January 26, 2025, 3rd Sunday After the Epiphany
“Being the Body”
Psalm 19:1-14; Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:27-31a; Luke 4:16-30
Order of Morning Prayer, p. 235
Hymns: #644 “The Church’s One Foundation”; #409 “Hail, O Source of Every Blessing”; #654 “Your Kingdom, O God, Is My Glorious Treasure”; #707 “Oh, That the Lord Would Guide My Ways”; #664 “Fight the Good Fight”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.
Have you ever noticed how what effects one part of these bodies of ours affects all the other parts? When your back hurts, you hurt all over… If your feet are cold, put on your hat… Cold hands, warm heart… Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face… Feed a cold and starve a fever… When one part of the body suffers, all the other parts suffer with it. And have you ever noticed how our state of mind and feelings and emotions affect our physical health? When the heart is sick, the body suffers… Hope deferred makes the heart sick…
In 1 Corinthians 12, St. Paul makes the comparison between these bodies of ours, and the Body of Christ, the Church. Talking about our bodies, he says our bodies work best when all our parts are working together; when the brain is being the brain, and the heart is being the heart, and the hands and feet are doing what the hands and feet do. If my hands and feet decide to quit working, the rest of my body isn’t going to go very far, very fast. If my ears or my eyes cease to function, I’m going to be deaf and blind, and have a hard time getting around. If any of my parts quit doing what I hope and expect they’re going to do, all my other parts are going to suffer as well. “But in fact,” says Paul, “God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as He wanted them to be.”
And now, says Paul, these bodies of ours our just like this Body of Christ, this Church. Here also, God arranges things just as He wants them to be. We’ve all been given different gifts and a different part to play in this Body – different jobs to do with our various parts. To each of us, says Paul, “the manifestation of the Spirit has been given for the common good.” “There are different gifts, but the same Spirit,” Paul says. And he goes on to list some of the greater gifts God has given His people to use in His Church. Some of us have the gift of spiritual knowledge, of knowing the Bible and understanding what it says; a precious gift that is, and one to be shared. Some of us have the gift of extraordinary faith, a gift that allows us to strengthen and encourage the faith of those around us, a gift to “accentuate the positive” and point others to God. If you have that gift, oh, does this Body need you.
Paul mentions the gift of miraculous healings, and the gift of working miracles and speaking prophecy. Some say those particular gifts disappeared with the last of the apostles; I’m not so sure about that, since I’ve seen some wonderful and miraculous things happen myself. I think Paul counts those things among the greater gifts, because they’ve always been somewhat rare. God apportions His gifts as they’re needed, in particular times and places. The Spirit blows where the Spirit will; God will do what God will do.
And then Paul mentions the gift of speaking in different kinds of tongues, and interpreting tongues. Literally, that’s the gift of languages, the ability to hear other languages and understand them, and to speak other languages and make them understood. In the case of Pentecost and the early Church, tongues were an immediate gift of the Holy Spirit, a “blowing in on the wind” kind of thing. These days, it’s more something that happens with study and hard work, if God had given you the talent for it. If you’re called to be a missionary or a Bible translator, “tongues” is a blessed and useful gift in God’s Church. If you have that gift, you should certainly use it for God.
Those are just some of God’s greater gifts that He gives to His people and distributes in the Body as He sees fit. There are other gifts, too, gifts that could be seen by some as lesser gifts, but are no less important. All God’s gifts are “the work of one and the same Spirit,” Paul says, “and He gives them to each one, just as He determines.” That puts the pastors or bishops or elders or leaders of the Church on an equal footing with those who teach the children, or mow the lawn, or move the snow, or who clean the restrooms or fix things when they’re broken. This Body needs us all.
Now, in the part of 1 Corinthians that we read from this morning, Paul says, “You are the Body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” Who is “you?” Who is Paul addressing, who is he writing to? “You” is the Church in Corith, and the people who made up that particular Church. And since this letter was a circular letter, meant to be passed around and read in all the churches; and since it’s a divinely inspired letter, meant to be included in Scripture and read and passed down through the ages, Paul is also writing to you, and to me, and to each and every one of us.
