Sermon preached by The Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
The Third Sunday after the Epiphany
How many of you have heard the saying, “If you have your health, you have everything,” or something like it? This bit of popular wisdom is usually offered to people who are healthy, and one of the characteristics of being in good health is taking it for granted. The person with a sound body doesn’t usually go around wondering what the most important part of the body is. All parts are important; there are no parts we would choose to do without. In fact, even to speak in such terms seems odd, for while the body is composed of parts, we are much more accustomed to thinking of our bodies as a single, unified whole.
It is when something goes wrong with one of the parts of the body that we become conscious of the importance of that part. A broken leg, a loose tooth, a headache, a stiff back—these things make us realize how important to us even seemingly insignificant parts can be. Several years ago a heavy garage door fell right on my big toe (how it happened is a long story that I won’t go into right now!). I had to go to the emergency treatment center, had to keep my foot elevated for several days, and I missed a Sunday in church for the first time in my memory. If asked what the most important part of my body was at that time, I would have answered without hesitation, “My big toe on my left foot!”
St. Paul, in his first letter to the Church at Corinth, refers to the Church as the Body of Christ. Each member is a part of the Body, and every part of the body is absolutely crucial. Paul had to say that to the Corinthians because some of them felt more important than others—namely, those who spoke in tongues thought that that gift made them more special than those who had not received the gift of tongues. He was attacking that age-old problem of spiritual pride, and when talking of spiritual pride the point must be made that all members of the Body are equal.
In another sense, however, we can indeed say that some parts of the Body are more important than other parts. The part of the Body of Christ that is most important is that part which is injured, just as my left big toe became the most important part of my body when it was injured. The person in our midst who is ill, or who is going through a divorce, or who has lost a loved one, or who has lost a job, and so on, is the most important part of the Body. And if the Body is functioning properly, then other members of the Body who are not injured are focused on that member who is.
Over the years, in the parishes I have served, I have noticed something that often occurs when a member of the Body of Christ is injured. Whether the injury is physical, emotional, or spiritual, the tendency is often the same. That tendency is for the injured member to remove himself or herself from the Body. In other words, something bad happens to the person, or family, and instead of drawing closer to the Church, that person or family leaves the fellowship of the Church. It doesn’t always happen that way, but all too often it does. A couple get a divorce, a person loses his job, a person gets sick and completely withdraws from all church relationships, a person finally faces the reality that he is an alcoholic. It’s as if some people have the attitude that the Church is a place for people who have their act together and when it is revealed that that isn’t the case, then they are embarrassed and feel that the Church isn’t the place for them. The attitude is that the Church is a kind of club for saints.
Contrast that with the group Alcoholics Anonymous. Can you imagine someone with a problem withdrawing from AA out of embarrassment? Of course not. People in AA are people who don’t have their act together. Problems are expected. That’s what the group is for.
The Church should be much more like AA than it is. None of us has his act together when it comes to our relationship with God and when you get right down to it, none of us has his act together when it comes to other problems in life. We all have them. They aren’t there always for all the world to see, but they are there. The Church isn’t a club for saints; it’s a hospital for sinners.
One Sunday, when Linda and I were on vacation one year, we visited another church, which is our custom when on vacation, and it happened that on that Sunday, in place of a sermon, a member of the congregation gave a presentation from one of his trips to Mexico. He is a doctor, and every year he takes a week of his vacation and goes to Mexico to work in a local clinic. The poverty in the area which he visits is great, the needs are overwhelming, especially for medical attention. When there, he works longer days and sees many more patients than he does in a comparable time at home. He takes no payment for his work, and he made his presentation at church in order to enlist more people in his healing ministry. This man understands that to be a member of the Body of Christ is to use his gifts to heal the members of the human family.
The work that is going on in Haiti through the Episcopal Church and many other churches after the earthquake springs from this understanding that as members of the Body of Christ we have a responsibility to that larger Body of the human family when members of that Body are injured. Our work in the Dominican Republic for many years is derived in part from our understanding that the members of the Body of Christ in that place are in greater need than in other places and therefore deserve our attention, the giving of our time, talent, and treasure. We can’t go everywhere in the world where there is need because our resources are obviously limited, but we can go somewhere, and so we have chosen the Dominican Republic. As you may be aware, we are also involved in mission work in China, Europe, and Rwanda, in addition to being involved in many local mission and outreach ministries, such as Resurrection House, Caritas, and the interfaith food bank. This all comes as a result of our theology, brothers and sisters, that we are members of the Body of Christ, which is a sign of the unity of the whole human family, and that therefore we must care for one another.
Our Lord came into a sinful and broken world, a hurting world, an injured world. To him, every member of the human family for all time is important, but his focus was and is on the injured members of the Body, and in a very real sense that includes us all. And so, as the beginning of his ministry he takes the book of the prophet Isaiah, and he reads the words that pertain to himself:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
The Spirit of the Lord is upon you and upon me, and he has anointed us, through our baptism, to be agents of healing to those members of our Body who are injured.
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