Edgewood United Church

United Church of Christ

January 21, 2007  Edgewood United Church, UCC Rev. Karen E. Gale

Distal Phalanges
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

How many of you know your distal phalanges?  I can see them from here--no xray vision needed.

Distal phalanges are the last segment of your fingers or toes, the small bone from the last upper knuckle to the end of your finger for example.

How important are they to you? Do you really need that last bit of your pinkie finger for instance?

Listen to this interchange I recently read between a comic and his buddy.

Me: “I don’t think I really need my pinkie finger.”

Friend #23: “Oh yeah? Would you chop it off for ten dollars?”

Me: “Ten bucks? To chop of my pinkie finger? No way.”

Friend #23: “But I thought you said you didn’t need it? That it was useless.”

Me: “Sure, but why would I chop it off?”

Friend #23: “How about a thousand dollars?”

Me: “No. Not for any amount of money. I don’t wanna be running around with a missing pinkie finger. You know how people stare at people missing fingers…”

Friend #23: “A hundred thousand dollars?”

Me: “Tax free?” (Paul Davidson, Words for My Enjoyment)

How much for one of your distal phalanges?

In today’s scripture, Paul is writing to the church in Corinth. The church was having problems and divisions were forming. Corinth was a very important trading city in Greece, a major city in the Roman Empire. Now Corinth was very diverse—racially, ethnically, economically. The congregation was made up of Jews who felt that they were longstanding members of the tradition, and Gentiles who brought strange ideas and new energy, a different background and who were new to the faith. There was tension around how to do things and who was really the church. 

Sound familiar? It wasn’t all that different from church today.

The church at Corinth argued over what was important and who was important and there was a clash between the rich and the poor of the congregation. Paul writes to them and tries to use an image/metaphor that all would understand: the human 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.  Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.”

It is a metaphor that is still effective today. Seeing ourselves as part of the body helps understand church, our role in it, and the call to all of us to be included and valued.

Now, the trouble with this analogy—that the church is like the body and all the parts are important—is that like all analogies, it falls apart at some point. We do actually have parts that we don’t technically need.

Christina Berry, a Presbyterian pastor in Silver Lake Minnesota imagined a children’s sermon nightmare:

The pastor asks, “Are there any parts of the body that we can live without?”
And a child answers “Appendix.”
And another says, “Spleens”
And a third says “One of our kidneys.”
And the pastor says, “Okay then, let’s have a prayer.”

We do actually have parts of the body that we do not need like the appendix. Okay, now, stop thinking about who the appendix is in this body of Christ!

“Paul’s words about the need of all parts of the body, contains an important truth The kind we all nod to and agree with on Sunday But the kind we often forget to live out every other day of the week.

“How often have we treated each other like appendix and spleens? It’s easy to do.
You go to a meeting and someone says something that annoys you And the next thing you know, you’re thinking, “Why don’t you just go fly a kite?” This person is obviously an appendix!

“And you’re really wishing everyone else would see it Yeah, we’re the body of Christ all right – and you’re an appendix!” We do it with other churches, too.” (Christina Berry, midrash.org)

Sure we believe in diversity of religious, but we are pretty sure that the Edgewood church is a more important part of the body of Christ. Certainly more important than our Nazarene neighbors or Mount Hope Church of the Flags. Those others are, well, like spleens. Or spare kidneys.

We even, do this within our own denomination. When we hear of those in the UCC protesting Open and affirming,  we catch ourselves thinking, “Why don’t THOSE PEOPLE just go away?” They’re nothing but APPENDIX!

“We do it all the time! As I think of it, it’s kind of a shame we don’t have a hymn for it “In Christ there is no appendix or spleen”

“But Paul reminds us that we are not our own And we are NOT on our own. We can’t get along on our own. We need each other. Look around you, at the faces around you. This is the body of Christ.” (Christina Berry, midrash.org)

The hands that open the mail…
That wash the Sunday morning coffee cups…
That send email about the dates and time of protest marches…
That organize a trip to Nicaragua…
That make a meal for a homebound person…
That cut out the Sunday School crafts…
That turned the heat on this morning…
This is the body of Christ.

If we had to scroll the credits for all those who just made worship happen this morning, we would be here through coffee hour and beyond.

