Rolling Up Our Sleeves--January 30, 2025

Rolling Up Our Sleeves--January 30, 2025

"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)

In a wonderful way, you can kind of see why the authorities, magistrates, and other assorted officials were always wanting to put Paul in a jail cell or run him out of town wherever he went.  To take Paul seriously here would mean overturning all of our old ideas about who is really a "big deal" and who is just dressing the part to cover up their insecurity.  This is one more reason why Christians were seen as a subversive threat to the established order--and why when Paul and his message came to town, local pundits sometimes called them "these people who have been turning the world upside down" (see Acts 17:6).  Here, in these words from the letter to the Corinthians that many of us heard just this past Sunday, Paul has turned the tables on our old understanding of who is "important" and who is ignorable, who gets pomp and circumstance, and who doesn't need it.

The analogy to the body that Paul uses to make his point is simple enough: the parts of our bodies that we are most self-conscious about or feel awkward about are the parts that we make sure to clothe.  In short, we wear underwear (or the ancient equivalent).  But our arms, legs, and heads, we don't make a big fuss about needed to make sure they are clothed.  They don't need it.  They are busy doing important work, while our swimsuit zones (again, not to be crude) are basically just covered up because we tend to think of those parts of our bodies as less fit for public settings.  This is why bathroom stalls have walls or partitions, but we don't mind windows in our office spaces--we don't mind being seen with rolled-up shirt sleeves baring our arms, but we don't feel comfortable letting others see us use the bathroom.  Okay, so far, so good, right?  The bottom line of Paul's little thought experiment is that you can tell which parts of the body are really the strongest because they don't need to be wrapped up in padding or special garments all the time, and that in fact the parts that do need to be specially dressed are the less honorable ones, not the more honorable ones.  And the flipside is true, too--there may be parts of the body we think are weak and unimportant, but they might just turn out to be the most vital of all.  We could quibble about exceptions, but you get the idea of his argument.

Now consider the kind of world in which Paul lived--one that was ensconced in the trappings of the Empire's pomp and circumstance.  In the Greco-Roman world, you knew who was most important int he empire's eyes, because they made a big deal about themselves.  The emperors, governors, commanders, oligarchs, and plutocrats were the ones draped in expensive fabrics, the ones with gold crowns and sparkling diadems. And they used all that ornamentation to set themselves apart from everyone else--the peasants, foreigners, and slaves who didn't have two drachmas to rub together.  In other words, in the culture of Paul's day, if you thought you were a big deal, you would advertise by putting on shows of your importance, from the way you dressed, to the statues you had carved in your likeness, to the titles you heaped up on yourself, to the places of honor you took at dinners, sporting events, or public ceremonies.  The enslaved population, along with the farmers, artisans, and the rest of the peasant class, well, they all would have worn the same basic meager tunics for work, home, market, and travel, and it would have been a lot less fancy and a lot more functional.  In Paul's day, the people who wanted to project their own self-importance (and didn't have to worry about breaking a sweat at work) made sure to clothe themselves in opulence to send the message that they were the center of attention. And in response, Paul basically said, "Nope.  That's all just underwear. Those guys are actually needy and insecure."

And of course, within the life of the Christian community, Paul applies the same thinking.  Instead of the people who see themselves as "strong" or "important" or "great" puffing themselves up and bragging about it all the time or putting themselves in the center of attention, the truly "strong" ones don't need to always be in the limelight. In fact, they'll go out of their way to help lift up and honor the lowly, the overlooked, and the undervalued.  The ones who really are great don't have to advertise it or tell you that they are great--you'll know it, Paul says, from the humble way their love lifts others up rather than only themselves.  Like the old line says it, we rise by lifting others.  In the Christian community, we are called to this very different--even upside-down--way of life, in which the most important or the greatest are the ones with their sleeves rolled up and doing something helpful for others rather than needing to parade around in royal robes or expensive accessories.  And on the flipside, we make a practice of showing special honor, care, and love to the people who have been treated as nobodies, remembering that in our physical bodies, sometimes the parts that seem least important turn out to be the things keeping us alive.  

It's a complete reversal of the expected way of doing things, and it certainly would have made the early Christian community stand out in unexpected ways.  It's just one more way that our faith in Jesus will lead us beyond our comfort zones and rearrange the way we see the world.  But it all flows from the kind of life that is centered on Jesus' kind of love rather than our wider culture's need for attention and adulation.  Maybe it's time to reclaim a bit of that subversive way of doing things.  Maybe it's time we spent less attention on the self-described "great" ones telling us how important they are and instead made a point of looking for ways to honor and lift up the folks who have slipped through the cracks or been left out before.  

Maybe it's time we rolled up our sleeves and got to that kind of gospel work.

Lord Jesus, keep us so grounded in your love that we don't need to get attention or honor from others, but can use our energy to show honor and care for the people we easily forget or ignore.