Jeff Tobin + January 19, 2025
Second Sunday after the Epiphany
In his sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany, guest preacher Jeff Tobin reflects on the powerful metaphor of the body used by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 to address divisions within the church. He reminds us that every gift—whether wisdom, service, or energy—is intended to benefit the entire community. By examining the pitfalls of ego and self-assertion, Jeff offers a vision of what true unity looks like. Just as a huddle in sports is meant to prepare for collective action, the church is called to serve a larger purpose. Together, we are better equipped to bring healing and hope to the world.
Sermon Transcript
From automatically generated captions, and lightly edited for readability by AI chatbots
After church, a woman found that she had locked her keys inside her car. So she got an old coat hanger and tried her best to get the car open, but it didn't work. She bowed her head and asked God to send her help.
A scruffy old man was passing by, and he stopped and asked her what was wrong. She explained the problem and asked if he could use the coat hanger to help unlock the car.
"Sure," he said. In less than a minute, he had the car open.
The woman hugged him, and she was so excited. Through her tears, she said, "You are such a nice man! Thank you!"
"Lady," he replied, "I'm not a nice man. I just got out of prison yesterday. I was there for car theft."
The woman, sobbing, hugged the man again and cried, "Oh, thank you, God! You even sent me a professional!"
I am not a professional car thief. And though I'm standing in the pulpit, I'm not a professional preacher. But I am with you—a fellow member of the body of Christ here at Trinity Lutheran, the body that Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians 12:12.
As a reminder, he said: "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one, so it is with Christ."
The many and the one.
A generation ago, a man—a doctor by the name of Paul Brand—wrote a book called Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. If that sounds familiar, you might recognize it from Psalm 139. Dr. Brand, as a medical doctor, took Paul's analogy of the body and its members and turned it slightly, talking about cells within the body.
This is what he said:
"The body is one unit, though it's made up of many cells. Though they are many, they form one body. If a white cell should say, for example, 'Because I'm not a brain cell, I do not belong to the body,' it would not, therefore, cease to be part of the body. If the muscle cell should say to the optic nerve cell, 'Because I'm not an optic nerve, I do not belong to the body,' it would not, for that matter, cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an optic nerve cell, where would the ability to walk be? If the whole body were an auditory cell, where would the sense of sight be? If all cells were the same, where would the body be? As it is, there are many cells but one body. Distinct cells, distinct functions—many, yet one."
We’re better together.
The Corinthian church, however, seemed to be doing better at the "many" and not so well at the "one." There's a certain urgency—an attempt at triage, if you will—behind Paul's use of the extended body metaphor that we read about in our text this morning.
As we'll see momentarily, Paul cites several examples of body dysfunction that prompt his teaching about how the many need to work together to be one. First, let’s consider verses 4–6 of chapter 12 in 1 Corinthians, the epistle that Colleen read so beautifully for us this morning.
Could we have the first slide, please?
I wanted to highlight the pattern that Paul establishes here in verses 4–6:
"There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. Varieties of service, but the same Lord. Varieties of activity, but the same God."
The many and the one.
He builds on this by talking about the gifts specifically in verses 8–11. He mentions wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, tongues, and interpretation of tongues.
Possibly, you may remember or note that your gift—or gifts—are in that list. However, it's not the only list that Paul provides. In Romans 12, he gives another list that includes at least five other gifts not mentioned here.
Personally, I appreciate the fact that I have received the gift of retirement.
In the second verse listed, verse 5, where Paul talks about gifts of service, the Greek word for "service" is the root for our word deacon. And David's going to talk to us about deacons after the service this morning.
In verse 6, where Paul mentions varieties of activity, some translations call it "works." The Greek word here is the root for energy. I hope some of you have received the gift of energy today—certainly, our young worshippers usually do!
If you think you’re seeing the Trinity in these verses, you wouldn’t be alone. These verses form part of the biblical basis for the formulation of the Trinity by early church theologians. That doctrine helps inform Paul’s message in 1 Corinthians 12, as the Trinity itself is a model of multiplicity and oneness.
God is one community made up of three persons. Similarly, in Paul’s metaphor of the church as Christ’s body, we—that body—are one community made up of many parts or cells. Just as in the Trinity, there is a unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit without uniformity, so in the body—the community of Christ—there is great diversity but with an underlying organic unity.
