I Corinthians 12
What God Thinks of Diversity
We're doing a series on community. And you know I've discovered something. I really
love the idea of community. It's people I have a hard time with. Community is one
of those things that sounds so good in theory, but isn't so fun when you actually
try it. Home Based Fellowships seemed like such a wonderful idea. Then when we began
to actually get into them, and discovered that we had to deal with real people, they
lost some of their glamour.
One of the biggest challenges to community is simply diversity. People are so different
from one another. How are we supposed to get along? Compound diversity with sin,
and it is surprising we're not all hermits.
There are a couple of different ways that people deal with this problem. Here's
a story to illustrate one of them:
[Arnold Lobel -- Grasshopper on the Road]
This story illustrates what I call the "club" solution to creating community. It's
a very straightforward solution: Insist on uniformity. If we get together just
with people who are just like we are, then community should be easy. The club solution
on a large scale begets totalitarianism.
There's another common solution to the problem of diversity. I call it the woodstock
solution. Just FEEL love for one another. Visualize world peace. Imagine all
the people . . . And if we just feel enough love for one another, then all of our
differences will fade away into insignificance. Course it helps if you have some drugs
to help the process along. And it helps if you all like the same sort of music.
Even then the feeling won't last much more than a weekend.
Churches fall into exactly these two patterns. There are club churches and there
are woodstock churches. We know we're supposed to be unified, but we don't quite
know how. So club churches aim for uniformity -- try to minimize differences and
turn out cookie cutter Christians. Woodstock churches take an I'm OK, you're OK approach.
Anything goes as long as we're loving enough.
But what is God's view of diversity?
1 Corinthians 12
The main argument in this chapter is that the church is meant to be a diverse place.
God DELIGHTS in diversity. And with a little thought, this shouldn't surprise
us at all. Look around at creation. Creation explodes with diversity. Then think
of God himself, who reveals himself to us as diversity in unity -- three in one. It
shouldn't surprise us at all, then, that God's love for diversity is also reflected
in the church.
1 Corinthians was written to a church that had forgotten this. The Corinthian Christians
thought that there were certain signs that you had really made it as a Christian.
In particular, they thought that anyone who was REALLY spiritual should be able
to demonstrate it in spectacular ways. In particular, the Corinthians were treating
the gift of Tongues as the only real sign that God's sprit was at work.
Let me offer a trivial example: Suppose I was to say, if you are really spiritual,
then you shoule be able to come up front and lead the congregation in singing.
Everyone knows that real Christians can sing. That would be absurd. You know
as well as I that we cannot judge someone's spirituality by whether they can sing. Being
able to sing is a gift from God -- not everyone has it. So whether you can sing
or not is not the issue -- what matters is WHAT you sing, which reflects what is
in your heart.
This is exactly what Paul tells the Corinthians in the first three verses. Not everything
that LOOKS spiritual is really from God. The only real measure of spirituality is
that Jesus is glorified. You may be doing spectacular things, but if you are not glorifying Jesus, then it's not from God. But if you ARE glorifying Jesus, then
it doesn't really matter exactly how you do it. I may say Jesus is Lord through
my preaching. You may say it by working in the nursery. Some one else by speaking
in spiritual language. Another through acts of mercy. God is not limited to one way of
working. There are as many ways for the Spirit of God to work in the church as there
are people. God delights in working in differing ways in different people.
So how does God show his love for diversity in the church?
The primary way that God's love for diversity shows itself in the church is through
gifts of the spirit.
If you are completely confused by the idea of spiritual gifts, you are in good company.
The Corinthians had several misconceptions about spiritual gifts and how they worked:
- They confused outward showiness with spirituality
- They had a very limited view of how God could work, so they became preoccupied with
certain gifts and ignored others.
- They had forgotten the purpose of the gifts.
Paul's purpose is to combat these misconceptions, and he does so by using the metaphor
of the body:
vs. 12-13 -- Our bodies are a perfect image of diversity in unity.
By its very nature the body is a unit. Think about how your body was formed. Did
your parents go to a junkyard of used body parts and try to find some that would
fit together? No, of course not. From the start your body was an organic whole.
In the same way, the body of Christ is, by very nature a unit. We are not just thrown
together at random, having to make the best of it and try to get along. Rather,
we were formed into a body by a supernatural act of God. Once you are a Christian
being a part of the body of Christ is not something that you can opt in or out of --
any more than your hand can opt out of your body. Being a part of the body is just
a fact of life that you'd better get used to.
vs. 14-20 -- But although the body is a unit, it is formed in such a way that each
member has a specialized function
I have come to understand specialization the hard way. I love to take things apart.
And I am very good at taking things apart. VCRs, watches, cassette players.
My problem is putting them back together! And it is not uncommon when I put something
back together to have a few pieces left over. Now its all very well for me to say,
oh, they just look small and unimportant -- but in a sophisticated device nothing
is small and unimportant.
The thing about specialization is that every part is necessary if the whole thing
is going to work properly. Thats why they put so many redundant systems on a space
craft.
Now because each member of the body of Christ has a specialized function, there are
two sins that will do terrible damage to the body:
-- Jealousy -- wanting someone elses gift rather than your own. It is God who determines
how the gifts are distributed.
-- Isolation -- leaving yourself out because you don't think you're important .
Have you ever put together a thousand piece puzzle only to discover at the very
end that one piece is missing? If you are unwilling to play your part, the whole
body will suffer
And that leads to Paul's final point:
As members of the body of Christ we need each other; we are interdependent. (vs.
21-31)
The most obvious characteristic of any interdependent system is that every part is
effected by every other -- if one part isn't working right, the whole system suffers.
The most obvious example of interdependence is the body itself. If I hit my thumb,
my whole body sympathizes. And that's even more true of the less visible organs
of my body. Those parts that are weaker are indispensable -- the internal organs,
the parts we think least about, require the most protection. Your hair may go gray and your
face wrinkle up without any harm to the body -- but if your heart or lungs or kidneys
fail, then you are in trouble.
Similarly, if we really believe that we are interdependent in the church, then we
will pay attention to the less visible parts. In the church, it is not those with
the visible, flashy gifts that need the most care and attention. We need to invest
ourselves in those who are behind the scenes.
What does any of this have to do with us at Stony Brook?
Do we take this image of the body seriously? Then think about this -- how much time
and effort do you spend taking care of your body? Between feed it, washing it and
grooming it, and admiring it, haircuts and manicures and shopping for clothes, exercise -- its a pretty big investment.
If our physical bodies are worth that kind of investment, how much more the spiritual
body to which we all belong. I challenge you to examine how much conscious effort
you put into building up the body - encouraging other members, building each other
up, feeding each other spiritually.
Every time you look in a mirror to care for your physical body I challenge you to
think of some way to build up a brother or sister in Christ.