Anything You Can Do: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
Third Sunday after Epiphany
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. 17 If
the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were
hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But
as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he
chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would
the body be? 20 As it is, there are many members,
yet one body. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I
have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of
you.” 22 On the contrary, the members of the body
that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and
those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater
honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 24 whereas
our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the
body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, 25 that
there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same
care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all
suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with
it.
27 Now you are the body
of Christ and individually members of it. 28 And
God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third
teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance,
forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. 29 Are
all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do
all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31 But
strive for the greater gifts. (NRSV)
When I was in
high school, I followed in my brother’s footsteps to doing the spring
musicals. At some point, someone gave me
a boxed set of CDs of the Rogers and Hammerstein classics—perhaps to contribute
to my theatrical career, I don’t know.
One of the shows in the set was “Annie Get Your Gun,” a musical composed
by Irving Berlin that debuted on Broadway in 1946 and was first adapted to film
in 1950. It’s an awful show, actually,
that is both incredibly racist and incredibly sexist, but there are several
songs that have bled into the popular jukebox with some staying power.
One such song
is “Anything You Can Do.” The two lead
characters, Annie Oakley and Frank Butler, sing this antagonistic set of
one-ups at each other after yet another fight between them over who is the
better sharpshooter. (It’s Annie, but
Frank’s pride can’t bear that reality.)
The song is ridiculous; they compete over who can sing the higher note,
who can get something for the cheapest price, who can bake a pie—neither of
them for that last. It’s a fight that
boils them both down to forces trying to occupy the same space, which they are
not. Each has a different skillset than
the other, considering they are different people with different
experiences. In the song, Annie has just
returned from a tour in Europe while Frank has been wowing audiences at Madison
Square Garden in New York.
“Anything you
can do, I can do better.”
We continue on
the heels of last week’s text from the first letter to the Corinthians and
Paul’s explanation of the gifts of the Church.
“Are all apostles?” he asks, implying in his rhetoric that the answer he
seeks is “no.” “Are all prophets? Are
all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do
all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?” Nobody can do all of those things and, in
fact, they should not try. There are
different gifts given to each and, Paul says to this fractured church
community, we are called to share them in order to make this work. Yet we so often balk at the idea of sharing
when it comes to gifts, not because we didn’t pay attention to the sharing
lesson in kindergarten but because we picked up another lesson along the way
that we are supposed to be self-sufficient at all times and in all ways.
“One issue,”
writes Professor Karoline Lewis, “that comes to the surface in working with
these texts from 1 Corinthians is how quickly, after the extraordinary unity,
community, and fellowship we experience during the season of Christ’s birth, we
succumb to the divisions to which we have become accustomed and with which,
more often than not, we feel more comfortable.”[1] We are in the season after Epiphany in which we
think through the act of ministry before we turn to the season of Lent, and all
week both my literal and electronic desks have been covered with news of
division. “Anything you can do, I can do
better” we say on the floor of the House of Representatives refusing to pass
legislation protecting voting rights, or in the assembly rooms of schools where
teachers have to prove again and again that they are trained to do their jobs,
or in the chambers of the Supreme Court where men tell women what to do with
their bodies. “Anything you can do, I
can also do, I can do it better, just watch, just see how I don’t need you or
anyone else to be successful, just see how I know everything I need to know and
that’s all that matters.”
“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. 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. If the whole body were
an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would
the sense of smell be?”
Professor
Lewis continues, “Being a member of the body of Christ means an absolute,
out-and-out conjoining of one with the other, a [sibling] in Christ. To exist
in division, to see only difference and not the unity we are able to profess
because of Christ, to demand conformity without celebration of difference, is
to entertain the notion of dismemberment. We will find ourselves cut off from
the very source of our life, our existence, and in a way, our ability to be
most fully who we are. To what extent are we able to live out fully our
callings when we are not able to rely on and give support to others to live out
theirs?”[2]
We are not
strangers to the concept of division, to the language of “you need to do this
like I would,” but in becoming familiar with that mindset we forget ourselves
as the Body of Christ. No single one of
us can do the work to which God calls us alone.