May we have the second slide, please?
So here, Paul, in verse 7, is going to begin to drive home the point that he's been making about the many gifts and the oneness because he says this:
“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”
There are varieties of gifts, services, and activities, as we noted in verses 4 through 6, but they're not an end in themselves. They are meant to promote the common good. That is to say, the good of the community. The implication, however, is that if the use of those gifts does not promote the common good, then they're being misused.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a book called Life Together—a very appropriate title for the discussion we're having this morning. In that book, Bonhoeffer mentions a potential problem that might apply to what Paul is dealing with in the Corinthian Church. Bonhoeffer said:
“Each member of the community is given his particular place, but this is no longer the place in which he can most successfully assert himself, but the place where he can best perform his service.”
Asserting himself—today, we might use the word ego. Ego and the common good are like oil and water—they don't mix well.
In the earlier chapters of this epistle to the Corinthians that we haven’t looked at yet, it appears that ego, or self-assertion, rather than the spirit of the common good, was all too characteristic of this church. For example, in chapter 1, Paul says:
“Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.”
He goes on to say these divisions, or factions, were evident in that some in the church were saying things like:
“I belong to Paul.”
“I belong to Cephas.”
“I belong to Jesus.”
In chapter 3, Paul notes that there is jealousy and quarreling among the members of the congregation. In chapter 4, he says some of them were being puffed up and arrogantly taking sides. Arrogance is always a form of self-assertion.
Self-assertion—ego—in this case, meant putting oneself above fellow Jesus-followers, condescending to them, which is a form of contempt. In chapter 6, Paul laments that when they had divisions among themselves, instead of working it out with reconciliation, they sued one another in courts.
If Paul didn’t invent the term herding cats, he certainly could have.
And if that weren’t enough (and I haven’t even mentioned all the things he talked about in those first chapters), in chapter 11, he really chastises them for what he calls factions and divisions in, of all places, the Lord’s Table. Evidently, the poorer members of the community were being disrespected by the wealthier ones. In chapter 11, verse 22, Paul says:
“What? Do you show contempt for the Church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?”
In some versions, the word despise is used instead of contempt. Paul goes on to say to them:
“For this, should I praise you? Certainly not!”
The Tobin translation would say: “Are you kidding me?”
These problematic examples, then, are all reasons Paul employs the body metaphor. It's an attempt to teach the Corinthians to think differently and act differently—to prioritize the common good.
Had symphony orchestras existed in the first century, Paul might have spoken of the importance of the various instrument sections—the winds, the brass, the strings, the percussion—all literally playing their many diverse parts in order to contribute to the making of one piece of beautiful music. Alas, he couldn’t wait 1,700 years for Mozart, so he had to come up with something everyone could understand: the human body.
The church—Christ’s body—is not a collection of individuals, like grains of sand on the seashore. Rather, like a human body, it’s a collaboration of interdependent cells and systems, where each contributes to the health of the whole.
We are better together.
Corinth was the third-largest city in the Roman Empire, but it was nevertheless a Greek city and employed the Greek language. The Greek word for city was polus, and in English, we get from the word polus terms like police and political.
The term the New Testament writers used to identify the church was a Greek term related to the polus. It was the term ekklēsia, and it had to do with citizens of the polus getting together to solve the problems of their common civic life. The New Testament writers must have seen in that term a parallel to what the church was: a place where people come together to work on their common problems and for the common good.
In his book Created for Community, theologian Stanley Grenz wrote, "The church is not an end in itself. We are not a holy huddle. The church exists to serve a larger intention."
“Holy huddle”—that's an evocative term, isn't it? Whether or not you're a sports fan, you've probably seen team sports where the players huddle up. Everyone is in a huddle, facing inward with their backs turned toward everyone and everything outside of them. The danger, of course, of a "holy huddle" is to be so heavenly minded that you're no earthly good.
So Grenz says, "We're not a holy huddle. We serve a larger intention."
What is that larger intention?
Our text for this morning is an Epiphany reading, and the Epiphany is about making Jesus manifest, disclosing him to the world. That’s the larger intention. That’s the church’s vocation.
