Sunday January 26th, 2025 Worship

Growing up as an athlete, I spent a lot of time focused on improving and expanding all the things that my body could do. For example, many people are surprised to find out that I used to be a goalie in soccer, despite my short stature, and that I had an over two-foot vertical jump that allowed me to reach above the crossbar. Or that I used to be a competitive swimmer, as well as cross-country skier. But all this training did not prepare me for what to expect when my body couldn’t function in the way that I wanted it to or sometimes even needed it to, whether that be medical diagnoses that would change how I live or the injuries that took me out of competitive sports temporarily, and now permanently.
This is where I feel that our teachings on the body of Christ also fall short. If we struggle to tend to our injured physical bodies, how much more difficult is it to tend to our injured communal bodies. If we have a hard time not striving for the “perfect” body in our personal lives, just think about how that translates to our churches and our communities in which we face challenges and conflicts. When we talk about the communal body in the church, it’s almost always in the sense of unity and here’s why there should never be any conflict. Just because we are part of one body doesn’t mean it’s always going to function well or in the way we want it to. Think about how our own bodies function. We also emphasize how each member is just as important as the others, but then we see our world around us tell us, still usually through the language of Christianity, that this can’t possibly be true. Look at the hierarchies and systems, it all seems so normal to us. And, we don’t know what to do about it.
I’ve been thinking about this reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians a lot this week (1 Corinthians: 12: 12-31a), as we think about what it means to honor the parts of our own individual body, but also our collective body. Paul talks about it regarding the church, but it can be further expanded to think about the communities in which we exist, whether that be as small as our neighborhoods or as large as our country or the world. Paul was preaching against the idea of the time that certain groups were better than, were more important than others. It has been true throughout history that people have been trying to establish their superiority over other groups, even if it is just one. It’s like how people joke about being chased by the bear, and it doesn’t matter how fast they are, just as long as they aren’t the last one in front of the bear as they run away. But, this division has caused us to forget the ways that we are all interconnected, and how have been called to and created for community that doesn’t have these hierarchies of value and worth.
In a similar vein, during my time as a chaplain, I visited several people who had either experienced or were facing the possibility of an amputation. During those conversations, one of the same themes kept reappearing: the impending amputation enlightens for us the way that we take the individual parts of our bodies for granted. With the recent threats to people of different communities, I think people are coming to recognize just how important each member of society is to our collective body. That by removing them, it inherently changes the structure of our communities. We are at a point where some have come to realize what this removal would mean for our lives, while others still don’t think that they would be negatively impacted. When we talk about being one body, it isn’t a perfect body by any means, but it is one in which all people, all of creation is interconnected, whether we can see those connections or not.
When I worked in interfaith training, one of the quotes we used in our teachings was this one, from German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” While his quote is set in the context of Nazi Germany, it speaks to the understanding of what happens to the collective body when we feel that the other parts don’t matter as much as we do, that we aren’t impacted by their loss. It’s a commentary on what it means for us to not care about the body until we are affected ourselves. This isn’t saying that we don’t value ourselves or take care of ourselves in the process, but it is a call to pay attention to how the rest of the body is being affected too. Just because it doesn’t seem like it will impact us doesn’t mean that it won’t.
I bring all of this up this morning because the well-being of the collective body is at the heart of our Gospel today from Luke. Jesus stood up in the synagogue, the heart of his religious community, and read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4: 18-19). When we hear this reading today, we often forget that it comes from a section that was later given the subtitle “Jesus Rejected at Nazareth (ESV),” that later in this same section we also get the verse that says, “And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff” (Luke 4: 29). Sometimes we forget that Jesus’ messages weren’t always well received.
What Jesus is reading from in Isaiah talks about “the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4: 19), which is not an ordaining of all of our actions, as it might sound, but is actually recalling the practice of the Jubilee Year. The Jubilee Year was a practice that, while not really documented as occurring in the Bible, was supposed to happen every forty-nine years and was a way to bring rest, renewal, and liberation to the people and the land. The biggest factors of this included allowing the overworked land to rest for a fallow year, releasing those held captive, especially those who had been enslaved because of their debts, and a redistribution of wealth and power through the forgiveness of debts so that one person or group did not hold all the control. It was grounded in God’s care for the poor and marginalized so that the harmful systems of use and abuse would not continue indefinitely. It was a leveling of the playing field to acknowledge the ways that the community had been divided, and hierarchies had been established, and that something drastic had to happen to adjust it. It was like hitting the reset button.
After Jesus reads the words of Isaiah, he concludes today’s reading by saying “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4: 21b). It is both a recognition of who Jesus is and what he is going to do for the world, the radical changes that God has in store, but also it feels a bit like a charge to the people who were listening to what was said: “go and do likewise.” In order for this year of the Lord’s favor to be lived out, people who have actually had to go home and release their slaves, forgive the debts of those who owed them money, and perhaps release some of their own power. What Jesus is proclaiming is Good News, and it is supposed to be Good News for all people because it is what is best for the collective well-being of the whole society. Yet, just as this Good News can both empower us and also challenge us today, so too is that the case in our story today.
We spent a lot of time in Seminary talking about Luther’s understanding of law and gospel, especially how our Scripture and what we preach can be heard as law for some because it holds a mirror up to ourselves and asks us to do some deep, sometimes uncomfortable reflection work about our relationship with God and neighbors, while others might hear that exact same thing as gospel, as hope, promise, and a sign of God’s love. Think about it from the perspective of our Scriptures from today, where those whose debts were forgiven would have seen this as a joyous opportunity, a fresh start in life when they were just falling so far behind, those who had to forgive the debts were probably grumbling about how they lost their servants and the passive income their debts brought to them.
Within this, we get back to the understanding of being one body, and what is means to care for the whole body and treat it fully with respect and dignity. To connect it back to my stories of being an athlete, I think about this in regard to the way we treat injuries. My last year of playing soccer, I actually scored as many goals as I let in, not because I was so impressive of a goalie that I could score from the other end of the field, but because I had to stay out of goal for several weeks while I recovered from a dislocated shoulder. While it was healing, I had to spend extra time taking care of it, not because the other parts of my body didn’t matter, but because it would have had detrimental impacts on my future well-being had I chosen to pretend that the injury never happened.
Whether we like it or not, we are all a part of one body. We are called to think about what is not only best for us, but for the collective body, no matter how uncomfortable that makes us because it will make us uncomfortable. The promises of Scripture are both promises and challenges so that we can live into existence the flourishing of the whole world. Paul was preaching against the teachings of the day that divided the people, that called out the way the different members of the body were being treated differently. As problematic as this body language can be, it does help provide a framework for what it means to live this collective life together. So, as Jesus proclaimed: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4: 21b),” may we continue to pray and work that it may be so.