While most of you were watching the London Olympic Games this
week out of pleasure or patriotism, my determined eye was on the news of the
Olympics in search of a sermon illustration. After all, with our lesson from
Ephesians continuing to use the metaphor this week of the Christian community
as Christ’s Body, I couldn’t help but think that the Olympics would be the
place to look for illustrations of bodily perfection! So I watched and read
about the swimmers and the gymnasts and the rowers and even the beach
volleyball players as they competed in individual and team events, and I was
indeed rewarded with two insights for us today at St. Thomas.
My first
insight came while watching the supple swimmers do their amazingly quick turns
at the end of the pool. As the contestants in the backstroke race reached the pool
wall, they would flip themselves around like a beach ball in a gust of wind and
then shimmy forward underwater like dolphins until they were once again on
their backs and racing forward. As I watched their bodies move through the
water as if they were made of rubber rather than bone, I thought about the work
of the tendons and ligaments that hold muscle to bone in their arms and legs. Bones
move together because ligaments provide a framework between one bone and
another, and tendons connect bones with the muscles, pulling on the joints so
that they can bend and rotate. Watching the Olympic swimmers, I could picture
the sinews of tendon and ligament within their bodies stretching and twisting
like rubber bands, making possible those powerful kicks, that rapid-fire flip,
and those fish-like shimmies. Watching
those swimmers, I suddenly understood what the apostle Paul was getting at in
that typically dense Pauline run-on sentence at the end of today’s Epistle: “But speaking
the truth in love, we must grow up in every way
… into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by
every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly,
promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love.”
We are used to imagining our participation
in Christ’s Body in terms of individual body parts: Like legs or arms or eyes, we
understand that we each fulfill specific functions in the community. The
function of the teachers is to teach, just like the function of the legs is to
kick. The function of the pastors is to shepherd, just as the function of the
arms is to hold things. The function of the evangelists is to bring Good News,
just as the function of the eyes is to tell us what is around us. Such an image
of the body, however, while emphasizing the variety of roles that we play in
community, does not shed any light on the ways in which we touch one another as
we live and move together. This understanding of the body metaphor is missing the tendons and the
ligaments that surround the bones; it is missing the supple parts that rub up
against one another—the parts where friction occurs, yet the parts that hold
the body together and allow it to move. If we are to move forward in love, if
we are to grow and mature without deformation, if we are to twist and turn
successfully in the currents, then we need to realize that we are more than
just disjointed body parts, each doing its own thing. We need the tendons and
ligaments that Paul commends to the Ephesians: humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, and peace.
In a small parish like St. Thomas, we
know each other well, and we are used to our roles in the Body. We think that
we know what kind of movement it takes to pull forward in the water, and we
think that we know the people around us with whom we coordinate those
movements. We also each have multiple roles in this Body. Not only are many of
us a leg, but we might serve as a finger and a nose, as well! It is hard to be
joined by a tendon to a neck muscle when you are also joined by some ligament
to the kneecap. What I have noticed, though, and notice even more lately, is that
we lack the agile movements of the Olympic swimmers because we forget that the separate
parts of our common Body need fasteners.
Recently,
it seems as if I often hear one group in the parish complaining bitterly (to
me or to someone else) about another group or one individual complaining about
another--either that they aren’t pulling their weight or that they aren’t doing things
the way they have always been done or that they aren’t communicating thoughtfully
(very often it is a matter of communication, or a lack thereof). I see each
section of us so busy “doing our thing,” so entrenched in our role, that we don’t think who is positioned
next to us or how we might need to work with them: bearing with them when they
are annoying, persisting together in what is right, responding gently even
under duress, walking in humility with one another. We are each so focused on the jobs that have
been given to us in this small Body of Christ, so focused on finally getting
them done so that we can go home and do something else, that we are like a bag
of separate bones trying to swim. And it is preventing us from moving forward.
I have also been feeling that it is
sometimes assumed—either on your parts or on mine--that it is only the rector’s job
to serve as the sinews between parts of the body. I feel as if I need to be the
constant cushion between what are often quite sharp and pointy bones! I feel as
if I am solely responsible for communication and coordination between the body
parts, solely responsible for smoothing ruffled feathers and guarding the unity
of the Spirit. That is not what Paul is saying, however, in our lesson from
Ephesians. Paul makes it clear that God gives us each the grace, along with the
gift, to build this body up in love. It is Christ, not the rector, who enters
into our hearts to bind us to one another in love and peace. And that brings me
to my second Olympic insight—one from the rowing competition.
The New York Times did an interview with
the coxswain of our American gold-medal women’s rowing team, Mary Whipple.[1]
The article describes Mary as “a sapling among the redwoods,” a short, petite
woman with a soft-spoken voice and quiet demeanor. Coxswain means “boat
servant,” and while she doesn’t row and doesn’t need the strong muscles of her
teammates, it is her challenging job to face forward and see what is coming, to
execute race strategy, and to keep the rowers motivated. “That’s it,” I thought
as I read about Mary. I could identify with Mary Whipple, and not just because
I’m short and have puny muscles! Instead of trying to insert myself between
every bone, wearing myself down between the body parts, I need to be more like
the coxswain in this race: Sitting where I can look forward to see what is
coming down the river, calling out strategy in my quiet but firm voice,
motivating, speaking the truth in love, keeping us rowing together that way, united in
the “one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” I
need to be the coxswain keeping and articulating the vision, the vision that is
more important than anyone’s specific joint pain or rubbing of bone on bone.
In a book on congregations, I recently read that it is easy
for us to “stay mired in automatic behaviors.” It is easy to forget that we “have
come together for something more than self-preservation … [to see] that [we]
form a whole to respond to something larger than [our]selves.”[2] I
think that this is what the apostle Paul was warning the Ephesians about, as
well. We cannot speed ahead unless the bones become a Body, a common network, a
united frame of tendon and ligament, a whole that is focused not only on
serving as Christ’s Body in the world, but that is also taking responsibility
for cultivating humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, and peace within. As
your coxswain, perched up here in the pulpit, I am calling us to row together,
to work together with the precision of the Olympic athletes that we are in
Jesus Christ, strengthening the ligaments of love that hold us together.
[1] Juliet
Macur, “On Rowing Team, Smallest Body has the Most Authority,” New York Times, August 1, 2010, found at
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/sports/olympics/voice-of-authority-directs-us-womens-rowing-team.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=general&src=me.
[2]
Peter L. Steinke, How Your Church Family
Works: Understanding Congregations as Emotional Systems ( Herndon, VA: The
Alban Institute, 1993), 72.
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