Shoulders, Knees, and Toes
Scripture
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
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.
Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 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? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members yet one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect, whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work powerful deeds? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.
Sermon
I am going to humble myself today and give you a glimpse of my beautiful mind. This week, as I was preparing the sermon, my mind kept going in circles. “How am I going to frame this?” Maybe I’ll use a spiderweb as a metaphor. Maybe I’ll tell a story about sailboats. And I could not stop turning it over in my mind.
And then I realized it. This is already a metaphor. What on earth am I doing? I mean come on, for once, Paul is giving us an easy, straightforward metaphor, and here I am, looking up spiders on Wikipedia.
Everyone has a body. Bodies are complicated. Some of us like our bodies, and some of us don’t like our bodies as much. Some of us think our bodies work pretty well, and some of us know our bodies will betray us. Some of us hold joy in our bodies, and some of us hold grief or heartache or hurt in our bodies.
No matter our feelings, what we all know is that our bodies are completely interconnected. If I had to guess, most of us discover the interconnectedness of their bodies in a similar way. Usually, we realize that interconnectedness when something stops working the way we want it to.
We quickly discover the importance of hand-eye coordination when our eyes stop working as well as they used to. We realize the joy of walking when we break our leg. We find out the importance of our wrists and ankles and knees when arthritis starts encroaching. When we lose our big toe, we lose our balance. When we lose our balance, we lose our mobility. When we lose our mobility, we lose our muscle tone.
And not only are our physical bodies connected within themselves, they are connected to our hearts and souls. For musicians, the loss of hearing or hand dexterity is a loss to more than their bodies, but their hearts and souls, too. Those who know the pain of a psychiatric mood disorder are far more likely to also suffer a sleep disorder [1]. For servicemen and women in the military, there is increasing evidence that a violation of one’s moral values often manifests in debilitating physical symptoms [2].
It turns out that interconnectedness is both a gift and a curse, two sides of the same coin. And yet, we often read today’s passage as an imperative or an exhortation. We hear Paul urging us to become the body of Christ, to become interconnected, to make our churches enmeshed. We hear this passage as a spiritual imperative to muster up interconnectedness. But the Greek only uses an imperative verb once, at the very end of this passage, and there’s little indication that the passage should be read as an imperative. Paul isn’t asking us to do, or become the body of Christ. No. “You are the body of Christ,” he writes.
This metaphor is more of an observation—or a confession—than anything else. “This is who we are.” The true church of Jesus Christ is one body: a body with regard for the weak and lowly; a body where every member has regard for the other; and a body that suffers as a collective. That observation, of course, helps us understand who we are, and if we are participating in the true body of Christ.
One of my professors of pastoral care, the Rev. Dr. Sonia Waters, taught us how to identify what constitutes a family system when providing care. A family system can include your immediate relatives—like your parents or your children—but is often more complicated. Sometimes family members are physically present but relationally detached. Oftentimes extended family members or close friends become part of a family system.
Dr. Waters told us that to understand who is part of a family system, look for anxiety. If someone in the family is anxious, how far does that anxiety ripple? If a father is worried because his cooking is ruined, does that ripple into the children? The spouse? His aunt? His spouse’s parents?
In this epistle, we come to know the body of Christ by seeing where the suffering ripples. Because, as we heard, when one member suffers, the rest of the body suffers with it. When one member is honored, the rest of the body rejoices. This is the byproduct of interconnectedness, one of its inconveniences. As part of the body of Christ, we are inconvenienced by the reality that we are not in control of what suffering or joy touches us. We can’t control what happens to another member, and relatedly, we don’t get to control whether we suffer or rejoice. Like our own physical bodies, we don’t get to choose when our muscles work, or our vision remains, or our mental health reaches equilibrium. We don’t get to choose if we’re weak or not, and despite that inconvenience, it is a gift, because that is where the presence and hope of Christ enters into our lives.
This is the observation, or the confession, Paul is making. To understand the body of Christ—and who has been grafted into it—look for where the joy and pain ripples.
“Like our own physical bodies, we don’t get to choose when our muscles work, or our vision remains, or our mental health reaches equilibrium. We don’t get to choose if we’re weak or not, and despite that inconvenience, it is a gift, because that is where the presence and hope of Christ enters into our lives.”
