All Saints’, Dorval

Epiphany III, Year C

January 23, 2022

“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.” Our reading this week from the first letter to the Corinthians is the middle portion of one of the best-known and most beloved passages in Paul’s epistles. Last week we heard the first part – “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord.” And next week we will hear the passage so frequently read at weddings, “Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.”

It is one unified argument: the members of the body of Christ work together like the members of a human, body each with a role to play, serving in different ways, but equally important. And the force that binds it all together, that animates it all, that makes it work, is love.

There are many images and meanings in the Bible that, at a distance of two millennia or more, we miss when reading these words today. But this is not one of them. Human bodies have changed very little since Paul’s time, although of course today we know much more about them and we have much more effective ways of treating them for illness and injury. But the standard human body still has hands and feet, eyes and ears; it still sits and walks and sleeps, smells and tastes and touches. This is a metaphor that makes immediate and intuitive sense.

And it remains true that in a human community, such as a congregation, we all have different – and complementary – gifts, and we all have different – and complementary – needs. Some of us come to church primarily for worship; some for fellowship; some for learning; some for the opportunity to serve others in the wider community. Some of us have a talent for music, some for finance, some for working with children, some for caring for the sick and suffering.

And again, what binds it all together is love. Love is what enables us to see and appreciate the gifts in each other, rejoicing that others make up for what we ourselves lack, rather than being envious for what others have that we don’t.

I think it’s important to recognize several things about bodies, if we keep digging deeper into this metaphor. One is that a body is a constant process of both giving and taking. Paul emphasizes what the members of the body can do (smelling, hearing, etc.; and teaching, prophesying, etc.) but it is equally valid to ask what the body needs in order to do these things.

My mother, in her book about celebrating Holy Week and Easter in the parish, makes the excellent analogy that worship is the metabolism of the Body of Christ: “it is what the body does” that enables it to function, to go about its daily business, to grow, and to heal from trauma. The body needs to gather, regularly, to pray, to hear the word of God, and to celebrate the sacraments.

The individual members of the body also need to nourish themselves, by prayer and fellowship, and by learning, growing, and being formed in the faith. It is hard, if not impossible, to exercise our gifts – “deeds of power, gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership” – if we are not being nourished by God’s Spirit in one or more of these ways.

And since it is January, the 2022 pledge letters just went out, and the Annual Vestry approaches, I would be remiss if I did not point out that the body needs actual, physical resources to keep itself in good working order: it needs to pay the bills, keep its house in good repair, and buy the things it needs to do what it does – including reaching out beyond the body’s boundaries in love.

Another thing to recognize about bodies is that they have life cycles. They grow – and they decline. Rarely do they maintain a precise stasis. Bodies are always changing, and if our communities are not finding ways to grow and change, they will eventually come to the end of their life cycle and have to find a way to gracefully die. For many churches, this process is being accelerated by the COVID pandemic and the extraordinary pressure that it is putting on so many of the institutions that we have come to expect will always be there, serving the purposes that we are accustomed to.

I am absolutely not saying that the pandemic has put All Saints’ on a collision course with extinction. Quite the contrary. And yet – a third thing to recognize about bodies is that they can get sick. And I think that, even though many of us have still managed to avoid the virus so far, it would be accurate to diagnose the body of Christ in 2022 with COVID-19. We have lots of symptoms. We are tired, we have brain fog, we have lost our voice, we are not eating regularly. And this body is going to have to rest up and be very gentle with itself, and take it easy, as it works its way back into life once the Omicron surge – and, God willing, the pandemic itself – is over.

Christians have not always been very good at attending to bodies, over our two-thousand-year history. But if scripture is clear on anything, it’s that God does in fact care what happens to our bodies, both as individuals and as the Body of Christ. And so, if we haven’t been in the habit of attending to those bodies, there’s no time like the present.

What part of the body of Christ are you? Head, hands, heart, gut, feet? What gifts do you have to give the body as a whole? And what do you need from the other parts of the body, in order to keep being healthy and strong?

If the body is, indeed, ill and suffering, how can you be part of helping it to rest, and heal, and eventually resume its active life?

And let us not forget that – as we will hear next week, in the portion that immediately follows today’s passage – the essential element in all of this is love. Not love as a warm, fuzzy feeling, but love as a commitment to a way of life: love that is patient and kind, that rejoices in the truth, that hopes and endures all things. Love that never ends.

This is the love that binds us together, with all our unique gifts and distinct needs. This is the love that will carry us through the current crisis. And this is the love with which the Holy Spirit animates us, and makes us into the body of Christ.

Amen.