Even Jesus spent much of His time with other people, refining His
messages with the inner circle of disciples.
Yet we let ourselves fall into cliques that say “we have all we need,
thank you, no one else is welcome.” We
become congregations that are closed off to all of the people who aren’t
already here by saying to ourselves that anything they could add must be
something we don’t need because anything they could do we’re doing better.
How
foolish! How short-sighted! How can we call ourselves ecclesia if
we do not seek out the feet, the ears, the liver, the ring fingers and knees
and say you, we need you as you are because we are incomplete without
you? How can we continue to say that
what we have, who we have is enough?
My home church
does a spiritual gifts assessment that uses literal body language instead of
the terms taken from Paul’s letters.
When you complete it, you are not measured on whether you have the gift
of teaching or the gift of tongues but whether you are a mouth, an eye, a
hand. I have taken this assessment
probably four times at this point and I am always, every single time, the
stomach. The description for the stomach
is, “You do the work of digestion. You understand complex ideas and are able to
explain them to others in ways that make sense.”
Yes. Yes, I do that. I am the stomach—and I am decidedly not the
ear, or the kidneys, or the feet.
Someone else has to be those in order for the Body to work properly, in
order for it to have life because I cannot be a stomach alone.
Theologian
Frederick Buechner wrote on this passage, “God was making a body for Christ,
Paul said. Christ didn't have a regular body anymore so God was making him one
out of anybody he could find who looked as if he might just possibly do. He was
using other people's hands to be Christ's hands and other people's feet to be
Christ's feet, and when there was some place where Christ was needed in a hurry
and needed bad, he put the finger on some maybe-not-all-that-innocent bystander
and got him to go and be Christ in that place himself for lack of anybody
better.
“And how long was the whole great
circus to last? Paul said, why, until we all become human beings at
last…and then, since there had been only one really human being
since the world began, until we all make it to where we're like him, he said—'to
the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ’ (Ephesians 4:11-13).
Christs to each other, Christs to God. All of us. Finally. It was just as easy,
and just as hard, as that.”[3]
C.S. Lewis brought this even further
by writing that such a thing, this becoming human enough to be part of the
Body, is really the only thing the Church should be doing. “The Church exists for nothing else but to
draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that,
all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are
simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose.”[4]
How is St. Luke’s doing on the call to
make people into little Christs? How are
we looking at the different gifts of the people who are here and the people who
aren’t and celebrating them, honoring them, speaking praise for the wonder that
I can be a stomach but you are an eye and together we make the world a little
more like Heaven? How are you leaning
into the humanness, the Christ-likeness of reaching out to others, of letting
them see your gifts and letting yourself value theirs? How are you refusing to sing only “anything
you can do, I can do better”?
Next week we will have a guest
speaker from the Bay Area Women’s Shelter come and talk about the ways they are
providing space for people to figure out their gifts and how they need others
in order to lead healthy lives. I invite
you to consider in this coming week who it is that forms a body in your
personal life. Who are the ears who
listen in your friend group or your workplace or your family? Who are the mouths who speak words of truth
and comfort? Who are the eyes who see
the bigger picture of what is happening?
How do you honor each of them and recognize that you are as important as
they?
And how can you bring that to this
Body, to the church? To be sure, we are
chock full of the many ways we tell each other “anything you can wear, I can
wear better,” but this is a season of different roads. Can we take a step back and say no, actually,
you do that really well and I do this really well and together we get something
done? Can we look at ourselves and see
what is missing and then become a place where those people would want to
be? Can we become little Christs, as the
Church is supposed to do?
May we have the imagination to see
what is not yet, the courage to change ourselves in order to make that
possible, and the clarity of knowing who we are in this complicated and
wondrous Body. Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment