One Body in Christ, by The Rev. Donald Hamer
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Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
Pentecost 18 – Year C – September 22, 2013
“One Body in Christ”
1 Timothy 2:1-7
I want to begin by saying I know it will come as a disappointment to some of you that I have decided this morning NOT to take on the challenges posed by the parable of the dishonest steward from the Gospel of Luke. However, this morning I think it more important that we wrestle with the difficult issues post by the first letter to Timothy.
When we citizens of the United States recite the Pledge of Allegiance, we say the words, “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
In the beginning of the first letter to Timothy which we heard this morning, the author calls on Timothy and his congregation to pray for everyone, even for kings and others in positions of authority, so that everyone may lead a peaceable life “in all godliness and dignity.” The writer says this is only right because God desires for everyone to be saved, so much so that he sent Jesus as a ransom for all. No exceptions. Take another look at the passage – the word “all” is used a lot.
The prayer for kings and all in authority is particularly noteworthy because the church at the time was heavily persecuted, accepted in neither the Jewish nor the gentile community. How much easier it would have been for them to withdraw in quiet seclusion to live “a quiet and peaceable life.” And yet they decided to pray for good government and sound leadership, even for those who oppressed them, because they desired something more: They wanted to live more fully in the world in order to further the proclamation of God’s radical desire of salvation for all and the accomplishment of that by Jesus Christ’s offering of himself as a ransom for all.
Unlike our Christian ancestors of Timothy’s time, most of us in The United States of America of the 20th Century have lived in relative peace and tranquility compared to the rest of the world. As Christians, we have been part of the fabric of society for centuries. The church and civil government have engaged in a sometimes uneasy but mutually beneficial dance ever since the 4th century when Constantine converted to Christianity and with him, his entire nation. Only with the birth of America did the world see the beginnings of the notion of separation of church and state.
And yet even in America, many of us have a different narrative, a narrative in which God’s desire for all is not mirrored in their experience in civil life. For our brothers and sisters from places like Liberia and Burma, also now known as Myanmar, their escape from political oppression and civil war in their home countries was anything but “quiet and peaceable.” Africans brought to the United States as slaves had to wait until 1861 for Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and it would be more than a hundred more years before state-enforced segregation became illegal. It would be 1920 before women would win the long battle to be able to vote equally with males, and it was not until the 1960s that the same right was specifically enacted into law for men and women of color. During World War II, Japanese Americans – American citizens – were dragged from homes and jobs and herded into internment camps where the government could keep an eye on them. In the Episcopal Church, women were not allowed to be ordained to the priesthood until the 1970s. For the past forty year, the battle for equal rights – both in the church and in civil society – has expanded to take on discrimination based upon sexual orientation.
All this is to point out the reality that even in the United States of America, “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” we do not all share that same common narrative. The letter-writer’s invitation for all to live peaceably “in godliness and dignity” is a challenge to a society that is all-too-prone to acts of violence both in mass shootings that capture headlines and in the less publicized but equally devastating acts of violence that mark our inner cities almost on a daily basis. The reminder that Jesus died for “all” can be in stark contrast to the experience of those who continue to struggle in the presence of prejudice of any kind.
Sometimes those prejudices can be intentional and acted out with a deliberate attempt to hurt. More frequently, our prejudices – and don’t fool yourselves, we all have them – are far more subtle and perhaps even unconscious. Because of the possibility we may not even be aware of them, they can be even more insidious because they are invisible to us.
In the past year, the death of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, in a gated community in Florida at the hands of a man claiming to be protecting that same community, has highlighted the continuing challenges we face in this country when it comes to matters of race. Even more broadly, these challenges revolve around issues of “otherness.” As citizens, the question may be posed as asking how individuals in a free society can balance the pursuit of their right to a “quiet and peaceable life” without infringing on the pursuit by others of their own right to a “quiet and peaceable life.” Individually, we can ask ourselves, “How do we as children of the One God engage other children of the One God who are different from us? How can we step back from our own narrative – our own understanding of how the world works and what is “normal” – to hear and really try to understand the alternative narrative of people who do not share our own experiences and understandings.
As a community of faith, we are comprised of people from many and varied backgrounds – many ethnic groups, many cultural traditions, many religious traditions; people from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds; people with varying degrees of educational achievement; people with different gender orientations and people of widely differing political views. This makes Trinity a unique example of the Body of Christ in all of its diversity, and it brings to life the image of the Body of Christ which St. Paul describes in his First Letter to the Corinthians in Chapter 12: A conglomeration of parts all of which are different and all of which require the others to form a functioning body.
But this type of body doesn’t just happen. Before a human body can function as a healthy unit, the various parts have to be fully integrated with one another by nerves, muscle and connective tissue and nurtured by the body’s blood to be strong. The organs must be compatible – you are all aware of the phenomenon of “rejection” that can take place whenever part of a human body is replaced by a donation from another human body or by a manufactured part. It is part of the mystery of God’s creation that allows the human body to function as a cohesive unit.
Likewise, corporate bodies like the church are called by God to function as a cohesive unit, The Body of Christ. But as the Letter to Timothy suggests this morning, it takes prayer and commitment to make it a reality. While we as parts of the Body may want to fit together into a cohesive unit, we don’t always know exactly how to do that. We don’t naturally seek to go outside of our comfort zone, or own sphere of familiarity, to explore, to understand, to really appreciate those aspects of the stories of our brothers and sisters that are different from our own.
As your pastor, I have had a unique opportunity to hear and be a part of some of your discussions following the death of Trayvon Martin and the trial of the man who shot him. I have heard the anguish of parents who see in the circumstances surrounding Trayvon’s death a tragedy that all-too-easily could befall their own sons and daughters. I have heard the stories of old wounds that have been re-opened by the circumstances surrounding this case. And yes, it haunts me that standing in the shoes of Trayvon Martin just as easily could have been any number of our senior acolytes.
As members of the Body of Christ here at Trinity, we are in no position to second-guess how the justice system did its work in Florida. Nor is it helpful to dwell on that issue. It is important for us – as we strive to grow into the full stature of Christ – to be in touch with each other’s stories, with each other’s narratives, and to understand how the circumstances underlying that case impact, in a very real and immediate way, the lives of our fellow parishioners. However we might understand the Epistle’s call to live in “godliness and dignity,” 1 Timothy’s encouragement to pray for all calls us and our congregation to expand our vision beyond our own self-interest and our own narratives to appreciate the different points of view of those whom we call “brothers and sisters in Christ” and to appreciate the context of those understandings.
Each week we come to this table together to nourish our souls with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Now I believe it is important for us to nourish our spirit of community and the fellowship we share one with another. I hope that our Town Meeting this morning will be the first of many conversations in which we become more intentional about growing into the full stature of Christ both as individuals and as a congregation. We will use a process of Indaba, or holy listening, in which we have an opportunity to listen to others -- not to judge or to be judged, but simply to more fully appreciate and understand the speaker’s point of view. In so doing, it is my prayer that we will continue the urging of 1 Timothy to pursue wholeness through the experience of coming to know God more fully and more deeply in the person of each other, in whom we can see the face of Jesus Christ. AMEN.