Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is just not the same without every dot of color.
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- Amelia Dorsey
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1 Body Language Scripture Lesson: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a The Rev. Dr. William E. W. Robinson Salem Presbyterian Church Third Sunday in Ordinary Time January 24, 2016 Sometimes it s hard to relate to what you read in the Bible. (Can I get an amen?! My family and I are experiencing that at times as we read the Bible together this year.) Today s text is not one of them. I think we get what Paul s saying here. He s using a metaphor: talking about the church in terms of a person s body. Not just any person s body but Christ s body. And by church Paul probably means the church universal (which of course includes individual churches such as the one in Corinth and our own). This passage is no doubt the basis of a quote attributed to Teresa of Ávila: Christ has no body on earth but yours. No hands but yours; no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands; yours are the feet; yours are the eyes; you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours. Some of you may have seen a similar message printed on a t-shirt. The front of the t-shirt reads: I don t go to church. The back reads: I am the church. I like both the t-shirt s message and the quote attributed to Teresa. They remind us that the risen Christ works in and through each one of us. At the same time, both the message and the quote have the individual Christian in mind. Christ has no body on earth but yours. I am the church.
2 Paul, on the other hand, has the Christian community in mind. He would rephrase Teresa s quote to read: Christ has no body on earth but us. We are his body. Ours are the eyes through which Christ looks with compassion on this world. Ours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Ours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Ours are the hands; ours are the feet; ours are the eyes; we are his body. Paul focuses on the Christian community because the Christians in Corinth were more focused on me, me, me (a familiar focus in our own culture). Each valued her or his own spiritual gifts. They especially esteemed speaking in tongues, and they d look down their noses at Christians with less or inferior spiritual gifts. As you can imagine, attitudes like that were a recipe for jealousy, quarrels, and division, not community! That s precisely why Paul uses the body metaphor here. He wants the Christians in Corinth to know that they re one in the Spirit (as we will soon sing). While they have diverse gifts, they re united by the Spirit into one body of believers. So, they re all connected and necessary, just like the parts of a person s body are. No Christian is better than another. No Christian is dispensable. That s what Paul s saying when he writes, Just as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are just one body, so it is with Christ and then adds there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor the head to the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. Now some of you may be thinking: There are body parts we can do without. Think of people who ve had their tonsils removed or appendix or gallbladder. Those body parts aren t necessary. We!2
3 !3 can even live without an eye or a hand. True. Like any metaphor, Paul s here has its limits. But we get his point. His metaphor helps us to visualize our unity and interdependence as Christians. And we need to hear this as much as our Christian brothers and sisters in Corinth did. Because, like them, we re sometimes tempted to question the worth of some Christians: Christians who disagree with us. Christians we don t like very much. Christians who drive us nuts. Christians about whom we think: What do they add to the church? Do we really need them? Yes, sometimes it s hard to see ourselves as an interdependent body, every part having value, playing some role. But Paul assures us that there are no spare parts in the body of Christ. We may question that at times. It may not seem to be true at times. Yet it is. As Paul reminds us (in the verses right before these) the Spirit endows all of us with gifts. Our challenge, then, is to discern what those gifts are. What are the gifts of the person who drives you nuts? How is God working in and through that seemingly worthless Christian? Rather than dismiss people people in whom the Spirit dwells we should ask God to show us how they are part of Christ s body. Even more, let s get to know them better and learn what their gifts are, what role they play (or could play). In a couple of weeks, we ll welcome new members into the body of Christ here at SPC. Before they become members, I basically tell them that we need them. We need them and their gifts to do the Lord s work in and through this family of faith. There are no spare parts. Just as the body won t work as it should if some parts aren t working, the body of Christ won t work as God designed it if some parts aren t working, aren t doing their job.
4 In light of the big football games today, let me switch metaphors: Christianity is not a spectator sport. We re all integral players on the same team. So, if you re not in the game in some way (here at SPC or in your own church), I hope you hear this as a call to get in the game! It s also a call to encourage others to get off the bench. I m thinking particularly of so-called inactive members. Let s help get them back in the game by inviting them to help us: on a committee, at RoundTable, whatever it may be. I ll summarize with this story and analogy: I m a fan of the nineteenth-century French artist Georges Seurat. During a college study abroad program in London, I enjoyed Sunday in the Park with George, a musical that focuses on his personal life and masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. It s a massive painting, roughly seven feet by ten feet, and it s a colorful scene of men, women, children, even pets enjoying a sunny Sunday on the island of La Grande Jatte, a public park in the middle of the Seine. When I was in Chicago some years later, I visited the Art Institute and marveled at Seurat s masterpiece. The technique he used in that work (and others) is called pointillism. It involves painting small, distinct dots of color, hundreds of them, in patterns to form an image. When you look at the painting up close, you can see the individual dots of color. When you look at it from a distance, those multi-colored dots become well-dressed, bourgeois men in hats, women with parasols, boats on the glassy-blue river. As individual Christians, we are like the individual dots of color in Seurat s painting. We re diverse. None of us is exactly alike. And Seurat s painting wouldn t look (or be!) the same without even one of the dots he painted so painstakingly on that canvas. The pattern they form would ve been altered, however minutely. A!4
5 Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is just not the same without every dot of color. As members of Christ s body, the church, we are also like the individual dots of color in Seurat s painting in that we are all connected to one another. Together we form one big picture. At our best, we could call it God s masterpiece. Amen and amen.!5
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