All the People

I Corinthians 12:12-31, Luke 4:14-21

January 21, 2007

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

One of the big news stories of this week was that UCC member Barack Obama has decided to run for President. I was reading the paper the day after Obama announced he was forming his exploratory committee, and the columnist Clarence Page had some intriguing observations. He talked about how Obama would have trouble in parts of the country because he is black, but then he qualified that by saying Obama is really mixed race, the son of a white mother from Nebraska and a Kenyan father. But most Americans, Page continued, will look at him and label him as black, as they do the golfer Tiger Woods who calls himself a Cablinasian to indicate his Caucasian, Black, Indian and Asian heritages. Page also noted that Obama will have trouble with some Americans because his middle name is “Hussein,” a name given to Obama at his birth and very common in Africa and the Middle East. Probably most of the folk who are disturbed at that won’t even remember that Barak is listed by the writer of the book of Hebrews in the New Testament as one of the heroes of Israel. Whatever Mr. Obama’s qualifications for being President of the United States, it is fascinating to me that we begin the discussion not with a conversation about his experience or views on subjects important to our nation, but with endless chat about his race and his name and what slot he fits into in our national diversity. Page spends some time talking about whether Obama can attract the “black” vote without a history in the civil rights era and how he’ll attract the “white liberal” vote out of guilt for our nation’s history of enslavement and discrimination.

Human beings seem to excel at what one writer calls the “tyranny of specialties.” I discovered this as a child when people in school asked me “what I was.” I come from a mishmash of ethnic ancestries: German, English, Canadian, and who knows what; my father used to call us “Heinz 57” when asked a similar question. It seemed that if I could not put something before a hyphen and then add American afterward, I was somehow impoverished. So depending on my location, I chose the German or the English piece and called myself that. I have found myself from time to time envying my children who are very clearly Korean-American, although the few times they have had racial slurs directed at them, it has usually been to call them some rude name for Chinese. We like to label in this country, but we’re not always clear on nuances.

The diverse nature of the United States (and of Canada for that matter) is one of our most incredible gifts. There are few places in the world where the population is such a mix as this one, and a mix that dwells fairly peaceably together most of the time, that is until some crisis occurs that makes us want to blame some part of our mix for the problem. Currently it seems to be Hispanic immigrants. I’ll never forget after the Oklahoma City bombing when Arab-Americans, or anyone that might have looked Arab, were targeted in retaliation, only to discover that that terror attack came from home grown Caucasian terrorists. Then on 9/11 people from over a hundred different nationalities and most ethnic groups were among the dead in the World Trade Center.

Those who want to counter the kind of vigilantism that targets one race or nationality as “evil” have worked hard to promote diversity in education, in public events, in writing and the arts. In general, this has been a wonderful push for something that’s been true of American life from our nation’s inception, and as a member of a multi-racial family and serving a multi-racial congregation, this is something for which I am grateful.

You do hear a “however” coming, though. I worry that in a society where the race or ethnicity or gender of a candidate becomes the first thing we talk about in a Presidential race, we continue a destructive focus on the things that make us different from one another, and so we miss the overwhelming goal of molding a society of peace and justice and prosperity together, not despite our differences, but bringing the gifts of those differences together.

And so finally, we get to Paul and his letter to Corinth, where he uses this marvelous image of the human body as a metaphor for the body of Christ. He is very clear in this passage that each of us as individuals is not the wholeness of the body of Christ. Despite those who claim it is possible, we cannot be Christians alone. It is all of us together who become the body of Christ; no one of us can be that without the others. “For just as the body is one and has many parts and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ…. Now you (and that is you in the plural in Greek) are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” Paul is writing to a church that has from the beginning been quite diverse, including Jews and Greeks, slaves, the poor, the uneducated and the wealthy and highly educated members of a large and diverse city. And from the beginning the Corinthian church has been unable to overcome those differences, with the wealthier and more educated regularly separating themselves from the others and with divisions between those of Jewish heritage and those who were Greek. Paul chastises them again and again in this letter, trying to get them to see that the waters of baptism were like amniotic fluid which birthed them into a new body, joining their individual bodies into one larger body where each part, no matter how seemingly unimportant or even outwardly disgusting, is of equal value and absolutely necessary to the functioning of the body as a whole.

Paul is not saying they are all the same. He values their diversity, but the diversity he lifts up has little to do with their race or ethnicity or economic or social status. The diversity he stresses has to do with the gifts they have been given by God, gifts meant for the “common good.” As important to many of us as our ethnic or racial or religious heritages are, Paul calls us to see something greater in each other: gifts of wisdom, of the ability to share knowledge, of faith, of healing, of prophetic speech and action, even of working miracles or praying with incredible power. Paul calls us to look at each other and see disciples of Jesus, prophets, teachers, healers, helpers, leaders, and those who can speak powerfully and full of the Spirit. Take a moment and look at each other, those of you who have been at this church for any amount of time. Visitors, look and imagine. Can you see any of those gifts in the people around you? Look! Now each of you look at yourself. What gifts are in you?

All those gifts are in this community. But we can’t stop at admiring each other’s gifts. Paul calls us to see all this diversity and understand absolutely our interdependence. If, indeed, we are to be the body of Christ and take on the mission that Jesus took on in his earthly body, then we will need all our gifts, all our diverse characteristics, to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed and a jubilee of forgiveness to our world. If our church is to be the body of Christ, as Paul called the Corinthians to be, then we have to value each one among us in all of our individual diversity because we cannot be a body together without each other. In order to be “us,” we must each be fully the “me” God has made us to be. We don’t ignore our differences, we can’t. We look on them, however, not as what should divide us or determine alliances based on common differences, but rather as we see the difference between our hands and our eyes and our intestines and our brains: each bringing essential parts to a body that can serve God. We are not a melting pot; we are Stone Soup; each ingredient essential to feed the hunger of the world.

Again and again in the Bible, people of faith are called to be a light to the nations, not just to religious people, but also to nations, to societies, to governments. As we order our life here at Redeemer, as we discern our mission, as we reach out to newcomers, as we witness to our faith and to Christ’s mission in our community, I believe we are called also to witness to the world how a body works. Because I, perhaps naively, believe that it is not only the church that can embody Christ, but communities and nations as well, even if they do not use Christ’s name. The label doesn’t matter; the oneness of purpose and the nurturing and sharing of gifts does. I believe the Spirit of the Lord is upon us, anointing us to join our diverse gifts to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and to proclaim to all a jubilee of forgiveness and love by the power of God. Amen.