Many Members, One Body

Rev. JT Smiedendorf

July 6, 2025

Text: I Corinthians 12:12-26

CENTRAL FOCUS:

All people have gifts that are unique and God calls these diverse gifts into a harmony that serves God’s Realm.

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. 13 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.

14 Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.

15 If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?

18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’

22 On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 24 whereas our more respectable members do not need this.

But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, 25 that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.

May the words spoken and the words heard become your Living Word in us, among us, and beyond us.

AMEN

Shortly after I arrived in Minneapolis in March, a generous member of this church gifted me with a performance of the Minnesota Orchestra. During the performance, a peak of participation was reached where about 90 musicians were all playing together. It was wondrous to see them all and to hear the beautiful music from the many come together as one multilayered expression.

At a meeting of the American Psychological Association some years ago, a study was presented on how members of the various sections of 11 major symphony orchestras perceived their own members by section.

• The percussionists were viewed as insensitive, unintelligent, and hard-of-hearing, yet fun-loving.
• String players were seen as arrogant, stuffy, and unathletic.
• The orchestra members overwhelmingly chose “loud” as the primary adjective to describe the brass players.
• Woodwind players seemed to be held in the highest esteem, described as quiet and meticulous, though a bit egotistical.

With all these differing perceptions, many negative, how can an orchestra ever come together to make such wonderful music?

I think it’s because they have made a commitment to a common goal, to a shared vision of what they can do together, to something that can only be done together. This motivates and allows them to combine their different instruments beautifully. Moreover, it makes their differences a necessary asset of birthing that beauty.

Like an orchestra, there are many different members of the Body of Christ, this Body of Christ, any church, any group. Look around this room. What a wonder, all the uniqueness of each person; in appearance, in life history, etc.

This morning’s Scripture is estimated to have been written around 54 AD. This ancient letter is part of a series of letters seeking to clarify Paul’s previous advice and offer further instruction to the church at Corinth. It’s not the first of the series of letters, but the first we have, so we call it First Corinthians. Being located on a peninsula in the middle of the Roman Empire, Corinth was an international city of commerce, much of it built on a foundation of slavery. This international character created a backdrop of many customs and religious practices. Amidst this diversity of culture and of opinion in the growing house churches, Paul seeks to offer a unifying word through the use of a well-known understanding of the body. These Christian communities did not follow the hierarchical relationships of Roman culture and family, but rather dissolved social and religious distinctions of status into an interdependent community of equals. Yet that equality was not automatically producing harmony.

Paul is trying to help them become a coherent community of equals. His answer: All people have different gifts like different parts of a body, and these are meant to come together like one whole and coordinated body for God’s purposes.

One never knows fully and specifically how each of us as parts will serve, how our diverse-ness will serve the whole. In the movie Simon Birch, Simon is a boy about 12 years old. Simon is not physically gifted or handsome by conventional social standards. He has a medical condition that has kept his bones and stature short. He moves awkwardly. Despite getting into trouble in various ways around school and family, he dreams of someday doing something important, even heroic. In the pool, he has the strange habit of practicing holding his breath under water for longer and longer periods.

One day the school bus in which he and some much younger classmates are riding, skids on some ice and plummets down an embankment into an icy lake and begins to slide underwater. In the midst of the panic, the adult bus driver’s courage fails him, and he leaves to save his own life. But somehow Simon finds calm and speaks with authority to organize a quick evacuation. On shore, with the rescue almost complete, he realizes that there is a little one still left in the sinking bus. He returns, and using his ability to hold his breath, saves this little one and gets back to shore.

Simon becomes the one who is uniquely suited to save the kids from the freezing water. His small size and ability to hold his breath are keys to the rescue. What was thought to be a liability or without value becomes of critical value. Simon reveals in his actions that he has gifts that others could not see, that most in that society could not recognize, including the gift of courage. The rejected one, the marginalized one becomes the hero saving all in the bus.

How amazing the way that diversity and diverse gifts can come together. Yet even amidst human diversity, there is always so much we share in common. Research suggests that all humanity, all of us here and all those out there have all come from the same genetic line which originated in the Great Rift Valley of Africa so long ago. And with all our differences of height, weight, skin tone, shapes, and sex, we still are essentially 99.99% the same. Think of the multitude of languages and appearances and cultures of the 8 billion human beings on earth. Amazing diversity. Yet, all 8 billion have the same facial expressions for the same emotions. Smiling is joy. Laughing is delight. Frowning is unhappiness or frustration. Glaring is anger. Crying is grief. For all of us.

Perhaps these are reminders of our unity, reminders that we can bring our human diversity into a symphony, our diverse parts into a purposeful whole that moves like a body. We here at Plymouth Congregational Church are a Body of Christ and are called, amidst our diversities, to move together for a greater purpose. Paul reminds the church at Corinth and us that the very work and the very nature of the Christ Presence is to seek unity amidst diversity, honoring both diversity and unity. We are called to follow in this Spirit, becoming like a body that moves, like an orchestra of many instruments that plays together.

On this July 4^th weekend, it is an opportune time to wonder how the body and its parts can hold together, what is the relationship of the many to the whole. Our congregational foremothers and forefathers helped form democracy in this nation, imperfect as it was, out of their understanding of the Gospel. The congregational meeting is a chief expression of this shared dance of unity and diversity.

Here at Plymouth Church, it is also an opportune season to wonder how our many members can become one body, especially as we enter a new chapter of ministry, an intentional interim time of ministry of new challenges and opportunities, where we ask again … What is Divine Love calling us to be and do now? How is Spirit moving within, among, and beyond us? Are we organized in a way to serve God’s call effectively? Is our financial model for our ministry sustainable?

Paul’s teaching is a challenge and a guide to us in ministry together and to our nation. My friends, I believe it is essential that we learn more deeply how to become the Body of Christ that knows all the parts are different, but needed, and we as parts know we are not the center, but a part of a whole. For us to meet the challenges of this new chapter of ministry and of national life, it will take all of us coming together like an orchestra, overcoming our limiting or stereotypical perceptions and thoughts about the other parts so that we come together.

This theme of the parts and the whole body is so important that I will continue to expand and go deeper with related messages the next couple of Sundays. We can only answer the call to love and justice and meet the challenges of being Plymouth Church in this time if we live out Paul’s teaching.

A constant reminder of many members and one body is in our pockets every day. That is, if anyone carries any coins anymore. You will see printed on the nickel E Pluribus Unum, Latin meaning “Out of Many, One.” May Christ continue to make out of the many of us, one Body, so that we can make music together, the Divine Music that brings God’s love into fullness within us, around us, and beyond us.  AMEN