for her in that church.
There is a happy ending to the story. Fortunately, with a little persistence, this woman quickly found out there was a place for her, that her cool reception that day had been a fluke. Yet, were it not for her persistence, she might never have broken through the ties of familiarity and friendship that were serving as an unintentional barrier.
***
Once there was a Christian visitor who entered a Jewish temple, at the invitation of a friend. He was sitting there, trying to make sense of the unfamiliar service, when after a time he heard the rabbi begin his sermon.
"You remember," the rabbi began, "that when we were in the wilderness...." Then it dawned on the visitor that this rabbi was talking not about anything that had happened last week, or last year, or even last century -- but about the people of Israel, wandering in the wilderness after having escaped Pharaoh's armies. Yet the way the rabbi talked about it, it was as though it had happened yesterday: as though everyone seated in that sanctuary had tasted the manna and drunk water from the rock. There was a sense of unity to that religious community, a shared tradition so strong, it overcame the boundaries not only of space, but also of time!
***
In his book, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Phillip Yancey describes the way a human body functions -- and sometimes malfunctions. He goes on to discuss the way these functions parallel the work of the church, which as the Bible tells us, is the body of Christ.
Many of us, Yancey says, assume that the brain serves as something of a biological dictator. It tells the body what to do. But that's not the whole story. The brain does tell the body what to do, but at the most basic cellular level each individual cell has a certain amount of freedom to do what it finds best.
For example, if the brain says to move the leg but that leg is too badly injured, the muscle cells will not move it. Or, if the brain tells the hand to open a door knob, but the knob turns out to be red-hot because there's a fire on the other side of the door, the hand muscles won't obey.
Yet, even here, things aren't simple and straightforward. It is still possible for the brain to override the hand muscles' reluctance. If the brain knew, for example, that grabbing a red-hot door knob was the only way to escape a burning building, the brain will override the hand muscles and command the hand to do something that will cause it harm, for the greater good of the whole body.
Yancey's point is that freedom is structured into us at the most basic cellular level; indeed, it seems to be one of the laws of God's universe. In a healthy body, that freedom is always exercised for the benefit of the body as a whole, although in some forms of sickness certain parts of the body or renegade cells may turn on the rest to serve only their own interests. Even so, that ideal of responsible freedom is always there, as God's intention for us.
-- Paul Brand and Philip Yancey, Fearfully And Wonderfully Made (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1980)
The church as the body of Christ is dynamic, unified, and organic.
Old Testament Lesson
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Ezra Reads The Law To The People
Worship leaders who wish to show off their biblical pronunciation skills can read verses 1-10 as a complete unit; otherwise, it is well to follow the lectionary editors' lead and omit verses 4 and 7, which are little more than lists of names. This story is the high point of one of Israel's most significant religious reforms: the rediscovery of the law under Nehemiah, who was governor of Judah under the authority of the Persian emperor, Artaxerxes I. Nehemiah was a good ruler who restored safety and stability to Jerusalem, but the more significant religious figure is the scribe Ezra. This passage tells of the dramatic moment when Ezra, surrounded by the elders of Israel, publicly opens the Torah scroll for the first time and reads it aloud in the presence of the people. Although it is unclear to what degree the scriptures had literally been lost during the years of the exile, it is certainly true that they had been neglected. This ceremonial public reading, on a wooden platform constructed especially for the occasion, represents the people's conscious return to the ways of the Lord. It is an emotional moment: Nehemiah and Ezra must instruct the people not to weep (v. 9). They command feasting rather than sorrow (v. 10). Many today, informed by libertarian views, see the law as more of a nuisance than an asset. The tearful, penitent reaction of the citizens of Jerusalem gives us pause to consider the Jewish understanding of God's Law as a source of abundant life.
New Testament Lesson
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
The Body Of Christ
Here Paul introduces one of the richest and most meaningful metaphors in all of scripture: the church as the body of Christ. Using absurd humor, in which the various body parts argue amongst themselves as to whether or not they need each other, the apostle communicates the important point that the church's unity depends on each one of us. Hidden amidst the humor is an important principle for church life: "God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member" (v. 24). The healthy community looks after the welfare of its weakest members, sharing the burden of suffering as well as the joy of celebration.
