“Building Beloved Community” (1 Cor 12:12-26)

The Last Thing I Want

We don’t want to be a burden to anyone else. The other day I had a pastor’s gathering. One of the colleagues shared about her mother, who is now 93 years old, still staying active and healthy. But her mother’s greatest and constant fear is that one day she would get sick or fall and lose her independence. My colleague hears her mother say ‘I don’t want to be a burden to anyone else. I’m happy to carry on living so long as I can look after myself, but as soon as I become a burden I would rather die.’ Though I can only imagine what her mother is going through, I had a chance to get a taste of what it feels like being a burden to others when my family and I had to isolate for 10 days because of COVID-19. All of sudden, my world stopped. I was unable to continue with my daily tasks without help of others. I had to depend on other’s help. Then I realized how much I was interrelated and interdependent.

The Body of Christ and the Church at Corinth

The human body is the chief metaphor that the Bible uses when it talks about the church. Particularly today’s scripture captures the essence of our dynamic interdependence. Eugene Peterson’s Message Bible translates today’s passage this way:

For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, "Get lost; I don't need you"? Or, Head telling Foot, "You're fired; your job has been phased out"? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way--the "lower" the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach… If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn't you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair? The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don't, the parts we see and the parts we don't. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance. (vv. 19-26)

Each of us is interdependent on one another. When Paul wrote his letter to the church of Corinth, he was keenly aware of divisions and factions in the church – especially between the rich and the poor. Corinth at that time was a commercial center of six hundred thousand people. Corinth was a strategic maritime port, a meeting point between East and West, and a wealthy civilized city. Behind this wealth were pervasive and severe poverty. Corinthian society was so riddled with competitive individualism and disregarded the poor. Sadly, this sensibility spilled over into the church. They honored the rich, the influential, the powerful; they neglected the poor, the weak, the lowly. For example, when the church came to worship and have the Lord’s Supper together, the rich went ahead and made pigs of themselves. They even got drunk. But the poor were left out and went home hungry (11:21).

Cultivating Ubuntu

What’s the cure for this? Keeping this in mind, Paul exhorts the Corinthian Christians to remember that each member of the church is interdependent on one another like the human body. So the cure for divisions and apathy and individualism is to cultivate a deep sense of communal interdependence.

In the southern-African philosophy there is a term called ubuntu. Archbishop Desmond Tutu summarized Ubuntu as follows: “I am because we are,” which literally means that a person is a person through other people. Ubuntu speaks to the fact that we are all connected and that one can only grow and progress through the growth and progression of others. Dr. King rightly said, “In a real sense all life is interrelated. All [people] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. . . . This is the interrelated structure of reality.” The concept of ubuntu encourages us to see ourselves in other people. If we look at others and see ourselves reflected back, we inevitably treat people better. Basically, ubuntu is not something new, rather it’s an expanded version of the Golden Rule: We are called to do to others as we would have them do to us. For instance, Nelson Mandela embodied ubuntu through his moral leadership. He refused to hate his enemies, including those who kept him imprisoned for 27 years. Instead, he sought reconciliation, and envisioned a future South Africa that included Black, White and all people together.

Eastern Christianity and Asian culture also can teach us about the importance of interdependent communities. Asian culture is communal. The community and family are more important than the individual. It is believed that we cannot be fully formed as human beings in isolation. The term uri, meaning “our” or “we-ness,” captures the centrality of interdependence. For example, in Korea one never talks about ‘my school’ or ‘my church’; it is always ‘our school’ or ‘our church.’ Likewise, one will say ‘our husband’ or ‘our sister’ to express the communal culture of society. In other words, everyone is your auntie or uncle. Everyone is looking for you and is in your business, for better or for worse. It’s like one big extended family. One family, one body.

Bearing One Another’s Burdens

It’s so important to cultivate a deep sense of communal interdependence in order to overcome divisions and apathy and self-centeredness in the church and in our nation. The next question is, “How do we cultivate ubuntu interdependence in our daily lives?” The answer is by bearing one another’s burdens. In Galatians 6 Paul talks about two kinds of burdens – one is to share, the other is to carry ourselves. In verse 2 Paul says, “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” But then, in verse 5 Paul also says, “For each one must carry his own burden.” How can we possibly carry each other’s burdens when each should carry his own burden? The Greek word for burden is different. The first burden, baros (v. 2) means a heavy weight beyond one’s ability; the second burden, phortion (v. 5) refers to a kind of light, bearable backpack. So we are to bear one another’s ‘burdens’ which are too heavy for them to bear alone, but there is one burden (or cross) which we cannot or don’t need to share. That is our responsibility before God.

So we were meant to bear one another’s heavy burdens. By bearing one another’s burdens, we learn to cultivate a sense of interdependence. By bearing one another’s burdens, we learn to overcome our selfishness and divisions. So when we see somebody with a heavy burden on his or her mind, we must be ready to get alongside them and share their burdens. In the same way, we must be humble enough to let others share ours. Somehow we are all designed to be a burden to others. You are designed to be a burden to me and I am designed to be a burden to you. Christ himself lived a life of interdependence. He is born a baby, totally dependent on the care of his mother. He needs to be fed and wiped and helped. And at the end, on the cross, he again becomes totally dependent, pierced and stretched, unable to move. But he never loses his divine dignity. Likewise, we too are called to live a life of interdependence – bearing one another’s burdens. Once Paul wrote to the church of Corinth: “We were afflicted at every turn—fighting without and fear within.” Then he continued: ‘But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus” (2 Cor. 7:5, 6). God’s comfort was not just given to Paul through his private prayer and waiting on the Lord, but also through the companionship of a friend and through the encouragement he brought. Paul encouraged the church, and he was encouraged by the church.

Building Beloved Community

When God asked Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” Cain answered irresponsibly, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen 4:9) But, if we are followers of Christ, we are to be our brother’s and sister’s keeper. Where is your brother? Where is your sister? We are to love our brothers. We are to serve our sisters. If they are overburdened, we are to bear their burdens together. If they have gone astray, we are to reach out to them and restore them gently.

As I close, let me share the poem written by Teresa of Avila:

“Christ has no body now but yours.

No hands, no feet on earth but yours.

Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world.

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.

Yours are the hands through 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 on earth but yours.”

Amen.