YOU are the Body of Christ, Paul says. You’re meant to do much more than just represent or symbolize the Body of Christ in this world. Since Christ isn’t here in the flesh today, you, little Church, are His Body, His touchable flesh, the living, touchable presence of Jesus in this neighborhood, in this community, and in the world around us; and each one of you here is a member, a limb, an appendage, a particular part of it, whether you’re an arm or a leg, or an eye of an ear, or a something else. Isn’t that a monumental thing? You’re not only a part, but an indispensable part, of helping this holy Body to function as it should. The only way we’re going to reach out into the world as we should, and walk where we need to walk, and say to the world around us what needs to be said, in any effective way, is if all of us turn our hearts to being whatever part God has called us to be. Pastor, what’s my part? I can’t answer that for you. Open your Bible and find the answer in His Word. Pray about it with all your heart. Ask Him and He’ll tell you soon enough; and I pray that your heart will be open to what He has to say.
“And in the Church,” says Paul, “God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues.” Wonderful! God gives all kinds of spiritual gifts, from the greater ones to the lesser ones (which aren’t really lesser ones, just different ones), all arranged by Him for the blessing, health, and prosperity of His Body, the Church. All parts necessary, all gifts needed and beautiful, all of us working together for good.
Not everyone, says Paul, can be an apostle, or a teacher, or a miracle worker. That would be like a Body where everyone wants to be the head or the heart, but no one is willing to be a hand or a foot. (There’s a cartoon where the villain of the piece is a brain in a jar; and super-brained and intelligent as he is, he still can’t go anywhere without someone having to carry him). “Do all have gifts of healing?” asks Paul. “Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?” Can everyone here be a prophet? Should all of us be able to speak in tongues, and do it all at once? Should we have five or ten or twenty pastors, all talking at the same time? That would make for an exciting Sunday morning (and a long one!), but none of us would learn much. No, we’ll let God do the calling, and the arranging, and distribute His gifts in the way He in His wisdom decides is best.
Paul says here that we, the members of this Body, should “eagerly desire the greater gifts.” One could interpret that to mean that we should all be trying for the greater and rarer gifts, that we should all be aspiring to be prophets and pastors and teachers, that we should all be walking around doing miracles and speaking in tongues. But I don’t think that’s what he means. Paul goes on to explain, in the rest of this wonderful chapter of 1st Corinthians, what he considers the greatest of spiritual gifts to be. He says, “And now I will show you the most excellent way.” And his excellent way is love, without which all the other gifts will have no value.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 that even if I could speak and preach like an angel, without love I’d only be making noise. And if could interpret the past for you, and prophecy your future, and if I have faith strong enough to throw a mountain into the sea, but I didn’t have love, I wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything worthwhile at all. If I gave everything I have to the poor, if I sacrificed this body of mine for the sake of some great cause or purpose or idea, but there was no love in it, I might as well have stayed home. Faith, hope, and love are the greatest of God’s gifts, Paul says, because they’re universal gifts, gifts God gives to every Christian, and the ones we should be most eagerly desiring and praying for, and the things that will make this Body live and breathe and grow.
Jesus, in our Gospel, stood up in that synagogue in Nazareth, and laid out as clearly as could be what His purpose was in the world, and why He came here. He came, He said, to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, to help the blind to see, and to bring relief to those oppressed by guilt and sadness and sin. And folks, He didn’t mean He’d do those things only while He was here on earth, then go away again. He passed those blessings of faith and hope and love on to His apostles, who passed them on to those who followed them. He came to establish a Church in this world, a spiritual Body, with Christ Himself as the Head, and you and me as the living members, the eyes and the ears and the hands and the feet, or whatever part is necessary to get the Lord’s work done.
He poured out His blood for us on the cross to take away our sin, and He was raised up from the dead, so that this Body of His could live. He is our life, His Body is our body, His blood is our blood. “In Him we live and move and have our being,” Paul says.
We are the Body of Christ. God has brought us together, and put us together, to be a blessing to one another, and to bless the world around us by bringing a message of hope and love and grace.
Lord Jesus, may this Body of Yours be the Body You want it to be. May we who have been blessed with Your marvelous gifts, now use what we’ve been given for the sake of Your name, and for the life and health and growth of this Church You have given us. May our hands now reach out, and our beautiful feet now move for You. As You have given Yourself to us in love, may love for You now be the reason for everything we do. In Jesus’ name; Amen.