There’s more going on in this metaphor, too. Paul’s listeners had a few other things popping into their brains. Paul didn’t invent this metaphor for the Corinthians or pull it out of a hat. Rather, it is one that he took and turned upside down. Ancient Roman society commonly used the metaphor of the body — often as a political metaphor. As a political metaphor, it was used to establish and prooftext the structures of power, hierarchy, and imperialism. To justify political manipulation, power, oppression, and injustice, Rome looked to the metaphor of the body: one body with many parts. But there was a twist. What was at the top? The head. Everything else was weak and beside the point.
Here, that metaphor is turned on its head, enfranchising the whole body, especially the parts that were disregarded and deemed weak. Whereas pervading society was interested in the head—its power, authority, dominance, and control—Paul was not only describing an interconnected body, Paul was describing one wherein the weak were celebrated and given regard. To say it another way, Paul is telling the church that it’s not about the head, and not about hierarchy or strength or power.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t about the head. It’s about the shoulders, knees, and toes.
That brings us to startling, inconvenient truths:
One cannot claim the name of Christ without being touched deeply by weakness.
One cannot be a Christian and mock the weak.
One cannot be a member of the body of Christ and reject any other member of it, no matter how different it may be.
And one cannot live as part of the true Church of Jesus Christ, and rationalize away the sin of apathy.
If one is not suffering with those who are suffering, how could they be comprehending Christ?
How could they yield to the commands of a God who brought salvation to the world through a weak, vulnerable child, hated by the powerful?
How could they understand the mystery of the incarnation, which at its very root, is the most sacred, abiding empathy of God for those who are lowly?
May God have mercy upon us if we cannot listen to the weak, and be touched by that weakness ourselves.
“One cannot claim the name of Christ without being touched deeply by weakness, and one cannot be a Christian and mock the weak.”
This metaphor that Paul gives us, despite the high responsibilities it bestows upon us, is a profound gift to the church. Everyone—no matter how much they try to escape it or pretend it away—will find themselves vulnerable and weak at some point in life. If I were to guess, these pews are filled with people who have known vulnerability, weakness, and loss. This metaphor Paul gives us offers us the greatest of assurances. Wherever the body of Christ is, and wherever its community can be found, there is an intimate presence of love, care, and solidarity, whenever we are touched by vulnerability. The body of Christ is with us, suffering not in an abstract, sentimental way, but touched in a real way by the very same wounds we carry.
We can trust that in articulating our pain, and in asking for comfort and companionship, there is no judgement in the body. The true body and community of Christ will never judge us, or shame us, or belittle us, or laugh at us, because the true body is already enduring our pain with us. The true body, whether we can blurt out our troubles audibly or not, feels our aches and knows our hurt. To borrow a phrase from Kierkegaard, the body will ”breathe in faith” with us.
Another gift of this metaphor is that the body of Christ welcomes every one of us. You don’t have to be a head. Shoulders, knees, and toes, are all celebrated. God even loves belly buttons!
This is a church full of different people, with different journeys, and different beliefs about God and the world and American society. That is a gift! It can be an inconvenient gift, but it is a gift. When ankles are sprained, we need good arms. When eyesight goes out, we need good fingers. We weather the challenges of life, and faith, and society, and natural disasters because of the gift of our interconnectedness, not in spite of it.
In Paul’s metaphor, we see that there is no institution too big, or too wealthy to fail. But what will never fail is a body of Christ that is full of weakness, full of weak links that will sputter and hurt and creak whenever it is moving around. If First Presbyterian Church of Newton is living as the body of Christ, then we’re not going to be a stalwart, immovable institution. We’re going to be a little soft, a little vulnerable, and a little tender. We won’t get to pick and choose when we hurt, or pick and choose when we celebrate.
God willing, if we are living as the body of Christ, we won’t worship a powerful head; we’ll be like you and me and every body that’s ever been born: vulnerable, weak, inextricably interconnected. And most importantly, alive.
Sources
[1] “Sleep and Mood,” Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine, 1 October 2021, https://sleep.hms.harvard.edu/education-training/public-education/sleep-and-health-education-program/sleep-health-education-87
[2] “Moral Injury,” Department of Veterans Affairs: National Center for PTSD, https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/treat/cooccurring/moral_injury.asp
Arthur J. Dewey and Anna C. Miller, “Paul,” in The Bible and Disability: A Commentary, Sarah J. Melcher, Mikeal C. Parsons, and Amos Yong, eds. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017).
