1 Corinthians 12: 12-31
12 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. And I will show you a still more excellent way.
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You may be wondering why this sermon is titled “Paddling in the Same Canoe.” What does this metaphor mean? Bishop Bickerton opens this chapter with a story of watching shell boat racing on the River Ouse in York, England. He talks about how it looks so simple, yet is a hard sport. In order to glide over the water, the rowing team has to be perfectly synchronized. Each and every one of them has to be focused on their rowing. If even one rower is off, if even one has a subpar day, the performance of the whole team suffers. The team is only as strong as their weakest rower.
The metaphor of the rowing team reminds me of our scripture passage for today, where Paul uses the metaphor of the body. This is one of the most well known passages in our Holy Scriptures. I’m sure many of us have heard it read before. “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,'” Paul writes. In other words, “We’re all different people, and we’re all equally important.”
Paul writes these words because the early church in Corinth was dealing with social and spiritual elitism. Members of the church were competing with one another, saying their economic status, social standing, or theological take made them more important to the church than someone else. This was all due to the influence of life in Corinth. A bustling port city settled by freed slaves, Corinth was a prosperous area where social mobility for the lower classes was possible. It became a haven for entrepreneurs seeking to gain wealth. The competition of the day to day in Corinth found a place in the Church. The desire for power and the fault of pride had woven their way into the church’s life together, and was affecting their mission to the world. As any pastor would, Paul writes to them, emphasizing unity. No one is better than any other. No one has greater importance than another. Remember, in the topsy turvy Kingdom of God, those the world deems least important are lifted up, and those the world deems most important are brought low. Life with Christ is not like life in the world.
This is reinforced by Paul’s use of the body metaphor. See, this metaphor was quite common in Greco-Roman political rhetoric. Those in political power said that revolts led by the common people were like “the hands, mouth, and teeth revolting against the stomach and destroying the body.” The political realm used this metaphor to reinforce hierarchical structures that kept them in power, while disenfranchising the common people. “There are some body parts that are more important than others!” They said. “And if the least important body parts rise up against the most important ones, then the body is destroyed.” But Paul turns this metaphor on its head, first saying the least important members are the most important. Like Jesus’ great reversal of “the last shall be first and the first shall be last,” Paul is saying that in the kingdom of God, those seen as “less honorable” will garner respect. So, you best respect them now. What Paul is saying is that no one is better than the other, all members of the body are important to the Body of Christ. And therefore, the church must be united. It is only when the church is not united, when members of the body begin to attack one another and tear each other down, when some members try to act like they are the most important part of the body, that the body is destroyed. The Church is the strongest when it stands united in Christ, while also letting all members play their unique, God-given roles.
There’s a quote that is often attributed to John Wesley. “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, love.”
“In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, love.”
Now this is a quote that did not originate with John Wesley. It actually originated with the Archbishop of Split, Marco Antonie de Domnis, in 1617. This quote gained popularity in 1626 when Lutheran theologian Peter Meiderlin used it in the midst of the Thirty Years War, a horrible and bloody conflict. Meiderlin used this quote to call people to the way of peacemaking, a way that did not stand for violence, discord, or disunity. While John Wesley never actually said this quote, it is likely that he was influenced by this train of thought, especially since he did say “Can we not all love alike, though we do not think alike.” The phrase worked its way into the United Methodist lexicon in 1996, when it was adopted as the motto of that year’s General Conference, and the sentiment is at the heart of many mission and vision statements of United Methodist Churches across the connection.
“In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things love.”
We will talk about Love next week. For this week, as we talk about paddling in the same canoe, we’ll focus on the first two parts of this phrase: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty.”
In essentials, unity. We’ve talked about this before. This is the heart of our entire sermon series. What are we fighting for? What are our essentials? What do we come around together? What values are core to who we are? What values, exemplified by Jesus, do we hold in our hearts, as a community?
The point of our discernment journey is to find a purpose and live it out with a common voice. This is a lot harder than it sounds.
You know, I was reading an article recently, where a spokesperson for a group who wanted to break away from a larger organization was being interviewed. The person said, “We’ve come to a fork in the road and we need to rethink. It was so easy for us to come together around what we don’t like about the organization. It was harder for us to dream who we would be without it.” It was easier for them to come together around what they didn’t like, and to come together around critiques of the larger organization. But when the time came for them to come together and dream of a new thing, they ran into problems. Everyone had their own ideas of what the essentials should be. It was easy to say who they weren’t, it was harder to say who they were.
The work of collectively discerning essentials is hard, but it is doable. It requires commitment, patience, openness, dedication, love, joy, hope, and vision. All of these things that we have talked about previously. It requires us to conference together, to talk, to dream, to listen to one another. The work of collective discernment means that we must uplift all voices, remembering that every person is a beloved child of God. It means listening before speaking, striving to understand another’s point of view, striving to accurately reflect another’s point of view, disagreeing without being disagreeable, speaking about issues; and not about people, and seriously tapping into prayer before making decisions or getting lost in human busy-ness. The work of discernment asks us to let go of our own agendas and our own egos, and come together with the best of intentions. It’s difficult work. But doable.
