Embodying God's Presence

 

As we continue to let the words of Paul inform and inspire our lives this summer, this week I want to turn toward and tune into the words about being the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12.  Remember, Paul is writing to a church where conflict was on the agenda of every meeting ~ sounds like a wonderful place to be – sign me up, I think sarcastically!  Part of the problem was (and maybe still is), people want to rate and rank everything.  There remains this competition to score points on an imaginary scoreboard of life.  People at the First Church of Corinth wanted to know that their casserole was the blue ribbon best at the potluck; that their leadership was so Christ-soaked it was as if Jesus himself was right there; that their sermons knocked it out of the park every single week (that last one might be a bit too close for comfort.  Gulp!).

Paul wants to remind the Corinthians that there is no “I” in church.  (Thank you to every sports movie ever for that cliché).  Built and baked into the human condition is this deep desire both to be seen as unique and to be accepted/affirmed/belong.  We long to be who God crafts us to be individually and we long to be in community.  Therein is an honest tension.  We long to belong and we long to be our authentic accepted self.  There are times those two are not as compatible or easily put together as we want them to be.  This isn’t easily resolved or solved.  There is no answer in the back of the book of life to help us figure out how to navigate the “me” and “we” of life. 

Paul draws on the image of a body.  He writes in chapter 12, ¹² 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. ¹³ 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. ¹⁴ Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. ¹⁵ 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. ¹⁶ 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.

There are many ways to take this passage.  First, we can look at our own lives.  Often there is a part of our body or life we wish/want to be different.  Remember back to January 1 of this year, if you made New Year’s Resolutions often those relate to our physical or emotional or mental or spiritual changes we want to make.  We often say, “New Year, New Me.”  The practice of wearing skin, of being human size, comes with a built-in color commentary in our minds that loves to point out all the places you could be just a bit better.  And if your own internal critic doesn’t do it, scrolling through social media will activate that part of our brain software almost every time.  Part of what I hear in the above words is the reminder to be human size.  I hear the affirmation that you, right now, are crafted and created in God’s image.

Savor this with me…re-read those last two sentences as many times as needed to let it sink in.

Remember, Paul is not writing to isolated individuals, but he is writing to a whole community and church.  We are connected to one another.  We are connected to people who are also hurting and hiding and trying to figure out life.  And sometimes the ache of life comes out as shame or blame or guilt or pull someone down to prop yourself up.  Happened in Corinth.  Happens in June of 2023. 

Today, I invite you to tell your inner critic/commentary, that you are created in God’s image.  And…so are the other people you meet today.  Come back tomorrow and we will dive deep into how this practice goes.