The Gospel
Luke 4:14-21
Jesus In The Nazareth Synagogue
The lectionary continues its march through Luke's Gospel with this story of the beginning of Jesus' ministry. Verses 14-15 tell of his growing fame throughout Galilee, but when he reaches his hometown of Nazareth, things turn out badly. In the synagogue, he reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah a passage relating to the prophet's own commission from God: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news ..." (v. 18; Isaiah 61:1-2). This passage reminds us of Jesus' Jewish origins, and of his faithfulness to his own tradition. Luke relates how he reads from the scriptures and comments on them, "as was his custom." There is nothing unusual about that. Where Jesus diverges from tradition is his audacious comment, spoken from the authoritative rabbinical sitting position: "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." The lectionary passage abruptly ends here, but the story continues in next week's lection.
Preaching Possibilities
In 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, Paul provides his vision for Christian leadership. In last week's lectionary selection, he reminds the quarrelsome Corinthians how they have all received different gifts by the Spirit, to use for the common good. Now, as we continue on in the twelfth chapter, Paul illustrates his point with a very famous image.
It's a very common image, the image of the human body: "You are the body of Christ, and individually members of it." It's an image that's dynamic, unified, and organic.
First, Paul's vision for the church is dynamic. "Dynamic" comes from the Greek word dunamis, or power. Something that's dynamic moves; it accomplishes; it achieves; it makes a difference. If we call someone a "dynamic" speaker, or if we admire a friend with a "dynamic" personality, we mean the person is lively, always in motion, never boring.
They say that when Thomas Edison first demonstrated his new invention, the "motion picture," folks were amazed. Here, for the first time, was something that seemed impossible: photographs that moved. The pictures most people knew back then were stiff, formal affairs. The family in the portrait assumed a rigid, unsmiling pose, then held their breath while the photographer counted off the seconds for the exposure to take place. The last thing you wanted, in those old-fashioned photos, was someone moving. It blurred the picture. The very word "photograph" had become synonymous with "stiff," "still," "motionless."
All that changed with "the movies" -- as Edison's new invention came to be called. It hardly mattered, in those early days, what the "movie" was about. Edison's first feature, "The Great Train Robbery," is grainy and amateurish. As the desperados rob the train, the actors' motions are jerky, their expressions wooden, the stunts unrealistic. But, Americans packed theaters from one end of the country to the other to see it. The fact that those pictures moved at all was endlessly fascinating.
Paul's image of the body of Christ is equally dynamic. He could have described the church in any one of a number of ways, but instead he chooses an image that moves; that acts; that makes a difference in the world. Yet how often, instead, do we imagine the church as something whose whole purpose is not to move -- a rock-solid institution that stays eternally the same; a great stone dike, holding back the turbulent tides of change?
There are times when the church does need to be a fortress, an archive of tradition. That's what it was during the dark ages, and in eastern Europe in the late twentieth century -- but that can never be its primary purpose. Always the church needs to be out there ahead of the community, having an impact on the world.
Presbyterian missionary, Dick Gibson, tells a marvelous story from his days in Cairo, Egypt, in the early 1970s. On a street called "Alley of the Water Carriers" -- a desperately poor neighborhood, with few modern conveniences -- a church had requested a film on the life of Christ. The missionaries drove there, set up a screen in the sanctuary and turned on the projector.
That was when the fun started. As the church's neighbors in this poor Muslim neighborhood walked by, and saw the image of Jesus moving and speaking on the screen, there was pandemonium. It was the first movie most of those people had seen. One of the women, who had entered the church out of curiosity, came bursting out the door and down the steps, shouting to all her neighbors, "Come and see! Come and see -- they've got Jesus in the church!"
Although it was the technology that amazed those Egyptians, wouldn't it be something if the neighbors of every Christian church could say that: "Come and see -- they've got Jesus in the church"? That's one great hallmark of Paul's vision of the body of Christ: it moves, demonstrating that Christ is alive in the world today.
The second characteristic of the body of Christ is that it is unified. Paul makes a great deal of the fact that the body is made up of many members. Each one has its own function; but each one is also intimately connected to the others.
