Most of us are probably acquainted with someone like the man in this picture, a person who has lost a body part. It might be a limb like his missing leg, a finger, an eye, or something less visible. Many, many of us are walking around minus various teeth or an appendix or gall bladder. I’m starting here this time, with the disturbing thought of being physically dismembered, in order to help us work backward to the incredible innovation and significance of Sunday’s text from I Corinthians 12:12-31a.
The thing is, the word “member” in relation to being part of a church has lost all its juice. You could say, all its blood. We are “members” of all sorts of things: the Wine-of-the-Month Club, credit unions, political parties, museums and art galleries, stores like Costco or Bi-Mart, and more. They all invite us to “join” and become members. So when your church invites you to become a member, maybe to take a class and submit an application, it all feels like just one more voluntary association with perhaps as little significance as that free oil change club card you carry in your wallet.
What we’ve forgotten over the course of twenty centuries of Christian history is that “member” did not always mean a person who is part of an organization. Instead, in the ancient languages of Bible times, it always and only meant a literal member of a body, typically a human body. That’s exactly how it was with the Greek word Paul used here no less than 12 times in our text. The idea of identifying human beings as parts, members literally, of a human body was not unknown but still extremely rare in the first century. It is only Paul’s adoption of the image and his picturing of the “Body of Christ” in this way that made membership in an organization the common idea it is today.
Note that even the word “organization” is not neutral to that body part image. Literally it’s a label for a functioning collection of organs, body parts again, all working together as the organs of the human body do.
I dwell on all this literal body part stuff in order to help us grasp like first century readers might have just how deep and essential is the connection Paul is describing. His humorous portrayal in verses 14-16 of body parts complaining to and about each other in regard to the various roles remains gripping. But it is even more so if we let ourselves feel the force of the basic word and idea operating in it all.
When Christians let the church be fractured and divided, it’s not merely the inevitable unraveling of some optional human social structure, it is literally the dismembering of the Body of Christ. When one Christian looks down on, humiliates, or hurts another Christian it is like cutting off an arm or leg, or gouging out an eye.
The body-member connection has another purpose for Paul. It supports and carries forward what he has already said in this chapter, as we heard last week, about spiritual gifts. They take various forms yet function together in the unity established by the Holy Spirit and reflecting God’s own unity as Trinity, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yet always one God.
So this text calls us not only to preserve unity. It calls us to promote and celebrate diversity in the church. Contrary to a notorious church growth strategy of the late 2oth century, local churches ought not be homogeneous collections people of similar backgrounds and stations in life. Verse 17 highlights that by insisting that a human body can’t possibly exist if all the parts were one kind of thing. Neither can a church.
Struggles with racism, politics, and sexuality have all recently rubbed our Christian noses in the fact that we are still working at really grasping and living by what Paul said here. But noses are part of the body too. Sometimes they need to get rubbed in stuff.