We all need each other, each are given gifts—all of us. Even those with whom we disagree or we see as divisive. We are all part of the body.

Paul writes, “if one member suffers, all suffer together with it. If one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. We are all members of the body.”

This can be challenging. Sometimes I meet or talk with people who tell me they are spiritual but not religious. I ask them what this means to them.  Often people mean they don’t agree with some theological points or doctrine. Or that they are turned off by problems inherent in any institutional structure like the church. They like to be an individual seeking God, independent from any of those things.

But as a Christian that is not really an option. We belong to the body.

As the church we are bound together, united with one another. “There is no way to detach oneself from that structure; if the foot should 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 (12:15-16). To be a Christian is to be part of Christ’s body.

Dennis Ormseth says, “Belonging to the body is to feel all its pains, share its hungers, know its limits, suffer in its illnesses, dance its liturgies, feed its growth, breathe its spirit, expect its healing, die its death, and hope for its resurrection. All these things members of the body do together and for each other. Like it or not, everyone has to learn to live with the smell! (Word and World)

In college my brother played ultimate Frisbee. This is a game with 10 players on each side played on a football field. The goal is to throw the Frisbee back and forth among your players and try to score a goal. Often what matters most is being in the right place at the right time. One does not need to be amazingly athletic. You just need to work together as a team, as one body, to play and score.

We, as the church, are the body. And the church serves different functions just as the body serves different functions. This is sometimes hard for us to reconcile or hold together.

Edgewood, for instance, is a church that strives hard for social justice. To some, this is the most important function of the church. To serve those in need. We can imagine social justice as the hands and feet of the body. Getting us out and doing/acting/working in the world in Jesus’ name. For what point is there in being a church if we do not take the message of God’s love and grace out with us?

The church also ministers to those who are grieving life’s losses. We are a place where people who have been sexually abused by clergy can learn that church can be a safe place. We are a place where those who lose spouses or children can be and cry and know that God loves them through this terrible mourning time. This is a place where our gay and lesbian folks can hear God’s promise and blessing for them despite how they’ve been wounded in the past.

This might be the stomach of the church, the place where people can be fed and held and healed, the way Jesus fed, and held and healed those in mourning and loss. For what point is there in preaching the healing and wholeness of God without tending to what is broken within folks or welcoming those just getting brave enough to walk in the front door of a church?

The church invites people to find God. The greatest commandment, Jesus said, is to love God with all our heart, mind and strength. We worship at church. We set aside time each week to come together and thank God for life and all that is in it. We come to praise God for all God has done. We come to be in the presence of God in a meaningful, deliberate way.

To some, this is the most important part of the church, being in worship and offering worship to the Lord. This is the skeleton of the church, the backbone upon which the rest of what we do is founded. For if we did not worship, how would we know who we are or why we do what we do or who guides us in our ministry?

Paul writes, 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?

Without the worship of God, our social justice is no different than the rotary or the ACLU. Without social justice and service, our worship of God is empty and hollow.
Without healing the people of God, the people can neither find God, nor engage in discipleship.

All parts of the body. No appendix in sight. Which brings us back to distal phalanges

The Japanese mafia is called the yakuza and it is a strictly hierarchical organization even more so than our image of the stereotypical Italian mafia like the Sopranos. A member of the yakuza owes absolute allegiance to the head of the organization, the boss.

“If a yakuza member displeases or severely disappoints his boss, the punishment is often yubizume, the amputation of the last joint of the little finger.  A second offense will require the severing of the second joint of that finger, and additional offenses might require moving on to the next finger.  The origin of this practice dates back to the days of the samurai.  Removing part of the smallest finger weakens the hand for holding the sword.  When a katana (the samurai long sword) is gripped properly, the pinkie is the strongest finger.  The ring finger is the second strongest, middle finger third strongest, and the index finger does almost nothing.  With a damaged hand, the swordsman became  more dependent on his master for protection.” (Crimelibrary.com)

That distal phalange is pretty important.

As are you.

We are all part of the body. Called to live out the preaching, prophesying, teaching, healing, assisting, leadership and speaking that Paul speaks about. We are not gifted in all these things as individuals, but together we are the body. We need each other. And Christ needs us, ministering in his name through teaching, healing, preaching, praying, prophesying in his name.   All of us. One body.

Amen.