Can the eye say to the hand, "I have no need of you"? Of course not! It's an absurdity. Can the head dismiss the feet, saying, "I have no need of you"? If the head could do such a thing, how would it ever get around? Each of us have different gifts, but our individual gifts are of little value unless we use them in cooperation with others.
Too often, we think of the church not as a congregation, but as an aggregation of individuals. We assume (as did the Greek philosophers of old) that the basic building block of the body politic is the individual -- that, when it comes to human organizations, each of us is a free and independent agent, able to join or leave as he or she sees fit.
"Don't like your church? Is the preacher boring? Is the choir out of tune? Find another! Exercise your individual rights!" Paul could never think that way. To him, we are intimately joined to one another -- bound together at the joints and sinews, linked by networks of blood vessels, animated by neural energy that sparks across the synapses. Can one part of the body be excised, removed, set up in an independent existence? Of course not! In Christ we are all one (though we differ in talents and spiritual gifts).
The life of the body, therefore, is an exercise in unity. It isn't always easy to set aside our individual wants and priorities, to give ourselves for the good of the community. Yet that is exactly what Paul calls us to do.
The third characteristic of the body of Christ is that it is organic. We're not talking health foods and compost here; we're using the word "organic" in the technical sense, as something that lives and grows. In the church, we are about the business of nurturing new life -- of passing on to others the life we have received in Christ.
The southern preacher and social prophet, Clarence Jordan, speaks about Christian discipleship as the planting of seeds:
"We loose the seeds of mercy upon the world. They do the work. We are the bearers and sowers of the kingdom of God, not the architects. God has scattered us in the same way that we are to scatter His truth. But we also are the seed of the kingdom. The leaven that is placed within the meal is the leaven of our own witness. We are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.... So we do not merely observe the gradual process of the kingdom coming, we also participate by losing our lives."
The church of Jesus Christ is one great organism, a life-form reaching out to enfold the world in love. That means that, like any living thing, the church can suffer illness. If there happens to be an infection -- if one of our number is suffering -- we all suffer. From time to time, viruses -- conflicts -- can ravage our common life. Then we experience chills and fever (in extreme cases, maybe even hallucinations).
If we are to enjoy good health as a living organism, there are certain things we need to do. We must take care, for example, not to neglect our spiritual exercise -- worshiping regularly, cultivating disciplines of private prayer. A proper spiritual diet is essential -- neither gorging ourselves on the saccharine sweetness of overly sentimental, "feel-good" religion, nor on the junk food of "gospel of success" preachers (who whisper seductively that if we but send in a contribution, God will reward us with material prosperity).
You and I must, in short, pursue the things that make for health. If we find ourselves, as a church, in ill health, there is no magical pill or gimmick that will put things right. It is the basics of worship, fellowship, mission, education that make the difference.
The organic nature of the church also means that death is a part of this bodily life of ours. In the human body, cells are constantly dying and being replaced by new ones; so the individual members of the body of Christ rise up and pass away in their time. When one of our number enters "the church triumphant," you and I may mourn their passing -- yet at the same time, we can rejoice in the truth that the body of Christ lives on -- and that, in the love of Christ, the individual lives on, too, in the heavenly places.
Dynamic, unified, organic: such is the body of Christ, which is the church.
Prayer For The Day
Lord, we are fearfully and wonderfully made:
not only we ourselves,
but also we as the church,
the body of Christ,
the community of those who are called out
and sent forth to serve.
Help us to remember
to look not only to our own interests,
but also to the interests of those
beside whom you have called us to live in community.
In the name of Jesus,
to whom we are connected:
bone and sinew,
nerve and muscle,
heart and hand. Amen.
To Illustrate
Here's one for the sports fans:
For the team is one and has many players, and all the players of the team, though many, are one team ... Indeed the team does not consist of one player, but of many. If the defensive end would say, "Because I am not the quarterback, I do not belong to the team," that would not make him any less a part of the team. And if the right tackle would say, "Because I am not a wide receiver, I do not belong to the team," that would not make him any less a part of the team. If the whole team were tackles, where would the running backs be? If the whole team were running backs, where would the kickers be? And if the whole team were kickers, where would the cornerbacks be? But as it is, the coach has arranged the players of the team, each one of them, as he chose. If all were quarterbacks, where would the team be? As it is, there are many players, yet one team. The quarterback cannot say to the tackle, "I don't need you." Nor can the defensive ends say to the running backs, "We don't need you." On the contrary ... if one player suffers, the team suffers together with him; if one player is honored, the team rejoices with him.