But, perhaps, even more difficult, is the work of actually living out the essentials once we discern them. Because that asks us to give up even more of our own agendas and egos. When we discern the essentials and put them at the center of our lives as a community, then everything each individual person does needs to be held in light of those essentials. If we say, “We are a community that holds grace at the center of all we do,” then I need to be aware of my own actions, and check myself if I become ungraceful. If we say “We are a community that holds the truth of scripture at the center of all we do,” then I need to make sure that all of my actions in and for the community are rooted in that truth. And we better have a good idea of what that truth is. Because when each individual in the community makes the commitment to live out the essentials, then the community will thrive. When we decide on the essentials, then our whole lives should flow out of those essentials. If we are a community that says grace is essential, we better make sure we show grace. If we are a community that says joy is essential, we better project joy. If we are a community that says Christ is essential, we better be following Christ.
Living out the essentials together takes tremendous discipline and practice. It’s like the super-champions on Jeopardy! They don’t just go on and get lucky with a 38-40 day winning streak. Sure, they already had some of that knowledge in their minds, but they didn’t rely on what they already knew, alone. They practiced. They studied. They buckled down and prepared.
So, too, it is in the life of the church. We’ve already got some of these essentials in our minds. But to live them out, we have to practice them. We have to commit to them. We have to buckle down and put our own selves aside and the community first. We lay our own egos aside for the sake of the community. We practice love, grace, joy, hope, prayer, scripture reading, etc. And we continue to practice those essentials for the rest of our lives. And we continue to communicate those values to every single person who steps foot into our community. Our essentials should be obvious, not just in our words, but also our actions.
You may be wondering, but what if we can’t even agree on the essentials? What if our community cannot agree on what we hold as core values? First, I would say, keep discerning. Perhaps the community is getting caught up on something that is important, though not essential. Perhaps there is more discerning and more digging that needs to happen. Maybe there is still something underneath and underneath and underneath. Usually, the essential is something that everyone can agree on. For example an essential would be “Scripture is important to our lives as Christians” or “God sent Jesus to be the Savior of the World,” or “We must show God’s love to the world.” I think it’s hard for any Christian to disagree with those sayings. They are foundational to our faith.
But, people may disagree on how to live those sayings out. And there we come to the non-essentials. In non-essentials, liberty. The harder way of saying this is “We will disagree on methods, individual expressions of faith, interpretations of scripture, etc, etc. But we have the freedom to do that. We can disagree with each other about how we all live out the essentials, so long as our essentials are the same.”
We are a complex and diverse body of Christ. We all have different, unique experiences and expressions of faith. We are not all the same. And yet, we are still part of one body. We still work together, through our differences. That is okay. We have the freedom to do that.
Bickerton borrows from the Moravian tradition to lay out two different types of non-essentials. There are the incidentals, which are matters of taste and culture. And there are the ministerials, which are sacred tools we use to compliment our essentials. They point us to what matters most.
So, the incidentals are things that aren’t really all that important, and things we should easily be able to let go of: What translation of the Bible is read on a Sunday morning. What color the carpet in the sanctuary is. The color of the pastor’s lipstick. What type of music is sung during worship. Whether we use the Hymnal or The Faith We Sing. Whether or not a certain banner is hanging up in front of the church. Whether we take out the pews or leave them in. These are all things that, at the end of the day, are just not worth arguing about. Too often, though, we get caught up arguing about these incidentals. They become really big deals. And suddenly a church finds itself in conflict over whether we should have green carpet in the sanctuary or blue. At the end of the day, though, the incidentals don’t matter. These are the “not really important, non-essential” things. And it’s a little silly that they cause such big arguments in the church.
The ministerials, on the other hand, will cause more arguments in the church. Though they are still non-essentials, ministerials are important tools that help us point to the essentials. They are the “important, but still non-essential” things. Essentials are the core of faith. Ministerials complement the essentials. Ministerials can change. They are the things that should change if they are causing harm or exclusion to any of God’s beloved children and creation. Since no well-intentioned Christian ever wants to use their faith to harm people, these ministerials can be changed and improved, so they better communicate our essentials, and draw more people into the Kingdom of God.
In his book, Bickerton writes about three ministerials that cause arguments in the church: Biblical interpretation (rooted in the essential of Scripture,) Theological beliefs, (rooted in the essential of belief in Christ), and the practice of compassion (rooted in the essential of compassion.) Biblical Interpretation. Theology. Practice of Compassion. Ministerials, non-essentials that point to an essential.
