A sermon preached by the Revd Dr Trevor Jamison at
Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, North Shields, 2 February 2025
Luke 4:14-21; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Watch the whole service on YouTube
So here we are at the beginning of the second sermon in a five-part series responding to some of what the Apostle Paul wrote in his first letter to Christians in the Greek town of Corinth. Last time we looked at the first eleven verses of 1 Corinthians 12, about the many spiritual gifts individuals receive; gifts which come from the one giver – God – to be used for the good of all, never just for the advantage of the individuals who receives a gift.
This week we follow directly on from those verses, and let me begin with a question. Which of these would you find the more alarming to encounter? – a talking foot, or a talking ear? For some reason I find the prospect of a talking ear more worrying, but I would quite understand if it was the other way around for you, or that you thought that one was just as bad (or good!) a prospect as the other.
‘The body does not consist of one member but of many,’ writes Saint Paul, then going on to state, ‘If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body.’ (12:15-16)
When words from the Bible get familiar to us we can start to take for granted. We can take as normal, something which in any other context we would find strange, if not downright weird. If you doubt me, consider how when this passage from 1 Corinthians 12 was read to us the verses featuring talking feet and ears passed without comment: ‘if the foot were to say … if the ear were to say.’
Of course, Paul is using metaphorical language here. If he was being literal, Sunday services at church would be very strange occasions indeed, with sermons being offered by talking feet, ears and other body parts. What I urge us to do, though, is to hang on to some of the strangeness of this imagery. If we dismiss it, or get so used to it that we no longer recognise it as strange, then we lose something important. And that’s very much the case with a phrase that we continue to use today: “church members.”
I’m a member of the National Trust. I am a member of Historic Scotland – it’s cheaper than English Heritage, but you still get access to all their properties! I am also a member of Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, North Shields, which in turn makes me a member of the United Reformed Church as a whole, and ultimately a member of the great Christian Church – the one with Jesus Christ as its head. (Ephesians 4:15)
Membership of the National Trust says very little about my commitment to and involvement in the life of that organisation. I pay my dues, I visit some properties, and I eat their scones. But that’s it. I don’t volunteer. I don’t attend, and seldom vote in the AGM, and I’ve got a similar level of membership commitment to Historic Scotland.
And that’s just fine all around. No one expects members of organisations like the National Trust to do more than I do. In fact as long as I pay my membership dues I don’t think either the National Trust or Historic Scotland will be too worried if I fail to visit any of their properties in 2025. It would be different, though, here at Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, North Shields, if I failed to turn up at church on any Sunday this year, or declined to take part in any related church activity … and that’s not just because I’m the minister; it’s because I am a member of this church. And that brings us back to 1 Corinthians 12, and Paul’s talk of talking ears and feet.
1 Corinthians 12:12-31 begins, ‘ 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.’ (12:1) And just a couple of verses later he writes, ‘Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.’ (12:14) That leads Paul to write about individual members of the body – feet and ears – who talk (foolishly) as though they could sustain a viable life and identity separate from the rest of the body with its many members.
Membership of the church of Jesus Christ is qualitatively different from being a member of the National Trust, of Historic Scotland, of English Heritage, and/or a host of other equally fine and good organisations. And it’s Saint Paul, writing to the Christian congregation in Corinth all those years ago, who helps us to recognise that fact, but only as long as we continue to hang on tenaciously to his language of “body” and “members.”
We are members of a body. We are the ears, feet, noses, eyes, limbs, and the unmentionable bits of a living body, which is also known as the church. I won’t ask you to say which body bit you think you are, or identify which body parts you think your fellow members might be, but when we say we are “church members” its this sort of membership – of a body – we are supposed to be talking about, not (or not just) what’s entailed in being a member of the National Trust. Membership of the National Trust doesn’t carry the sense of being a limb or organ of a body, but, as Paul reminds us, being members of this body, the church, very much does have that meaning.
As church members, we recognise that we are different from one another, but that at the same time we are dependent upon one another, and that it has pleased God to make it so: ‘God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body,’ as Paul puts it. (12:18, 19) Indeed, he goes on to point out that some parts – some members – of a body regarded as marginal are in fact indispensable to the life and flourishing of the whole body, including all of the other members: ‘the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable,,’ he writes. (12:22)
Some years ago. I was in a meeting of representatives from five congregations which had formed one United Reformed Church pastorate, sharing two ministers. The representative of the smallest congregation reported that problems with their building, combined with the frailty of the members meant that they were contemplating closing. The representatives of the “big four” made some half-hearted, sympathetic noises. Then the small church representative said that he had thought it good to alert them because it was the small financial contribution from his church that made the numbers add up for the five together to be able to afford to pay for the second minister for the group. The others suddenly became much more concerned for the health of the weakest member of the body!
Perhaps it would have been better if, from the start, the supposedly stronger ones had remembered that ‘God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.’ (12:24-26) And what’s true for relationships between congregations is true for relationships between individual members within congregations.
In church membership all are members of the one body. And here comes the final point in this sermon that invites us to take membership more seriously. Having written about how the relationship between the members affects the health of the body, Paul goes on to state, ‘Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.’ (12:27) And once again, don’t let familiarity with biblical words obscure their significance for you.
Paul doesn’t say that we, the church, composed of members, are like Christ’s body. He says we are Christ’s body: ‘Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.’ I don’t know about you, but I find that hugely challenging.
There’s a poem that I imagine that many of you will have heard quoted, at least in part. It’s often attributed to our fellow church member, Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), though whether it was she who wrote it is uncertain; maybe it was one of history’s supposedly less important church members who did so. Whichever the case, I think it speaks to where we are today:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
And today I would want to say a firm “Amen” to all of that, as long as every time we hear the word, “yours” you don’t think of it as about you only, the individual; Christ has no body but yours, church members! It’s about all the members of the church together; they and we who collectively form the body of Christ here on earth, in order to do his work here on earth; Christ has no body but yours.
Earlier in this service we focused upon Jesus Christ’s Spirit-anointed ministry, which he said was ‘to bring good news to the poor … to proclaim release to the captives … and recovery of sight to the blind …. to let the oppressed go free … [and] to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ (Luke 4:18, 19) That gives us a good idea of what being Christ’s body in this world entails.
That might seem like a big “ask” because it is a big ask! But we are never alone in this bringing of good news to those in need, because you and I are all members of one body, arranged by God as God chooses (12:18); arranged for living the life of Christ in the world today. So may God give us the inspiration and the strength to do exactly that; all of us together, members of Christ’s body. Amen.