Respect
Sermon
You Have Mail From God!
Second Lesson Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany Cycle C
Roland and Elizabeth were unusual guests at the complimentary "high tea" being held late in the afternoon in the four-star, luxury inn on Hilton Head Island. For one thing, Roland and Elizabeth were not guests of the hotel. They lived about twenty minutes away from the inn. Their home was in the wealthiest neighborhood on that island of very wealthy residents. In fact, Michael Jordan, the basketball legend, had lived next door to them. But Michael had stopped visiting the home after his father died.
Roland and Elizabeth had moved south a few years earlier to escape the harsh climate of western New York, near Buffalo. When they finally moved into their posh dream house, they noticed something unusual. They missed one of the very things they had taken for granted: neighbors. Virtually all the homes around them were expensive second homes for millionaires in Atlanta and Washington. No one was ever in their neighborhood longer than it took to spend a few nights and play golf and tennis.
So it was that Roland and Elizabeth came to pay a fee to the inn to allow them to come over once or twice a week and have tea with the guests. Roland and Elizabeth, out of their desperation, cared little where the strangers were from, what religious or political views animated from their one-day-stand comrades, or what personal or spiritual gifts were in the possession of their table guests. Roland and Elizabeth just wanted a little community, for however fleeting a moment it could be theirs.
How those things we take for granted can flare up and rob us of the essence of life. Most of us do not think of our body parts until they are sick or missing. Who focuses on his or her inner ear until it gets messed up and causes dizziness? No one thanks God for a healthy gall bladder until it gets diseased. In our ignorance about our body, we are perfectly happy until one of its parts begins to hurt. Then it dawns on us how important that part is, both physically and psychologically, to our well-being. Regardless of the infinite variety of parts that compose our bodies, whatever is hurting at the moment becomes the indispensable center of attention. We will pay any price to strangers who can offer us relief.
Paul immediately got the attention of the diverse Corinthians by talking about their bodies in relationship to forming a community. Roman and Greek orators had used the same image to speak about the State so the Corinthians were comfortable thinking metaphorically about the human body. The body and its limbs had been used by Roman senators with the Plebeians, and the Stoics had put the metaphor to good use in their political arena. This image was always a good one to drag out when trying to express unity and tolerance.
Christianity was not unique among religions in appropriating the image of the body and its limbs to express the work of the Holy Spirit in creating unity, a sense of togetherness, amid diverse members of a group. In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition each member was said to be like a hand or a leg of the Buddha: "The right hand never says to the left hand, 'I am doing charitable work for you.' " 1
Certainly in the church every member is a part of the body of Christ. What is Paul really after? At first glance one might be tempted to say, "Tolerance," and let it go at that. Tolerance, unity amid diversity -- certainly a worthy goal. And the crazy Corinthians could use all the tolerance for other people's religious gifts they could muster.
Paul is after more than tolerance. Way deep down, behind the flowing pen of his composition, is a clarion call for respect. Respect is quite different from tolerance. Stephen Carter in his work, The Culture of Disbelief, has noted, "Tolerance without respect means little."2 If we tolerate someone's spiritual gift then it is our forbearance, not our recognition of the equality of that other gift, that allows the person possessing it to be a part of the church. Toleration means only allowing something to exist. For many people the idea of toleration is bound up with the notion that those with different spiritual gifts will, in time, come to confess the error of their ways.
Paul's great description hammers home through the simile of the human body that each of us is necessary for the good of the Body of Christ. None of us has all the truth. We are a mixed bag of the necessary. When each part has equal concern for each other so that all suffer if one suffers and all rejoice when one is honored, that is respect.
Respect for that which is different seems to be the defining mark of Paul's entire ministry. The gifts he identifies among the Corinthians seem almost to be in conflict with each other, but we need to respect them all for we need them all in order to be the Body of Christ. When Jesus thought of community, he did not conceive of it as having "high tea" with strangers. His members were not to be desperate seekers after one-day (albeit a sacred day) stands with table guests. Nor were these Christians to be dues-paying members of a comfortable and secure group who had retired from the inclement weather and nasty pace of a secular world to gather with like-minded people for pleasant conversation.
