Breaking the Law of the Jungle--November 7, 2022

Breaking the Law of the Jungle--November 7, 2022

"On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 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; whereas our more respectable members do not need this.  But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension in the body, but the members may have the same care for one another." [1 Corinthians 12:22-25]

Here's more of that gospel foolishness--and I am here for it.

I don't know about you, but I keep finding myself surprised and delighted by the moves Paul makes in this letter.  Way, way back in the opening chapter, he had talked about how the news of the gospel sounds like nonsense and scandal to the watching world, but how the followers of Jesus can recognize in it the real power of God.  And over the course of this letter we've seen several instances where Paul took the world's usual expectations, especially about power and self-interest, and showed how the gospel turns them upside-down.  Over and over the community of Jesus is called to be something different, something inside-out, compared to the empire's Me-and-My-Group-First thinking.  We refuse to demand "our rights" at the expense of those who are struggling or fragile in faith.  We choose to bear the possibility of being wronged rather than fighting for our own self-interest.  We wait for the last, make room for the excluded, and show special concern for those regarded as of "least" importance.  It is absolutely radical, if you think about it, and it all flows from belief in a God who is specifically concerned with raising up the lowly and attending to the vulnerable.  In other words, it makes perfect sense in light of the God we have come to know in Jesus, the Crucified One.

But it also runs completely counter to the kind of thinking the world takes as "common sense."  The world's kind of crooked logic goes by all sorts of names: call it "the law of the jungle," "the principle of the survival of the fittest," or whatever else, but it's all just repackaging the notion that might makes right, that the strongest and most powerful get positions of prestige and privilege, and that the weakest die off or get eaten.  "It's every man for himself," they say, along with the old cliche, "It's a dog-eat-dog world out there."  And it is utterly easy to find ourselves just nodding along and agreeing, arranging our lives to get as much as we can for ourselves and to decide that whoever is left out or empty-handed just doesn't have what it takes to get ahead in the world.  I've heard that same tired old thinking every day of my life from one voice or another, and I'll bet you have, too.

And that's why it just floors me to see Paul pushing against the current here and saying just the opposite for the community of Jesus--and really for all of humanity as God has meant for us to live.  Paul notes that in our literal physical bodies, the things we often think of as weak or useless turn out, quite often, to be indispensable.  Your brain, after all, doesn't "look" like it does anything to the naked eye, but clearly it's running the show inside our bodies.  Internal organs like the pancreas or liver might look like they're just sitting there taking up space inside our guts, but they each perform vital tasks we couldn't survive without.  And similarly, Paul says, the parts of our bodies we generally think of as "less honorable" [think bathroom functions here, among other things] are the parts we make sure are clothed and not exposed to public gaze or the elements, while the parts of our bodies that are more "respectable" can go around uncovered and bare.  It's a creative reading of the way our bodies and sense of modesty work, but the point is to say that even in our bodies, we don't play by the rules of "the survival of the fittest."  Rather, because our bodies are whole entities, each part supports the rest, and there is always greater care given to what seems weakest, least important, or most vulnerable.  It is a deliberate breaking of the "Law of the Jungle," which turns out to have been entirely made-up in the first place by people looking to justify their desire to conquer and take.

But think about what Paul is saying here: by connecting this concern for the lowly and marginalized to the workings of our bodies, Paul is saying that we are actually designed to function as living beings by means of caring most for the most in need and showing special honor and protection for those who are seen as least honorable.  Paul says that God's intention in creating us, even down to the arrangement of these bodies of ours, is not mere "survival of the fittest" or "might makes right," but rather the care of the whole by lifting up the lowly, for no other reason than that they are lowly.  It is exactly the same kind of reordering of the world that Mary sang about in her Magnificat and that Jesus announced in the Beatitudes, but taken even further.  Paul says that God has woven this special focus on the last, the least, and the left-out into our own physiology, almost as a tell-tale sign that the Creator of the universe has a thing for underdogs and outcasts.  It just stands to reason, then, that the people of this God will seek to arrange our lives in the same way--specially looking out for those who are deemed weakest and least honorable, rather than dominating or overpowering them because we can.  So in our life together as the Christian community [or, as Paul will keep saying, "the body of Christ,"] we are particularly called to attend to the needs of those who are put in the most vulnerable situations, rather than looking to prop up our own bottom line.  We are called to give away the bonuses, blessings, and abundance lavished on us rather than to hoard them.  And we are called to look for ways specifically to lift up those who are most stepped-on.  Paul says our own bodies are telling us the same, if only we pay attention.

How would it rearrange our actions, priorities, and choices today to dare to live in tune with our bodies that way today?  How can we specially seek the good of the ones around us who are treated as least, lost, or left-out, because at last we realize that their well-being is our well-being?

That's the challenge for today.  And I am here for it.

Lord God, rearrange our priorities today to align with the way you have arranged these bodies of ours--so that we give special care to what is deemed weak or unimportant, as you grace us with love and care in our weakness too.