A healthy body not only implies internal cohesion but, as Pastor Hector has often reminded us, the church is a movement. A body is meant for movement. So the church—the Jesus community—is a movement of which we are a part, meant to bring the gospel message, the Jesus vision of reconciled and reconciling community, to the world.
Tomorrow is a day when we honor the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As a Christian pastor, Dr. King preached and embodied the gospel vision that he spoke of in his dream of the Beloved Community.
There’s a passage in the book of Revelation, chapter 7, that some scholars refer to as God’s dream. In that passage, John, the writer of Revelation, says:
"After this I looked, and I saw a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes, from all peoples, and from all languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. And they cried in a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to our God and to the Lamb.'”
I believe, in the end, that Dr. King’s dream and God’s dream, as envisioned in the book of Revelation, are one and the same: one family—one human family—standing together without any us and them, united in praising our Creator and Redeemer.
I once saw a bumper sticker that said, in bold letters, "Jesus," and underneath, in smaller letters, it said, "Please protect me from your followers."
Maybe you know people—family or friends—who share that sentiment. Maybe some of you here this morning share that sentiment as well.
But I wonder: What’s really behind that bumper sticker? What was the person who created it trying to say? What experiences might they have had that led them to feel that way?
I believe there could be a great deal of pain hidden in that humor. Maybe they saw what Bonhoeffer spoke about: self-assertion. Maybe they saw too much of that ego in their own prior church experience. Or maybe, behind the bumper sticker, there was an experience they had of being injured—or knowing someone dear to them who had been injured—by the church.
By a church riven, as the Corinthian church seemed to be, by factions, jealousies, and quarreling.
Jesus, deliver us from such a church.
Jesus, deliver us from being such a church.
Consider this observation from Richard Rohr:
"The great temptation of the Christian church has always been to think that if we were in control, if we had the power, we would win. But that's exactly what Jesus warns us against. If we look at church history," says Father Rohr, "whenever we were in charge, that's when we became the most corrupt."
Maybe this un-Jesus-like history of the church is what the bumper sticker laments.
Remember the Bible stories of Jesus' temptation after his baptism? The devil offered Jesus power: to win, to be in control. Thankfully, Jesus rejected that offer, and he made a different choice.
In a moment, we're going to come to the Eucharistic table to reenact the choice that Jesus made. He said, "This is my body, given for you—my life for yours." And we're also going to say, twice, "Do this for the remembrance of me."
Not just remember what Jesus did, but how he did it.
He rejected the devil and the devil's offer of power. He rejected what Luther called the "theology of glory" or triumph, and he instead embraced, by contrast, what Luther called the "theology of the cross."
At the Eucharist, we’ll sing how he did it: Lamb of God, with love poured out, you suffered with the world.
And it's in this context, also, that we should remember Paul's words to the church in Philippi, where he said that Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and he humbled himself.
Jesus chose downward mobility—not the upward mobility of the "theology of glory."
And in that same Philippians passage, Paul also says this—to that church, to us, and to every church since then:
We should, indeed, have the mind of Christ.
"Let this same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus," said Paul.
We remember not just what Jesus did but how he did it. He emptied himself and became a servant.
Jesus always used the power that he did have under people to lift them up—not power over them to oppress and coerce them. His power was to heal and to lift up.
When the church, the body of Christ, has—in the past or in the present—displayed power over people, then we have strayed from the vision of Jesus: the downward mobility that lifts people up and makes them whole.
And maybe that's why bumper stickers like that get created—because we've forgotten what our Master embodied and showed us.
Let me conclude by once again referring to Dr. Paul Brand.
If you know something about him, you know that his medical specialty was dealing with leprosy. He was one of the primary researchers and hands-on physicians addressing the needs of some of the most rejected human beings on the face of the Earth. He emulated the mind of Christ and used his power on behalf of those who truly needed it.
Dr. Brand said, "When Jesus departed, he left a visible community to embody him and represent him to the world. Although we cannot change the world individually, together we can fulfill God's commandment to fill the Earth with his presence and love. When we stretch out a hand to help, we stretch out the hand of Christ's body. And we do that better together."
Amen.
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