In the first struggles of the infant Christian Church to embody the life of Christ, Paul takes it upon himself to articulate Christ's respect, not tolerance, for those who are different. The text challenges us to respect one another in our different places with our different gifts. And with respect comes the willingness to support and undergird one another. The world has seen tolerant religious groups before. But true examples of fellowship and love are rare, even in religious circles. They produce a body of mutual respect quite unlike that which is normally seen, even in a democracy such as ours.
Paul appeals to more than a worldly model of unity. This is no warmed-over Roman or Stoic appeal to tolerance. The whole body has to be well in order to function or that body will die.
The inventory of gifts is not important. What is important is that the old way of tolerance is past. The new way of respect for those who are different has broken upon the world through the Holy Spirit. Respect for one another within the church becomes the catalyst for the way the Holy Spirit operates beyond the walls of the church.
Paul's statement about the different spiritual gifts had as its ultimate dream a day when it would not be necessary to speak of spiritual gifts at all.
Paul possessed a throbbing concern. He enabled the church to draw upon the Hellenistic notion of paideia3 as a model for its life. Paul's letters were "teaching sermons." They were poised to form the character of their hearers and not just transfer information. The great apostle strove to enculturate a habit of thinking about the world in light of the community's deepest values which would allow the Christian to perceive and act for the good of all in any situation.
If respect for those inside the diverse church at Corinth could become the deepest value, then Christians could experience a profound conversion that would enable them to hasten the day when the whole of humanity would respect and love one another instead of compete in the market place.
What about our church? We are tolerant. But do we have respect?
People who have no sense of being an object of respect are seriously handicapped in making someone else an object of their respect. The person who has grown up feeling outside the reach of other people's respect has a dual handicap. On the one hand, he or she is quick to pass a judgment on himself which insists on his own unworthiness. At long last he feels rejected. On the other hand, the person may make an inner compensation for the lack of respect others show him. He or she becomes preoccupied with his own needs and interests. It can make such a person thoroughly self-centered and arrogant.
When a climate of acceptance is transformed into a climate of respect, we call that the work of the Holy Spirit. When that transformed climate becomes the dominant value of a group, we call that group the Body of Christ. When that body exists together through time, we call that body the Church!
So be it.
____________
1. Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ (New York: Riverhead Books, 1995), p. 67.
2. Stephen L. Carter, The Culture of Disbelief (New York: Basic Books, 1993), p. 3.
3. See Ronald J. Allen, The Teaching Sermon (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), pp. 14-15, for an excellent analysis of the Hellenistic notion of paideia.
Roland and Elizabeth had moved south a few years earlier to escape the harsh climate of western New York, near Buffalo. When they finally moved into their posh dream house, they noticed something unusual. They missed one of the very things they had taken for granted: neighbors. Virtually all the homes around them were expensive second homes for millionaires in Atlanta and Washington. No one was ever in their neighborhood longer than it took to spend a few nights and play golf and tennis.
So it was that Roland and Elizabeth came to pay a fee to the inn to allow them to come over once or twice a week and have tea with the guests. Roland and Elizabeth, out of their desperation, cared little where the strangers were from, what religious or political views animated from their one-day-stand comrades, or what personal or spiritual gifts were in the possession of their table guests. Roland and Elizabeth just wanted a little community, for however fleeting a moment it could be theirs.
How those things we take for granted can flare up and rob us of the essence of life. Most of us do not think of our body parts until they are sick or missing. Who focuses on his or her inner ear until it gets messed up and causes dizziness? No one thanks God for a healthy gall bladder until it gets diseased. In our ignorance about our body, we are perfectly happy until one of its parts begins to hurt. Then it dawns on us how important that part is, both physically and psychologically, to our well-being. Regardless of the infinite variety of parts that compose our bodies, whatever is hurting at the moment becomes the indispensable center of attention. We will pay any price to strangers who can offer us relief.
Paul immediately got the attention of the diverse Corinthians by talking about their bodies in relationship to forming a community. Roman and Greek orators had used the same image to speak about the State so the Corinthians were comfortable thinking metaphorically about the human body. The body and its limbs had been used by Roman senators with the Plebeians, and the Stoics had put the metaphor to good use in their political arena. This image was always a good one to drag out when trying to express unity and tolerance.
