Because You Are Not An Amoeba--November 1, 2022

Because You Are Not An Amoeba--November 1, 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." [1 Corinthians 12:12]

It's an adjustment in this life, isn't it, when you come to realize that your life isn't really just "yours"?  It's hard moving from that youthful sense of invincibility that dares risky and foolish things with the justification that "I'm the only one who will have to deal with the consequences if I get hurt--which I'm sure won't happen," to realizing that my choices never just affect me alone, because I am always inescapably a part of something bigger than myself.  

Sometimes it comes in life when we get our first "real" jobs and see how much others depend on us being present, focused, and able to do our tasks.  Sometimes it comes from being married and seeing that your choices send ripples through the lives of others who have vowed to share the effects of those choices with you, for better or for worse.  Sometimes it's the presence of children in your life that makes you see how your habits affect their habits, and your example becomes their first templates for how to "do" life.  Sometimes it's when we come to care for aging adults in our lives, especially if it means the tables of caregiving have turned, and we realize how much our time, ability, energy, and patience belongs to others--just as theirs belonged to us when we needed them to tie our shoes, make our lunches, or sit with us when we were sick.

So often those moments of recognition that we are bound up with each other happen in family relationships, but to hear Paul the apostle tell it, it's not just in biological family groups or nuclear households that we share those connections.  Our belonging to one another isn't the exception--it's the rule.  We are always more than just lone individuals, without any responsibility to one another.  And we are always the recipients of the benefits that come from being connected to others who give us their time, love, energy, and ability.  It is always a dance, this giving and receiving, like breathing out and breathing in, so that we are forever the givers of grace and the graced, always both loving and beloved.  

I think that's what makes the metaphor of being a body as the Christian community so apt, and so powerful.  Each of our bodies operates together, with organs and appendages performing functions that benefit the whole, regardless of stopping to inquire "What's in it for me?"  We'll get more of the way this extended analogy works in Paul's mind in the coming days, as you may already know, but for now it's worth just sitting for a moment with the fundamental shift that the image represents:  we are not lone believers, whose faith and life and choices are "just between me and Jesus."  In fact, we are not primarily isolated individuals, but parts of a whole, much as the separate cells in my skin or heart do not function alone, but always as part of a larger organism.  And the fact that my heart cells do their work of contracting and releasing [as they are directed to by the electrical impulses that get sent to them by a different set of cells in a different system of the body] for the sake of the need in my kidneys, toes, ears, and fingertips is a powerful reminder for us about the purpose of our existence both as humans and as Christians.  None of us lives for "just me," or even "Me and My Group," any more than a brain cell exists just for its own survival or just for the brain.  We exist with each other, and for each other--always.

In a culture with so many voices teaching us to ask, "Why should I help somebody else out--it's not MY problem?" or "Why would I take THOSE people into consideration when I make my own choices?" Paul is really doing something subversive: he is daring us to see that we are not lone amoebae in a petri dish, grabbing whatever we can for ourselves as our sole purpose, but rather we are permanently parts of a bigger reality, and our thriving is caught up in the thriving of all. Just as Desmond Tutu says, "My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, with what is yours.... Far too often people think of themselves as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.”

Look, I know that it is not ours to silence those loud voices that insist on selfishness as a virtue and pretend it is possible to live your life without causing ripple effects on the whole sea of humanity.  Nor can we expect those who don't share our faith in Christ to automatically agree with Paul's view of being parts of a body rather than isolated individuals.  But we can at least keep each other honest, especially when it is tempting to baptize that "It's not my problem, so I don't have to care" thinking or pretend it is just the way the world works.  We can remind each other that we belong as members of a body, which means that we will always take into consideration how "my" choices affect someone else, how "my" gifts and abilities might meet someone else's need, and how "my" need might be met by the gifts that someone else offers.  And maybe then part of our witness to the rest of the watching world is the ways we can be honest and humble enough to admit our needs for the help of others, as well as our willingness to give what we can offer for the benefit of others, too, because we can tell the truth about ourselves: we are members of a body, not self-sufficient cells.

Today, whatever you face, you do not face it alone.  And today, whatever strengths or good you have, you do not have them just for yourself.  It turns out both of those are the good news of being in a body.

Lord God, give us the courage to be honest with ourselves about how we belong to one another.