“Today, the scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
The social scientist, Brenè Brown, writes in her book
“Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging,”
how important the value of community is.
She talks about it as something that is a deeply, human need;
that we absolutely need community.
We need to belong in some really powerful, meaningful way.
We need to belong to a group and the group needs to be belong to us.
It is part of our humanity.
She powerfully illustrates this in one section of the book,
which I quoted often but it is worth quoting again:
“Hunger is a signal to the body
that the body needs glucose to prevent damage being done.
Thirst is a signal to the body that the body needs water
to stop any further damage done by dehydration.”
Loneliness is a signal to the body that the spirit needs community.”
It is a powerful illustration of the most innate desires;
the innate demands of the body to want community.
She goes on to talk in the book very eloquently
about what it means to belong and
how we do not get true belonging in a group
without being vulnerable;
the only way you have mutual belonging
is where there is mutual vulnerability.
Any group that is missing the vulnerability
will miss true belonging.
She gives a great illustration of how a community of faith
can be a community of true belonging
when people are vulnerable and
are willing to be vulnerable to each other.
She warns when that is missing
then we do not have the true belonging.
We see that illustrated when we are the best version of ourselves
at St. Simon that true belonging is real;
that we look out for each other
especially those who are most in need;
and we belong, we feel that sense of belonging.
I certainly felt that when I went through the loss of my brother;
and how the community bound around me
in an incredibly powerful way that no one can fake.
It is just powerful.
It is that same sense of belonging that
St. Paul illustrates in his beautiful letter to the Corinthians.
We are all parts of the same Body:
we have all these different gifts but we are all one community
sharing with one another as necessary.
Here is the challenge:
we hear this passage so often
about how we are all part of the same Body,
and we tend to turn it off and hear, “ blah blah.”
It goes in one ear and out the other.
But we should understand that the original listeners of this
would have been shocked because St. Paul twisted
what would have been the normal way to use it.
In the ancient times, the image of the body
was used by Rome and the Emperors
but it was not that everybody was equal.
In their use of the metaphor,
the stomach was the most important
because the stomach needed to be fed.
All the food needed to come into the stomach
and then the stomach would process the food and give it out,
all the energy, to the necessary parts as it deemed it.
The stomach was the Roman Emperor.
And plebs needed to supply all the food to the emperor
and engorge the emperor and all his men.
And that is how it worked.
Paul comes on and uses this metaphor and twists it on its head and says,
“Oh yeah, we are a Body. We are all equal parts.”
Those were fighting words!
He says that “we” are the Body of Christ. You and I.
And that we are called to recognize that
the “hand cannot say to the foot I don’t need you.”
Nor the ear to the eye, “cannot say I don’t need you.”
In other words, we all have our place in this Body of the Church.
We are not meant to mirror what the society is doing,
which you can see where he went and
how poignantly he was pointing to Rome;
and we are not going to be like the Romans.
We are all going to be equal.
And we are called to do that inside the Church.
We are all equal is that we all have a role to play
and we all have gifts to share.
An illustration of that is how many people
it takes to put on a Mass each Sunday?
One person the priest could do it but that is not what we do here.
We have people in the tech booth;
we have lectors;
we have Eucharistic ministers;
we have a whole choir;
and we have a whole cadre of people who are in the background,
Mass coordinators;
even those who clean the linen, clean the Church;
and do all these unseen things.
All happening just so we can be here for just this one hour.
There are many parts that make this Body.
This is true for all parts of our lives, we need each other.
But here is the part I find interesting:
sometimes we struggle to accept that we have gifts.
We’ll say "Oh, you can do that.
Oh, I don’t really have much to offer.”
That is the work of the evil one
because every single one of us has gifts.
And they are not given to you just for you.
They are given to you for the good of all.
That is the most important part of Paul’s metaphor.
It is that all the parts work together
for the sake of the whole Body.
No, the toe cannot operate on its own.
The hand, the hand doesn’t just go walking off on its own.
The eye, it does not operate on its own.
It all operates together for the good of the whole.
That is what we are called to do.
Then Paul goes on to say a very curious thing:
those insignificant parts that seem most insignificant
play the most important role.
So why does he say that?
Because he is following Jesus.
And Jesus points out that the lame and
the broken and the wounded,
the widows and the orphans, the children,
they are the most important.
Why? If we want to know what defines a community,
it is how the weakest members of the community are treated.
That is what will define us.
How do we care for the sick?
Those who are disenfranchised?
Those who feel outside the circle?
Are we always welcoming?
Are we always asking them not to join the membership
but to be part of our community so that we can serve them?
That is what Jesus is saying with his magna carta that we hear today.
He comes to bring glad tidings to the poor;
to heal the sick; and to announce those who are prisoners to go free.
That is our role.
You and I have the role of being that beloved community
for all that we come across.
So today, what does that mean for all of us?
It all sounds wonderful but how are we to live that out?
First of all, we have to be willing to discover our gifts.
And to not think we do not have them; we do.
Then we have to be willing to share those gifts with all that we have.
Maybe that means that we are great at listening,
a listening ear, that you are tender-hearted;
or maybe you are great at going out to visit those who are sick;
or those working in the fields;
or maybe you are just an important part of the community
that enables others to do that.
Find out what our role is; accept it and be it.
And most of all, we are called to look out for
those who are least able to look out for themselves:
The elderly, the sick, the wounded, the disenfranchised.
Today, what can we do as we celebrate Christian Unity Week?
We can certainly pray for those
who are not part of our own Christian circle
but are part of the wider Christian circle.
We can look for the weak and the broken in our own community.
And seek to serve them so that we can be
that Body of Christ that God calls us to be today and every day.
“Today, the scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