Christianity was not unique among religions in appropriating the image of the body and its limbs to express the work of the Holy Spirit in creating unity, a sense of togetherness, amid diverse members of a group. In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition each member was said to be like a hand or a leg of the Buddha: "The right hand never says to the left hand, 'I am doing charitable work for you.' " 1
Certainly in the church every member is a part of the body of Christ. What is Paul really after? At first glance one might be tempted to say, "Tolerance," and let it go at that. Tolerance, unity amid diversity -- certainly a worthy goal. And the crazy Corinthians could use all the tolerance for other people's religious gifts they could muster.
Paul is after more than tolerance. Way deep down, behind the flowing pen of his composition, is a clarion call for respect. Respect is quite different from tolerance. Stephen Carter in his work, The Culture of Disbelief, has noted, "Tolerance without respect means little."2 If we tolerate someone's spiritual gift then it is our forbearance, not our recognition of the equality of that other gift, that allows the person possessing it to be a part of the church. Toleration means only allowing something to exist. For many people the idea of toleration is bound up with the notion that those with different spiritual gifts will, in time, come to confess the error of their ways.
Paul's great description hammers home through the simile of the human body that each of us is necessary for the good of the Body of Christ. None of us has all the truth. We are a mixed bag of the necessary. When each part has equal concern for each other so that all suffer if one suffers and all rejoice when one is honored, that is respect.
Respect for that which is different seems to be the defining mark of Paul's entire ministry. The gifts he identifies among the Corinthians seem almost to be in conflict with each other, but we need to respect them all for we need them all in order to be the Body of Christ. When Jesus thought of community, he did not conceive of it as having "high tea" with strangers. His members were not to be desperate seekers after one-day (albeit a sacred day) stands with table guests. Nor were these Christians to be dues-paying members of a comfortable and secure group who had retired from the inclement weather and nasty pace of a secular world to gather with like-minded people for pleasant conversation.
In the first struggles of the infant Christian Church to embody the life of Christ, Paul takes it upon himself to articulate Christ's respect, not tolerance, for those who are different. The text challenges us to respect one another in our different places with our different gifts. And with respect comes the willingness to support and undergird one another. The world has seen tolerant religious groups before. But true examples of fellowship and love are rare, even in religious circles. They produce a body of mutual respect quite unlike that which is normally seen, even in a democracy such as ours.
Paul appeals to more than a worldly model of unity. This is no warmed-over Roman or Stoic appeal to tolerance. The whole body has to be well in order to function or that body will die.
The inventory of gifts is not important. What is important is that the old way of tolerance is past. The new way of respect for those who are different has broken upon the world through the Holy Spirit. Respect for one another within the church becomes the catalyst for the way the Holy Spirit operates beyond the walls of the church.
Paul's statement about the different spiritual gifts had as its ultimate dream a day when it would not be necessary to speak of spiritual gifts at all.
Paul possessed a throbbing concern. He enabled the church to draw upon the Hellenistic notion of paideia3 as a model for its life. Paul's letters were "teaching sermons." They were poised to form the character of their hearers and not just transfer information. The great apostle strove to enculturate a habit of thinking about the world in light of the community's deepest values which would allow the Christian to perceive and act for the good of all in any situation.
If respect for those inside the diverse church at Corinth could become the deepest value, then Christians could experience a profound conversion that would enable them to hasten the day when the whole of humanity would respect and love one another instead of compete in the market place.
What about our church? We are tolerant. But do we have respect?
People who have no sense of being an object of respect are seriously handicapped in making someone else an object of their respect. The person who has grown up feeling outside the reach of other people's respect has a dual handicap. On the one hand, he or she is quick to pass a judgment on himself which insists on his own unworthiness. At long last he feels rejected. On the other hand, the person may make an inner compensation for the lack of respect others show him. He or she becomes preoccupied with his own needs and interests. It can make such a person thoroughly self-centered and arrogant.
When a climate of acceptance is transformed into a climate of respect, we call that the work of the Holy Spirit. When that transformed climate becomes the dominant value of a group, we call that group the Body of Christ. When that body exists together through time, we call that body the Church!
So be it.
____________
1. Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ (New York: Riverhead Books, 1995), p. 67.
2. Stephen L. Carter, The Culture of Disbelief (New York: Basic Books, 1993), p. 3.
3. See Ronald J. Allen, The Teaching Sermon (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), pp. 14-15, for an excellent analysis of the Hellenistic notion of paideia.
