CEpiphany3-2010

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21

January 24, 2010

I was at Virginia Seminary for some study the past two weeks.

The classes were stimulating.

The newer faculty that taught them was engaging.

The food in the refectory was much better than it had been

when I was a student there 20 years ago.

The dorms and guest house no longer have bathrooms down the hall.

But have been renovated so that every room has its own.

The chapel was the same and a couple of my former teachers are still there.

The familiar and the new have blended well at Virginia Seminary.

Someone who isn’t there any longer is Churchill Gibson.

Churchill was the chaplain

when I was a student there twenty years ago.

He said once when I had returned for a visit and commented on

some new furnishings and fresh paint:

When only young men were here,

the place was very utilitarian

and there were only men’s bathrooms.

When the first women students came,

we had to figure out how to add bathrooms for them.

When women students began to live on campus,

the rooms needed more comfortable furnishings,

the food got better and we had to put in air-conditioning.

And now that the dean of the seminary is a woman,

we have landscaping with flowers and we are redecorating.

When Churchill retired, I asked him to come to the church where I was serving

to be the resident theologian one Lent.

Each year a retired priest who was a great preacher and teacher

would be invited for the six weeks of Lent.

On one of the Sundays when he was the preacher of the day,

he also did the children’s sermon.

It was about today’s reading from Corinthians.

Churchill had black rimmed glasses and white hair.

a round cheery face with the rosy pink cheeks of the English.

His back was rounded in that professorial way

so that his arms kind of hung in front of him when he walked.

He was known for the profound simplicity of his sermons.

This was his children’s sermon that day:

The bible says that we, God’s children, are wonderfully made.

And we are!

Just look at your bodies –think of all the parts that have to work together.

Paul reminds us that there is not one part of our bodies that is not needed.

And that no one part is any less important than another.

The foot is just as important as the hand.

You need your ears just as much as you need your eyes.

The bible also tells us that God made all sorts of people

to be the body of Christ in the world, with Christ as the head of all of us.

And so we listen to our head and use

our feet and our hands and our ears and eyes and noses

to take God’s love wherever it needs to go.

When I was about your age, I asked my mother what part

of the body of Christ I was.

Was I a foot or a hand or an ear or an eye or a nose

or a heart or a brain or lungs?

I was the youngest child in my family.

I was worried because my hands couldn’t draw as well as my sister’s.

My feet couldn’t run as fast as my brother’s.

My brain couldn’t think as fast as my father’s.

I was worried that I wasn’t a very important part at all

in the body of Christ.

And do you know what part of the body my mother said thought I was?

She looked at me and said,

“Why, Churchill, I think you’re a big toe in the body of Christ.

That’s what I think you are.”

“A big toe?” I said. “That’s all?”

She said, “Well, Churchill, the big toe is a part of the body

that we hardly ever think about.

It’s a small part that doesn’t seem to do much as the rest of the body.

Most days you don’t even think about your big toe being down there.

But, the big toe is very important.

Without our big toe we can’t keep our balance.

and we need our balance to do everything else.”

The human body as a metaphor for the Body of Christ, or the Church,

can stand to be stretched in a lot of ways.

One member is no less a part of the body that another.

All, even what we think of as the lesser parts, belong to the body.

And if the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?

So, our differences are vital to the working of the body.

No part of the body can say it doesn’t have need of another.

The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’

The more vulnerable members of the body may not be visible

but are nonetheless, and most often, essential.

The strong visible legs are nothing without the heart and veins.

We’ve all had the people of Haiti in our hearts and prayers

since January 12.

What part of the body of Christ is Haiti?

We know the Episcopal Church in Haiti

is a diocese in our own national church,

just as the diocese of Atlanta is.

We know that the people of Haiti are children of God.

But what part do they play in the big scheme of things?

I didn’t get to see any of the program “Hope for Haiti Now”

until I got home yesterday.

Movie stars answering phones,

songs sung by some of the world’s most popular performers,

interspersed with news coverage of the lives being saved,

the efforts going on.

One song struck me.

I don’t know the name of the singer.

I don’t know the names of a lot of the singers.

It’s like I’ve been awakened

Every rule I had to break

In the risk that I am taking

I’m never gonna shut you out

Everywhere we’re looking now

I’m surrounded by your embrace

Haiti, we can see your halo

You know you’re my saving grace

You’re everything we need and more

It’s written all over your face

Haiti we can see your halo

I pray you won’t fade away.

The words of this song sound to me

like the body waking up and realizing

how much it needs a part that it had not given much thought to.

Like a big toe.

A real sense in this song is that without Haiti,

we all would be less than whole.

And that in reaching out to that broken part of the Body,

we can be more of who we are meant to be.

We can bring some balance that has been lost in this world.

Joseph Gresham, one of our teenagers, lost his big toe in an accident.

I thought about him when I recalled Churchill’s children’s sermon

and gave him a call.

Joseph told me that enough of the joint of his toe closest to the foot

is still there to help with balance.

And Joe has gotten everything working together –

enough that he’s moving just fine and doing all the things he wants to do –

all the things he wants to do that his parents will allow, that is.

His mom, Lane, reflected that their family is a part of the body of Christ

and when they were knocked off balance during Joe’s lengthy hospitalization,

the rest of their church and friends kept the family going.

Jesus quoted Isaiah from the scroll when his ministry was beginning.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

Because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives,

[even if I have to dig through concrete and rubble with my bare hands,]

and recovery of sight to the blind,

and let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

The head of our body knows where it wants to go.

And maybe Haiti is a halo for us right now

to awaken us to be the body of Christ wherever we are.

What part of the body are you?