Sermons

“Discerning the Body”

I Corinthians 11:17-29 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – April 2, 2017

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that your love might fill our hearts and open our eyes. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

So let’s start by taking a deep breath. As a general rule, if Disciples are going to be reading about the Body of Christ from First Corinthians, we’re going to be reading chapter 12. We love chapter 12. We use it for church camp curricula and special sermons and Youth Sunday themes and Bible studies. All that imagery about the different parts of the Body makes it really adaptable for skits and such, but mostly, the overall message about every single person’s gifts being an important part of the whole – that’s a lesson Disciples want to share every chance we get!

But we didn’t read from chapter 12 today; we read from chapter 11. And there’s that one bit that’s fine, where Paul has written out what we call the “Words of Institution”; we say those every week, more or less, so that part’s probably fine. But it’s preceded by some pretty strong words, and then those verses that come right at the end. We’re just not that comfortable with a passage that uses the word “judgment” like that. We spend a lot of energy encouraging people to think of this Table as a place of welcome and redemption and wholeness and love. We’re not used to considering whether we might be “eating and drinking judgment against ourselves.” I mean, it’s Lent, so we’ve added that “Litany of Preparation” with a short time of silent confession in right before communion, but “eating and drinking judgment against ourselves”? It seems a little harsh. So let’s take a deep breath. And lest you think I’m going too far off the Disciples “Welcome to the Table” script, let me say that my understanding of this passage owes a lot to a communion mediation shared by Sharon Watkins at a meeting a number of years ago. She made this passage approachable, if not warm and fuzzy, for me, and I hope I can do the same this morning.

So first of all, let’s orient ourselves, in case anyone has forgotten the context here. Paul is unhappy with the church in Corinth, why? Because they’re pretending to be a church, but they’re not taking care of one another. There are apparently people of vastly different economic situations in this one community, and the ones who had food were eating, and the ones who didn’t were going without. This is a fairly clear problem. It’s not that hard to figure out that they should be sharing their resources, so that when there’s food at church, everybody gets some. He’s not even saying they have to share all their resources, as we see in the church described in Acts. If they want to eat something on their own, they should do it at home, Paul says. But if you’re going to be eating at church, you need to, in that classic grade school classroom rule, “Bring enough for everyone.”

I think we can safely assume, from the vehemence of Paul’s admonishment, that this was happening repeatedly and wasn’t just one isolated incident. And that it wasn’t a matter of manners, where different people were taking turns being the ones eating in front of others without sharing, but a matter of economics, where the same people always had more than enough and another group consistently had nothing. The rich people weren’t sharing with the poor people, and it was making Paul really angry.

And then abruptly, after yelling at them for behaving this way, Paul is reminding them of the central truths of the Lord’s supper, going so far as to write out every line of how it goes and what it means. I believe this is what a writing teacher might call “dramatic contrast”. This is what you’re doing; this is what you’re supposed to be doing. They are not the same. And then he brings it back around by noting the consequences. “For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.” And it’s that phrase that I want to focus on today, “discerning the body,” because we have to know that this isn’t just about making sure everyone gets something to eat at the potluck.

What does it mean to “discern the body” as the church in 2017? Congregations are less stable than they were in hallowed memory, less stable but also more fluid and sometimes more flexible. The church lives on six different continents, in every time zone, and God only knows how many different languages. There are more generations within any given congregation than at any point in history, simply because we’re all living longer than we used to, yet the same patterns of assuming churches are full of old people, and the pattern of young couples returning to church when they have kids are still around. And the lines Christians used to draw between believers and the rest of the world are no longer seen as the boundaries they once were. What does it mean to “discern the body” in this context?

First of all, let’s just clarify what this phrase even means. It seems to me that Paul is telling us that if we’re going to claim to be part of the body of Christ, we must develop an awareness and compassion for the other parts of the body of Christ. If we are not relating to those other parts as though their welfare is directly connected to our welfare, we are not really acting as part of the body. To “discern” is to perceive and recognize, to see and understand. Given the context, Paul is talking about more than simply admitting that there are other parts of the body. To discern those parts is not just to know they exist, but to confess their intimate connection to us, as parts of the same body.