***
Anyone who's been in parish ministry any length of time has learned to appreciate the wonderful impact of common, everyday tasks, performed by ordinary people. So did the American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson and his son found themselves occupied one day, for a half-hour or so, trying to force a calf into a barn. Not being from the farm, they struggled and wrestled, they pushed and shoved -- but no way, no how was that calf going into the barn.
Finally, they gave up. A farmhand (who had been watching the whole scene with barely concealed amusement) walked over, stuck his finger in a pail of milk, and placed it in the calf's mouth. Without so much as a "moo" of objection, the calf cheerfully followed the man right into the barn.
Emerson walked back to the farmhouse, washed the barnyard smell off his hands, and wrote in his diary: "I like people who can do things." Belonging to the body is about doing things, according to the gifts we have all been given.
***
Once there was a church that decided to have a "work day," on which members showed up to do heavy cleaning and light maintenance on the church building. A general call went out for volunteers. "The usual suspects" showed up, of course -- the ones who had performed that project year after year, time out of mind.
One other person showed up, as well -- a new member. She brought with her the mop and bucket of cleaning supplies that volunteers had been asked to bring. The newcomer announced her presence, saying to the ones who appeared to be in charge, "Here I am, what do you want me to do?"
No one paid her much attention, beyond the superficial greetings. The longtime members went about their accustomed tasks, laughing and socializing with each other, but no one went out of their way to welcome the newcomer, to put her talents to work. She went home that day wondering if there was a place for her in that church.
There is a happy ending to the story. Fortunately, with a little persistence, this woman quickly found out there was a place for her, that her cool reception that day had been a fluke. Yet, were it not for her persistence, she might never have broken through the ties of familiarity and friendship that were serving as an unintentional barrier.
***
Once there was a Christian visitor who entered a Jewish temple, at the invitation of a friend. He was sitting there, trying to make sense of the unfamiliar service, when after a time he heard the rabbi begin his sermon.
"You remember," the rabbi began, "that when we were in the wilderness...." Then it dawned on the visitor that this rabbi was talking not about anything that had happened last week, or last year, or even last century -- but about the people of Israel, wandering in the wilderness after having escaped Pharaoh's armies. Yet the way the rabbi talked about it, it was as though it had happened yesterday: as though everyone seated in that sanctuary had tasted the manna and drunk water from the rock. There was a sense of unity to that religious community, a shared tradition so strong, it overcame the boundaries not only of space, but also of time!
***
In his book, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Phillip Yancey describes the way a human body functions -- and sometimes malfunctions. He goes on to discuss the way these functions parallel the work of the church, which as the Bible tells us, is the body of Christ.
Many of us, Yancey says, assume that the brain serves as something of a biological dictator. It tells the body what to do. But that's not the whole story. The brain does tell the body what to do, but at the most basic cellular level each individual cell has a certain amount of freedom to do what it finds best.
For example, if the brain says to move the leg but that leg is too badly injured, the muscle cells will not move it. Or, if the brain tells the hand to open a door knob, but the knob turns out to be red-hot because there's a fire on the other side of the door, the hand muscles won't obey.
Yet, even here, things aren't simple and straightforward. It is still possible for the brain to override the hand muscles' reluctance. If the brain knew, for example, that grabbing a red-hot door knob was the only way to escape a burning building, the brain will override the hand muscles and command the hand to do something that will cause it harm, for the greater good of the whole body.
Yancey's point is that freedom is structured into us at the most basic cellular level; indeed, it seems to be one of the laws of God's universe. In a healthy body, that freedom is always exercised for the benefit of the body as a whole, although in some forms of sickness certain parts of the body or renegade cells may turn on the rest to serve only their own interests. Even so, that ideal of responsible freedom is always there, as God's intention for us.
-- Paul Brand and Philip Yancey, Fearfully And Wonderfully Made (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1980)
