CHRIST’S MISSION & THE BODY OF CHRIST
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21 - 3rd Sunday after Epiphany, January 23, 2022
Pastor Ritva H Williams
We meet Jesus this morning attending a sabbath gathering in his hometown of Nazareth. He has been away, for how long we don’t know. While away from home, Jesus has encountered John the Baptist, answered his call to repent and be baptized, received the gift of the Holy Spirit, and spent a season in the wilderness where he was tested by the devil. Now, Jesus returns to Galilee filled with the power of the Holy Spirit which manifests itself in his teaching. So when Jesus shows up at the synagogue they invite him to read and interpret the scripture. The synagogue leaders hand him the scroll of Isaiah which Jesus unrolls until he finds this passage:
God’s Spirit is on me;
he’s chosen me to preach … good news to the poor,
… to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
to set the burdened and battered free
(The Message)
Jesus then announces that what Isaiah dreamed of and prophesied is happening right now.
Jesus declares in clear and direct language who he is, what he will do for whom. Jesus reveals that he is God’s anointed one, the Christ, chosen to preach good news, announce pardon and recovery, to set free the poor, the prisoners, the blind, the burdened and battered.
When we hear the word “poor” we automatically think of people who have very little or no money. But in the world of Jesus the vast majority of people had very little or no money, yet they were not all “poor.” In the ancient world, the word “poor” pointed to vulnerability and the loss of dignity, respect, and social status due misfortune. Widows and orphans were always “poor,” as were persons suffering chronic illnesses, physical, mental, and emotional disabilities even if they had financial resources which most didn’t. The “poor” included people who disadvantaged in a hierarchical society because of their legal status, family history, occupation, perceived impurity, and/or the judgments of people in authority. Religious elites were known to dismiss “the poor” as chronic sinners living unclean and unfaithful lives.
As Professor Elisabeth Johnson warns, “the spiritual aspect of salvation … cannot be separated from economic, social, and political realities. Jesus’ mission is to free people from captivity to sin and from captivity to the sinful structures and systems that diminish and destroy lives (www.preacher.org 2022).
As a congregation committed to knowing, living and sharing Christ caring about the poor is St Stephen’s mission too. In my annual report I was able to list 5 different ways that we try to make a difference for the economically poor in our neighborhood: LOAF Ministry, Little Free Pantry, HACAP’s backpack program, Feed Iowa First urban gardens, and our partnership with Family Promise of Linn County. Through these excellent ministries we provide resources for the economically poor.
But we also know that age, race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability are correlatives of economic poverty in America. Native Americans, Blacks and Hispanics are two to three times more likely to be poor than white people. Children under the age of five are twice as likely to be poor as senior citizens. (1) Women of every age group are more likely than men to be poor. (2) LGBTQ persons are more likely to be poor than straight folks. (3) A report by the National Disability Institute demonstrates how poverty causes disability and disability causes poverty. (4)
The sins of racism, white supremacy, ageism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism grant privilege to some persons while denying dignity and respect to others based on things they have no control over. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. The good news is that God doesn’t want it to be this way. The good news is that in Christ we can dream of a society organized differently and work to make it happen.
In today’s reading from 1 Corinthians, Paul sets up a parable in which various body parts become actors and give speeches based on the hierarchical structures of ancient Greco-Roman and Middle Eastern cultures. The body was a common metaphor for human communities and Greco-Roman peoples assigned different statuses to different body parts. The head had the highest status, followed in order by the eye and the right hand. Ears were a step lower. The left hand was unclean, and feet were “unspeakably unclean.” Even today in the Arabic speaking Middle East the word foot is “four-letter word” for which a speaker must apologize before pronouncing it. (5)
So when the foot says it does not belong to the body, it is reflecting society’s assessment that it is inferior and unworthy to be part of the body. The ear makes a similar statement based on the idea that it is less worthy than an eye. The foot and the ear believe what society says about them. Paul insists this is just plain nonsense. A body without ears cannot hear; a body without feet cannot walk. Ears and feet are essential for the body is to be whole and to function properly.
Then the eye declares it doesn’t need the unclean left hand; and the head proclaims it doesn’t need those unspeakably unclean feet. These are the voices of the socially superior whom Jesus described as lording it over ordinary people and playing tyrant over them (Matthew 20:25). To the eye and head Paul gives a resounding no.
Paul insists that in the church, “the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the 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. For God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member.”
Commentators like to point out that here Paul is referring to the body’s private parts which are kept covered to avoid shame. What they do not say is that God has given the greater honor to these inferior members because they have the capacity to create life. They are not shameful but holy and sacred, to be treated with great respect so they are not misused, and protected from abuse. But that is a tangent.
For Paul, the human body functions as a metaphor for the church. The body parts represent its human members who come from all walks of life. Paul’s point is that regardless of how society evaluates these persons, in Christ they are all essential to the functioning of the whole church. I urge Christ-followers to extend this metaphor to the whole human community whose individual members are all created in the image of God, each uniquely gifted to make a positive difference in the world.
Paul’s parable about the body is the most powerful argument against hierarchy, privilege, and radical individualism in scripture, graphically expressing the mind of Christ who did not count his equality with God as something to be grasped and exploited but set it aside to become one of us (Philippians 2:5-8). Paul’s parable about the body shows us the way to make the good news of Christ real.
Please pray with me this prayer written by Pastor John van de Laar. It is called “The Way.”
We are poor, Jesus, in love, in appreciation, in spirit; and we need Good News to fill us.
We are broken, Jesus, in heart, in hope, in faith, and we need to be healed.
We are prisoners, Jesus, of our own addictions, of our own foolishness, of our own pride, and we need to be freed.
We are blind, Jesus, to the sacredness of the world we exploit, to the image of God in the people we hate, to the purpose you have planted within us, and we need sight.
We are oppressed, Jesus, by our constant tendency to destructiveness, and by the destructiveness of others, and we need to receive and share forgiveness.
Yet, in our great need of you, we rejoice and celebrate because you are the way to what we need,
to what we can become, to what we can contribute. We praise you and bind ourselves to you again, Jesus; Anointed One; The Way. Amen.
Joseph Chamie, “A breakdown of poverty in America is a mirror to the nation’s reality,” 11/17/21, thehill.com
“Poverty rate in the United States in 2019, by age and gender,” statista.com
Meera Jagannathan, “1 in 5 LGBTQ Americans lives in poverty — and some groups are particularly worse off,” Oct 23, 2019, marketwatch.com
“Financial Inequality: Disability, Race and Poverty in America,” 2019, nationaldisabilityinstitute.org.
Kenneth E. Bailey, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes — Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians, Intervarsity Press, 2011, p. 341.
