Sunday, January 26, 2025

Third Sunday after Epiphany
Connections
Rev. Brent Gundlah

First Reading (First Corinthians 12:12-3a/NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (Luke 4:14-21/NRSVUE)

In my younger days, I was a reasonably serious runner. I wasn’t terribly fast, mind you, but I was disciplined about actually getting out there and doing it regularly. Given my history of susceptibility to the fourth deadly sin (for the record, that one is “sloth”) — especially when it comes to physical exercise — this was no mean feat.

But one December day everything suddenly changed for me. As I got out of bed that morning and put weight on my right leg, the excruciating pain I felt in my right knee was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I could barely walk up or down the stairs and, since I didn’t happen to live in ranch house, my everyday life became a little more challenging. Suffice it to say that I knew I was going to be hanging up my running shoes, at least for a while anyway.

After a few days of hobbling around in agony, I finally decided to go see a sports medicine specialist and, given the level of discomfort I was enduring, I figured that I had to be headed for the operating table. The doctor watched me walk to and fro in my sneakers and in my bare feet for a while; he took a bunch of x-rays of my right knee; he examined my entire leg from my hip right down to my big toe. And when he had finished doing all of this, he looked at me and proceeded to say something that I found surprising — the problem wasn’t actually with my right knee, it was with my right foot.

This was kind of hard for me to believe at first because my foot felt completely fine while my knee, in contrast, was throbbing in pain. But the doctor was convinced that he knew exactly what was going on.

He explained that my foot was collapsing inward when it struck the ground as I was walking or running, putting an incredible amount of stress on the inside of my knee; this was what was causing my problem. If we could somehow fix the issue with my foot, then the pain in my knee would subside. Thankfully, I didn’t need surgery — just a whole lot of physical therapy and a pair of orthotics for my shoes. Sure enough, within a few weeks of tending to my foot, my knee pain went away. It’s kind of like Paul said to the Corinthians about the, “If one part suffers, all suffer together with it; if one part is honored, all rejoice together with it.”

Suffice it to say, I gained a whole new appreciation for the complex interconnectedness of the human body as a result of my unfortunate orthopedic experience. It really made me think about how coordinated so many different parts must be in order for us to do even the simplest of things — everyday actions like walking or talking or smiling that we so often take for granted.

Paul’s point in our first reading for today — which is drawn from his first letter to the church in Corinth — is that the church is similar to the human body in many respects. It takes the constant coordination of a whole lot of different parts, each contributing in specific and unique ways to something that is greater than any one of them, in order to make it all work.

Sometimes the Lectionary’s choice of texts for a given Sunday can really be challenging; it can be a bit of a stretch to try to relate the readings to what is actually going on in our church at the moment. But today is not one of those times. I mean, could there possibly be a more appropriate passage for us to consider today, one week before our winter congregational meeting?

That is, of course, the day upon which we gather to look back on what we did last year, and to look forward to all the possibilities of what we might accomplish together going forward. It is the day on which we not only vote on our budget for this year, but also elect our Spiritual Gifts team — the folks who are responsible for seeking our church’s next leaders before we gather to call them at our next meeting this spring. Who knows? Maybe you’ll choose to step up and be one of those leaders. Truth is, we need all sorts of people to come together to do the work of this church body.

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and we were all made to drink of one Spirit,” is what Paul says to the Corinthians. It’s fair to say that baptism is pretty important to Paul, and that’s because it was pretty important in the life of Jesus.

A couple of weeks ago, we talked about Jesus’s baptism. Immediately after he plunges into the waters and the dove appears and the voice of God rings out from the heavens, saying “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased,” everything in the story changes — Jesus’s ministry among the people actually begins.

We don’t hear an awful lot about Jesus’s life before then — the account of his baptism occurs really early in all four gospels (In chapter one of Mark and John, and in chapter three of Matthew and Luke). This is not to say that the details of Jesus’s life up to that point don’t matter, because they do; the details of all of our lives matter.

But it’s also no accident that we begin to get a better, more complete understanding of who Jesus really is when he accepts John’s invitation to a baptism of repentance — when he chooses in this ritual act, in this sacrament, to give himself over; to orient his life towards others, towards the world, towards God, towards something bigger than himself.

So, were you baptized as a child or an adult? Did you have water sprinkled on your head or did you get dunked in a river? Perhaps you were never baptized at all. The important part is that you’re here, and obviously something brought you here.

Maybe that something was your family or your friends; maybe that something was the hope of finding a family or friends; maybe that something was a desire to be closer to God and to follow the teachings of Jesus; maybe that something was the fact that the people of this church have covenanted to be Open and Affirming and to do the work of Creation Justice. The reasons are important because they are part of your story and they are all different ways of saying that you wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself.

For Paul, baptism is a reminder that we belong here, that we matter here, that we are accepted for who we are here, that we are a part of this body — and these are real gifts of the Spirit. Indeed, everyone belongs here, everyone matters here, everyone is accepted for who they are here. And these are wonderful things about this church community. But there is definitely more to it.

Because, as far as Paul is concerned, to truly be a part of this body you must also participate in it, you must bring whatever unique gifts you possess to bear here, for the benefit of all. In other words, belonging and responsibility are two sides of the same coin in the life of the body of the church, just as they are in the human body.

The foot is, as we all know, a part of the human body. But, as I learned, if your foot happens to stop doing what a foot needs to do, then your knee is negatively affected. And if your knee can’t do what it needs to do, then your back hurts. And so on and so forth. Pretty soon, your whole body simply doesn’t function as it should. And it’s the exact same thing with church.

We all need to do our part here in order to make this work. It sounds so simple in theory, but not so much in practice. What if we don’t understand what our gifts are? What if we think that other people don’t see our gifts as being essential? What if we don’t even see our own gifts as being essential? What if my gift clashes with someone else’s gift? These are all very real issues and concerns, because whenever people are involved, things can be challenging.

But none of this changes the fact that we are called to be Christ’s hands and heart in this world. So we can’t allow all of those other things — those very human things — to distract us from that task; we can’t permit tendencies such as self-doubt, worry, laziness, envy or conflict to paralyze us. We can’t just sit there with the bat on our shoulder, we’ve actually gotta lean in and take a swing at some point — even if that means we’ll strike out sometimes. While it might seem counterintuitive, it’s when we put ourselves out there for the benefit of others and for the common good that we manage to shine the brightest and matter the most.

We currently find ourselves in difficult and tumultuous times, and the presence of a faith community such as ours is especially important, right here and now, to people who might be feeling like they don’t belong, like they don’t matter, like they aren’t accepted elsewhere. But in order to do what God calls us to do — to embody extravagant love, to care for the oppressed and the vulnerable, to act compassionately, to speak truth to power — we need all the parts of this church body to be functioning as they should, and to be functioning together.

It’s pretty simple, really. We all belong here and we all have responsibilities here. So let’s discern what our gifts are and determine how they can be used for the greater good; let’s figure out what our respective jobs are and get to work being the Body of Christ.