I am beginning to feel a bit discombobulated. Not because I am called Bob, but because of all that is happening around the world at this time. It seems that we are in the throes of huge changes, transformative seismic shifts in the political fabric of this world: maybe even geographical, in some circumstances.
This week’s text is from 1 Corinthians 12: 12-31a. Paul is writing from probably Ephesus (~ 53AD?) to the church he set up in Corinth. This is definitely his second letter (1 Cor 5:9) to them, possibly we are rereading extracts from even later letters which have been formed into what we have today. This is a flourishing trading town, a riotous mix of different cultures and people. There, in the midst of all that is going on, is a fledgling new group of people investigating what it is to be ‘church’: church, well before the word really had caught on. This was really a house group – before ‘house group’ really caught on. In possibly a rich person’s yard, they’d meet up, chat, eat and be as one. I wonder where they, the people who had come to Corinth to trade, to sell and buy those goods as they passed through this bustling entrepreneurial port, originally came from?
I am pondering whether they were from different countries, cultures and faiths? Some might have been pagan, whilst a few would have been Jewish. Now they were followers of Jesus, who was their Messiah. As someone literate reads Paul’s letter to them, they might hear this:
“12 Christ is just like the human body—a body is a unit and has many parts; and all the parts of the body are one body, even though there are many. 13 We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jew or Greek, or slave or free, and we all were given one Spirit to drink. 14 Certainly the body isn’t one part but many.“
What might we make if this today? How is our society made up today? Who might we meet up with don’t share our origins, language, culture, or faith?
We, as society, are formed of many different people. Our differing stories define us in some way. We are all human, but these stories impact upon our lives: the way we communicate, and love one another. Paul was encouraging this disparate group of people in Corinth that, to be followers of Jesus, they needed to be different: whether “Jew or Greek, or slave or free“. This was a place where slaves could be sold, some out of servitude.
Today we might read this as we are from different countries, have different skin colour, different genders, different attitudes to how other people live, and may have a different focus how we can let our society flourish. Whether we wish to increase or decrease taxes can define us; but also, that definition can be discerned in so many other ways.
Paul continues …: “22 the parts of the body that people think are the weakest are the most necessary. 23 The parts of the body that we think are less honourable are the ones we honour the most.“
I am reading the word woke in today’s parlance for those verses. Those people who some regard as woke…are the ones we honour the most? Well, I am not thinking that one is any better than the other, but they are least thinking along the same lines as Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. When organisations are now freely considering, sorry enacting, that ‘free speech’ is ‘game on’ (despite those advocating such actions are currently in litigation against others who criticised them), we now have active, seemingly acceptable, criticism against those who are LGBTQ+.
Paul then says: “24b But God has put the body together, giving greater honour to the part with less honour 25 so that there won’t be division in the body and so the parts might have mutual concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part gets the glory, all the parts celebrate with it. 27 You are the body of Christ and parts of each other.“
So, as perhaps Christians, as members of our society, humanity: where do we stand on such issues?
Paul is seeking to encourage those in Corinth who are facing a challenging journey trying to navigate their path through life as new adherents to following Jesus. We may also be joining them on those first few tentative steps, or have more practice. Nevertheless, in this turbulent world, where leaders seem to want to dictate the conditions to criticise others, whilst not allowing criticism, in any way, of them; where leaders are seeking to identify groups of our society as ‘illegals’, ‘aliens’, and to generalise with terms of ‘rapists’, where do we stand? Are we prepared to sit back, hide behind the keyboard, say nothing, and hope it all just goes away quickly – or do something?