So if that’s what it is, how do we do it? It seems to me that the commandment to discern the body requires that we be church together. Because the hard truth is that no one of us is capable of discerning the whole body or even most of it on our own. We’re all good at it in different ways. And we’re all bad at it in different ways. We need each other in order to cultivate a fuller awareness of the body that can truly begin to reflect the presence and reality of Christ in our world. Our hearts are set to different frequencies, to pick up different sorts of needs from all the many different parts of the body, near and far. When we add it all together, we have a richer and more detailed picture of the full glory of the body of Christ.

Sometimes, discerning the body mean struggling to understand the pain of a situation so far removed from ours that it’s difficult to imagine. Our choir has sung today’s anthem before. But for whatever reason, the last time we sang it, I didn’t notice the back story the way I did this time. A few weeks ago, when we first began rehearsing that song, I was suddenly hit by a ton of bricks. The song is about dying and going to heaven, right? “Soon I will be done with the troubles of the world. I’m going to live with God.” And always before, when I’d heard that first verse – “I want to meet my mother,” – I’d just assumed it was the common sentiment people share about seeing their late parents again in heaven when they die. But then I noticed that’s not what it says. It doesn’t say “I want to see my mother.” It says “I want to meet my mother.” And suddenly I was blown away by the realization that this is the song of a slave who was taken away from her mother before she was old enough to remember her. The pain of that – the weeping and the wailing – is almost more than the heart can bear. But the trauma of it is still present in parts of the body today. What does it mean to discern that part of the body’s pain and our connection to it?

Other forms of discernment are far closer to us. Todd and I have been catching up on the show “Madame Secretary” on Netflix lately. It’s a show about a woman named Elizabeth McCord who is named Secretary of State. Elizabeth has three kids, and as you can imagine much of the show is about the balance she struggles to keep between her demanding job and being a mother. An episode we watched recently focused on the middle child, Allison. She thrust herself into the spotlight, yelling at her mother that she felt invisible. And Elizabeth comes to realize that her nature pushes her to focus on one crisis after another, both at work and at home. So the older daughter dropping out of college, the younger son getting kicked out of school for fighting, the high-level treason that led to her predecessor’s assassination – these are the dramatic tensions that held Secretary McCord’s attention. Meanwhile, her middle child – accomplished, rule-following Allison – was withering away from lack of attention because she wasn’t a crisis. We’re all bad at this in different ways. And we’re all good at it in different ways.

Whether it’s me bringing up the recent violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Michael reminding us of the plight of Syrian refugees, or Glenda letting us know about the health concerns of a former pastor, or Donna keeping us up-to-date on the passing of a former member, there are all sorts of ways we help each other discern the body. I am so grateful for all the ways various ones of you help me stay in touch with the concerns of fellow members. I know my awareness is limited, for whatever variety of reasons, so I depend on you to keep my finger on the pulse. We all have blind spots, so let us give thanks to God that we don’t all have the same one!

Because when we gather, we want to be able to come to the Table together. “When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper,” wrote Paul. Harsh words! It is, of course, God who makes this Table holy. We can no more remove God’s grace than we can live without breathing. But we can live or not as the body of Christ. And to live as the body of Christ requires that we confess and live our connection to the rest of the body. It is when we come to this Table, discerning the rest of that body as fully as we can, that the Spirit of Christ is truly in our midst, transforming the world through us by the power of the broken bread. We work at this, not because we want to be commended by some church authority, but because we truly want to meet Christ, to know Christ, to make Christ present in our lives and our world. We aim to discern the body, to share in the pain and the glory of each part of the body, precisely because we are called to welcome all to the Table as Christ has welcomed us, and to serve as a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world. As Disciples, we can do this better when we read chapter 12 and chapter 11 of First Corinthians. May the eyes of our hearts be opened! Amen.