I wonder what it means for you to feel
like you really belong that you are part of something.
When Paul was writing his letter to the
new Christian community in Corinth he writes to a fragmented group that was struggling
for a sense of identity and had problems with division.
There were members of the community who
did not feel like they belonged whilst others claimed a stronger sense of belonging
and so deliberately excluded others. In
many ways this behavior of this early Christian community reflects the nature
of many community groups and churches right through to our present day.
Paul’s response is to emphasis again and
again the unity and bond that the group has not in their own acceptance of each
other but in and through God’s love in Christ and through the Holy Spirit:
12 For just as
the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though
many, are one body, so it is with Christ.13 For in the one Spirit we
were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all
made to drink of one Spirit.14 Indeed, the body does not consist of
one member but of many.
So it is he uses political imagery of
the community as a body to help emphasize that every member has importance. It is highly likely that this body imagery that
was borrowed from the Roman statesman Marcus Agrippa and was also used by one
of Paul’s contemporaries Plutarch.
As modern day Christians we are probably
used to hearing this passage and thinking of it as somehow uniquely Christian
but the reality is that it is not. It is
borrow political imagery designed to help people see beyond feeling of exclusion
and inclusion and into the embrace of God’s love which is offered to all. It is about saying that you belong.
But, and this is an important but, it is also about saying you, and you
and you and them and they and us belong as well.
This invitation and challenge to invite
belonging in the body of Christ is a challenging one. It has been eroded by
denominationalism and by the theological traditions that influence us. It has been further distorted through history
by nationalism and cultural imperialism.
Yet still we are called into the one body.
My feeling is that this sense of
belonging to God and to community is a salient topic for us to be reflecting on
together as we approach Australia Day or Invasion Day, however you might see
it. Often what creates belonging for one
group creates exclusion for another and debates around Australia Day or
Invasion Day reflect this within our own culture.
Nearly twenty years ago now a little
book entitled Rainbow Spirit Theology
began to explore the meaning of an Australian Aboriginal Theology. It is a book that pushes theological
boundaries and reminds us of our chequered history. The authors ask, “whether the Gospel, brought
to us by missionaries, is part of the culture which enslaved us, or whether the
power of the Gospel frees us to be our true to ourselves and our land.” The Jesus present to Aboriginal people was a “white”
Jesus which it could be argued had been domesticated by the English and
European culture of the missionaries themselves.
For us to speak of being one body of Christ
in Australia as we approach Australia Day-Invasion Day the discomfort of our
history should challenge us to go deeper into the resources of our faith to
find that common ground and seek reconciliation with the people that were dispossessed
by the arrival of Europeans.
The Uniting Church in Australia in its
decision to adopt a preamble to our Constitution has recognised the history and
therefore the very people which had been previously ignored in our past. This preamble reminds us:
Many
in the uniting churches shared the values and relationships of the emerging
colonial society including paternalism and racism towards the First Peoples.
They were complicit in the injustice that resulted in many of the First Peoples
being dispossessed from their land, their language, their culture and
spirituality, becoming strangers in their own land.
This act of confession is a step towards
true healing and hope. Returning to the
book Rainbow spirit Theology we read:
Paul
declares that Christ is the power of God which broke down the diving wall of
hostility which existed between the Jews and the Gentiles of his day… Christ,
who has broken down this wall, is among us now to break down the dividing wall which
separates Aboriginal Australians from other Australian’s in this country. Through Christ we can be one. Through the suffering Christ we can be
reconciled. Christ is calling us, inviting us to be a part of that healing,
that reconciliation.
When Paul wrote to the Corinthians he
was encouraging them to see beyond their ethnicity and status into their life
in Christ: Jews and Greeks, slaves and free. It was a political statement and an
unsettling one. The boundaries created
by our human communities and our socio-economic status were being transcended
by God’s love, could the people of God follow and embrace this reality. If we examine human history and the history
especially of the church the truth is that this has always been a challenge for
us and it appears more the exception than the norm that people find a true sense
of belonging at the same time as accepting those that are different.
So it is that we too in our day as
Australian Christians are being continually called beyond ourselves and our
tribalism: Anglo and Aboriginal; European, Asian, Islander, African, American
and so on. We are continually being
called beyond ourselves and our elitism: rich and poor, educated and uneducated,
white collar and blue collar. We are one
body in Christ and in Christ’s body every member has a place.
As I contemplated this I was struck by a
reflection about Australia Day by a young Muslim women, Fatima Measham, who is
a reporter in Australia. She who talks
about belonging in this way, “Belonging is not something to be conferred, nor
is it the default effect of being here. In the end it depends on whether we
feel fundamentally safe being who we are.”
As Christians we find this sense of
safety first and foremost in Christ but as Paul reminds us this should lead us
into our belonging in each other. To me
when we encounter such a sense of belonging as being one in Christ we are encountering
what Jesus preached about in Nazareth – the year of the Lord’s favor. And when that year comes good news to the
poor, the captive is released, the blind see, and the oppressed go free.
So the good news is this, Now you are the body of Christ and individually
members of it. The question is of course can we accept that other
individuals, different individuals, strange individuals are also part of that
body? For whether we do or not, they are!
You belong, you and you and they and
them belong – we are the body of Christ. This is the good news: “Today this
scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
We are one body in Christ!