What Bickerton is saying is that it is okay to have differences in these things. In the church, we should not demand conformity for any of these.
Let’s start by talking about Biblical Interpretation. This may be mind blowing, but there is no single way to interpret scripture. We all interpret scripture differently, based on our experiences, the traditions we grew up with, and what our minds tell us. Experience, Reason, and Tradition are lenses through which we read Scripture, and at the end of the day, everyone will approach Scripture differently and interpret it differently. Even those who read the Bible literally will, at some point, disagree on what certain verses say.
As an example of this: I have a saying that I like to use about my approach to the Bible, “I take the Bible seriously, but not literally.” I’m exposing a bit of my own self here. I do not take the Bible literally. I view it as a series of writings, laws, stories, and letters that are products of the time they were written. I take writing style, authorship, cultural context, translation history and historical context into account when I read the Bible. So, I don’t take the Bible word for word literally. If I did, I could not be a pastor, because my translation of 1 Timothy says women should be silent in church, right? But, taking the Bible seriously, though not literally, is my personal approach to scripture. And, in my faith life, it does not diminish the truth that I find within God’s Word. I can find the truth of love and grace and God’s movement in the world. I can find the truth of building God’s community and God’s kingdom. I can find the truth of God in the Bible, even if I don’t take everything in it literally, and I can still orient my life around the truth revealed in scripture.
And it may be jarring for some of you to hear that a pastor doesn’t take the Bible literally. It may make you feel uneasy, or uncomfortable, or maybe even angry that I would admit such a thing from the pulpit. Maybe you think that I need to take it literally in order to be a good pastor. Any good Christian should take the Bible literally. But, at the end of the day, the way we all approach scripture is a ministerial. I find big T Truth in the Bible, just like someone who takes it word for word literally does. I’m still pointed toward the importance of Scripture, just like someone who takes the Bible word for word literally. Scripture is essential, even if interpretation and approach toward Scripture are different.
The next ministerial Bickerton writes about is Theolgoical Beliefs. Theological Beliefs are simply what we believe about God and how those beliefs are applied to our daily living. So, we can agree that Belief in God is essential. Everyone is here in the church because they believe in God or they desire to believe in God. Belief in God is essential. But how we live out and express those beliefs are ministerials. So long as the theology is not being used to harm or exclude anyone (if that is the case then Bickerton argues it does need to change), how we live out the theology does not matter. There are a variety of ways of expressing belief in God in the life of the church. Church is not a monolith. We do not all conform to the same theology. Bickerton asks the question, “Is it the job of the church to demand conformity? Is it the job of the church to tell people there is only one, most correct way to believe? Should we limit our understanding of God to one box? Is conformity essential to unity? Or, can we make space for all voices in the conversation?”
Does a church have to define itself in a particular way? Does everyone in the church have to think of God in a particular way? Or, is there space in each church to hold multiple beliefs.
God, Christ, the Spirit: That is the essential. Even if our theologies differ, our belief in the essential is the same.
The final ministerial Bickerton writes of is the practice of compassion. How do we, as Christians live out our essential value of compassion for the world? Bickerton writes that some may express compassion through justice work, advocacy, and calling for systemic change. Others may express it through evangelism, invitation, and conversion. Others may practice compassion in both ways. But whatever way someone practices compassion, the essential is the same: belief that all persons and creatures are of sacred worth and are beloved of God. Because we believe everyone and everything holds value to God, we care for them and have compassion for them. The ways we show compassion may differ, but again, compassion is essential. How we show it is not.
Often we tend to confuse unity with conformity. In order to be united we have to all think the same. We all have to have the same expressions, interpretations, understandings, and ways of approaching life. Difference is a threat to our unity. And so, we struggle against difference. We try to rid our lives of difference. We cannot be united if we are different! So we work to court people to our sides. “Hey, hands, why don’t you become a foot!” “Hey, head! Become a heart!” But when we mistake conformity with unity, we hurt the church, because we cut off differing expressions of God. As Paul writes, so clearly in 1 Corinthians12, we are one body, but made up of many members. We are created differently, and that is okay. So long as we respect our differences, so long as no body part is exalted more than another, so long as hands aren’t told to become feet and feet aren’t told to become hands, this body will function well.
The end of 1 Corinthians 12 says “I will show you a still more excellent way.” Our Bible leaves the chapter on a cliffhanger. What is the still more excellent way Paul is speaking of? What is it that draws us all together? What is it that, ultimately, binds our lives together?
I’ll leave you on a cliffhanger too.
But just know, there is something in our lives together that is the most important thing. Something we should all strive for. Something that should mark all our thoughts, all our words, and all our actions. Something that is, truly, the most essential. That still more excellent way which tells us, we don’t need conformity to be united.
But, we’ll have to wait until next week to get into it.
Strong Female Pastor 