Corinthians 12: 12-31 The Message Bible
12-13 You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
14-18 I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so? If Ear said, “I’m not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don’t deserve a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell?
19-24 But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn’t be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, “Get lost; I don’t need you”? Or, Head telling Foot, “You’re fired; your job has been phased out”? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the “lower” the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it’s a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn’t you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?
25-26 The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.
Reflection
Paul in this passage was writing about the Church but really it is a good way to look at our community, our nation and our world. We are so many different parts but we all matter. There is not one individual part that is more important than the other and we all matter.
I learned a new word this week “Intersectionality” or rather I had heard it before but I had yet to understand its relevance.
Intersectionality was coined by American civil rights activist Kimberly Williams Cremshaw to illustrate how black women can face double doses of discrimination by virtue of race and gender in the U.S. Intersectionalitydescribes the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.
Intersectionality is a useful concept and reminded me immediately of the metaphor Paul uses of the body. Just like Paul brought together all people emphasizing their uniqueness as well as their differences and especially their interdependence on each other thus enabling the body to work as a body. The theory of intersectionality brings together some of the BIG problems: power, economics, race, religion, LGBTQ bias, gender issues, climate change, ecological sustainability which we would otherwise see as separate issues.
I think this Intersectional theology has it’s roots in Liberation Theology of the 1960’s onward – Black Theology, Korean MinJung Theology, Latin American Liberation Theology etc. which have all developed further over time. These theologies rooted in the Exodus story begin with God’s and Jesus’ preferential option for the poor and the oppressed.
God hears the oppressed Israelites crying out and responds to their suffering never leaving them. God is with the Israelites, and later in the New Testament Jesus is seen as constantly stepping beyond the boundaries set for a good Jewish rabboni. Jesus speaks to the woman at the well, Jesus listens to the SyroPhoenician woman, Jesus speaks to the tax collector, Jesus heals the blind and lepers, Jesus says that the woman who anoints him with expensive oils will be remembered and she is (although we don’t know her name). Jesus is with the adulteress, the pagan, the unclean, the marginalized, the poor. We can see where Jesus stands and who he stands with in the gospels.
We know Jesus wasn’t able to solve the problems of his day but he did leave us a template to follow – He showed us where to stand and who to stand with, he gave us all some good advice when he said “Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself”, and he showed us who our neighbours included: those who were marginalized in society, those who were looked down upon, those who were ostracized, those who were forgotten or never even noticed.
Jesus was about living out God’s word and his
message to us was all about listening to and for God’s word in our lives. If we are able to follow that model knowing that God was situated right beside the poor, the oppressed, the suffering and right with those in pain and those who carry open wounds, and we are guided by the stories of Jesus and the early Church, then anything we do or say to improve one area be it: poverty, food availability, housing availability, access to safe drugs, child care, aboriginal reconciliation, climate change, ecological resource practices or working for justice and against racism, sexism, gender bias, - anything we do in one area of the body benefits the whole body – benefits our community, our nation and our world. We are all interconnected, and ultimately we are all one body – one great big world together.
Prayer
Holy God
We come to you with heavy hearts
Our world is smoldering and we are breathing smoke
We pray for those people and families
Who have lost their homes or pets or loved ones
In these horrific fires burning in California, Oregon and Washington
We pray for those who have evacuated but do not know what they will return to.
Wrap these people in your love
Bring to them comfort and support
Be with your people in their time of need.
This we pray knowing that you are always with us
Amen
12-13 You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
14-18 I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so? If Ear said, “I’m not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don’t deserve a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell?
19-24 But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn’t be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, “Get lost; I don’t need you”? Or, Head telling Foot, “You’re fired; your job has been phased out”? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the “lower” the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it’s a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn’t you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?
25-26 The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.
Reflection
Paul in this passage was writing about the Church but really it is a good way to look at our community, our nation and our world. We are so many different parts but we all matter. There is not one individual part that is more important than the other and we all matter.
I learned a new word this week “Intersectionality” or rather I had heard it before but I had yet to understand its relevance.
Intersectionality was coined by American civil rights activist Kimberly Williams Cremshaw to illustrate how black women can face double doses of discrimination by virtue of race and gender in the U.S. Intersectionalitydescribes the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.
Intersectionality is a useful concept and reminded me immediately of the metaphor Paul uses of the body. Just like Paul brought together all people emphasizing their uniqueness as well as their differences and especially their interdependence on each other thus enabling the body to work as a body. The theory of intersectionality brings together some of the BIG problems: power, economics, race, religion, LGBTQ bias, gender issues, climate change, ecological sustainability which we would otherwise see as separate issues.
I think this Intersectional theology has it’s roots in Liberation Theology of the 1960’s onward – Black Theology, Korean MinJung Theology, Latin American Liberation Theology etc. which have all developed further over time. These theologies rooted in the Exodus story begin with God’s and Jesus’ preferential option for the poor and the oppressed.
God hears the oppressed Israelites crying out and responds to their suffering never leaving them. God is with the Israelites, and later in the New Testament Jesus is seen as constantly stepping beyond the boundaries set for a good Jewish rabboni. Jesus speaks to the woman at the well, Jesus listens to the SyroPhoenician woman, Jesus speaks to the tax collector, Jesus heals the blind and lepers, Jesus says that the woman who anoints him with expensive oils will be remembered and she is (although we don’t know her name). Jesus is with the adulteress, the pagan, the unclean, the marginalized, the poor. We can see where Jesus stands and who he stands with in the gospels.
We know Jesus wasn’t able to solve the problems of his day but he did leave us a template to follow – He showed us where to stand and who to stand with, he gave us all some good advice when he said “Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself”, and he showed us who our neighbours included: those who were marginalized in society, those who were looked down upon, those who were ostracized, those who were forgotten or never even noticed.
Jesus was about living out God’s word and his
message to us was all about listening to and for God’s word in our lives. If we are able to follow that model knowing that God was situated right beside the poor, the oppressed, the suffering and right with those in pain and those who carry open wounds, and we are guided by the stories of Jesus and the early Church, then anything we do or say to improve one area be it: poverty, food availability, housing availability, access to safe drugs, child care, aboriginal reconciliation, climate change, ecological resource practices or working for justice and against racism, sexism, gender bias, - anything we do in one area of the body benefits the whole body – benefits our community, our nation and our world. We are all interconnected, and ultimately we are all one body – one great big world together.
Prayer
Holy God
We come to you with heavy hearts
Our world is smoldering and we are breathing smoke
We pray for those people and families
Who have lost their homes or pets or loved ones
In these horrific fires burning in California, Oregon and Washington
We pray for those who have evacuated but do not know what they will return to.
Wrap these people in your love
Bring to them comfort and support
Be with your people in their time of need.
This we pray knowing that you are always with us
Amen
