One Body

I Corinthians 12:12-31
by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones
Cathedral of Hope — Oklahoma City
24 January 2010

Because I simply cannot help myself, let’s start with Pat Robertson.

He has inserted himself, once again, into public discussion with his statement about the earthquake in Haiti, which may have killed 200,000 people, that implied that it was God’s punishment on the country for what he called its pact with the devil. Everyone’s talking about Robertson’s statement. It is all over the internet. Newsweek wrote about it and promoted the article on their cover. It has even been discussed on NPR, where I heard the leader of Haitian voodoo denouncing the statement and explaining what Haitians really believe.

I, for one, called the 700 Club to register my disgust at the comment and ended up having a nice moment of prayer with the woman who answered my call.

But absolutely the best response I have seen was a letter being forwarded around this week by e-mail and which I first received from Jonalu Johnstone. It was entitled “Satan’s Letter to Pat Robertson” and was written by one Lily Coyle, appearing as a letter to the editor in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Dear Pat Robertson, I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll. You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract. Best, Satan

With wry humour we are reminded that a pact with the devil comes with stuff. Stuff like riches, power, and fame. Want to find demonic activity? Look instead at the people who have accumulated the most stuff.

This week Judy Hey sent me the link to a New York Times article on human happiness. This new research on the biological aspects of happiness teaches us that: Accumulating stuff does not make you happy. Ambition does not make you happy. Beauty, youth, even physical health do not make you happy. What does? Volunteering, religious faith, committed relationships, social networks, giving. The research showed overweight elderly women on dialysis were generally happier than rich, single, healthy, attractive young men if those women were married, went to church, volunteered, and gave. Recent brain research has even showed that giving activates the same region of the brain as sexual pleasure and eating, indicating that that the three most basic human pleasures are sex, food, and giving. The article concluded that we are hard-wired to be altruistic.

In I Corinthians 12 Paul teaches about the body of Christ. And this fascinating passage raises a host of interesting theological questions. Commentaries I read this week ranged broadly proposing all sorts of interpretations of and approaches to this metaphor. There was the political interpretation about how this body was a new humanity to counter the Roman imperium, particularly in its preference for the weaker member. Queer questions are raised about the gender of this body and its members. Is it a body composed of many genders, therefore an intersexed body? Are those who enter into it transgendered in some way? And isn’t there something a little erotic in the very idea of being a member of the body of Christ. Yes, a few commentaries pushed this erotic interpretation. The passage itself makes subtle references to genitalia.

There is the eco-feminist critique that the passage seems to leave out non-human creation and to privilege Christians over non-Christians.

There is the mystical interpretation, focusing on what union with Christ and one another might mean. There are metaphysical questions raised about the nature of bodies and what we even mean when we say that a particular historical body has become a body spread through space and time composed of numerous other bodies. And in a book which used film theory to approach theology, I encountered this tantalizing passage:

He has become the flesh of every foreign body, the touch of every stranger; the glory of an alien encounter. If Jesus’ body is deterritorialized, and so no longer located in any one place, then every other body is set free, since Christ has become for us a common humanity, the difference in the same.

I read that passage to a friend this week and said I was fascinated by that word “deterritorialized” and they simply said, “What does that mean?” I didn’t have a good answer.

Maybe we should have a six week bible study class on this passage in which we, in turn, explore each one of these possibilities for discussion?

But as much as I was tempted to take one of these avenues into the text, when I got the e-mails from Jonalu and Judy I came back to the most straightforward interpretation of this image of the body of Christ.

We are interconnected and dependent upon one another. None of us can succeed without each other. This challenges individualism. Promotes caring and sharing. And makes us all more humble.

Yes, Paul is talking about the church. And during this period of congregational renewal and our Hope. United. process as we explore our mission and ministries, it is important to recall that we each have different gifts, different roles, different calls, but that all of those are required if the church is to fulfill its God-given vision.

But this image of all being members of the same body doesn’t rest there. It expands to include the church universal and all those people of different races, sexes, classes, nationalities, abilities and disabilities, and sexual orientations and gender identities. And we become tantalized and maybe at times overwhelmed by what all that might mean to share in the same body and be interconnected with all those vastly different others, those strangers, those aliens.

Unless we are deeply cynical or afraid, we recognize the beauty and the joy in this idea that we are all interconnected, that we all rely upon other another, that we are even part of each other, especially in our difference.

And I think we take it even further and realize that while it may be true of the church that we are the body of Christ, can’t we also say that that image is a sign of a reality that does encompass all creation and that in some way all of us — human and non-human, insects and polar bears, oceans and mountains, even the stars in the sky — are interconnected, that we are part of each other, that we rely upon one another.

And suddenly the full ecstasy of this image may begin to dawn upon us. That we are an essential, valued, and worthy part of the whole. That we are part of transcendence and the sublime and the unimaginably beautiful.

In this moment of rapture we realize that we must give, we must share and care, we must live humbly, because that is the only way to live truthfully.

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