Long Trip Home
St. Paul’s United Methodist Church
Corinthians 12: 1-11 Liz Moore January 17, 2010
In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to a group of students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia. He asked them: What is your life's blueprint?
He went on to say, "Whenever a building is constructed, you usually have an architect who draws a blueprint, and that blueprint serves as the pattern, as the guide . . . Number one in your life's blueprint, should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your worth and your own somebodiness. Don't allow anybody to make you feel that you're nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance."
Somebodiness. Now there’s a word with some juice to it. In fact, I think if the apostle Paul had been sitting in the audience that day at Barratt Junior High, he would have said to himself. “Somebodiness. Why didn’t I think of that?” Well... in some ways I think he did. See what you think.
Today’s lectionary reading is from a letter written by Paul to the believers at Corinth. To set a bit of context: The church at Corinth was divided. They were young, they had apparently had several charismatic followers of Christ come through, each giving his own take on what it meant to be Christian. As a result, they were embroiled in conflict: what to eat, how to carry out the sacraments, how loosely or closely to follow Jewish law. Paul’s primary message throughout this letter was a reminder to these ardent but immature believers that their unity in Christ created a bond strong enough to handle diversity. In this particular passage, he is moving toward the heart of his message as he presses the people of Corinth to get past their differences and recognize the gifts each one brings, as well as the inherent equality of standing they share as members of a body.
Hear the words Paul used to describe “somebodiness” as he saw it. From The Message, I Corinthians 12: 1-11.
1-3 What I want to talk about now is the various ways God's Spirit gets worked into our lives. This is complex and often mis-understood, but I want you to be informed and knowledgeable. Remember how you were when you didn't know God, led from one phony god to another, never knowing what you were doing, just doing it because everybody else did it? It's different in this life. God wants us to use our intelligence, to seek to understand as well as we can. For instance, by using your heads, you know perfectly well that the Spirit of God would never prompt anyone to say "Jesus be damned!" Nor would anyone be inclined to say "Jesus is Master!" without the insight of the Holy Spirit.
4-11God's various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God's Spirit. God's various ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate in God's Spirit. God's various expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people! The variety is wonderful: wise counsel; clear understanding; simple trust; healing the sick; miraculous acts; proclamation; distinguishing between spirits; tongues; interpretation of tongues. All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one by the one Spirit of God. God decides who gets what, and when.
I think Paul is saying almost exactly what Dr. King said: as children of God, we are all somebody. We have worth and significance. And I love this phrase: Each person is given something to do that shows who God is.
I’m reading a book right now: Souls in the Hands of a Tender God. The author, Craig Rennebohm, is a chaplain whose ministry takes place on the streets of Seattle. For more than twenty years, Rennebohm has gently, gracefully offered the healing touch of compassion and companionship to men and women struggling with mental illness...people left behind by society. Every story he tells, including this one about a woman named Mary, is one of seeing who God is through lives that are disheveled, broken and so far out of the mainstream as to be invisible, even in broad daylight. Rennebohm met Mary over the course of many patient weeks, during which time he simply and intentionally crossed paths with her at a particular intersection every day. Mary was predictable in her routine, moving from one side of the street to the other, each time setting up her barricade of bags as she re-settled on the other side. Rennebohm recounts that one day, after several weeks, his eyes met Mary’s for just an instant as they passed. A few days later, their eyes met again and she nodded... maybe it was a nod. Finally, after months, as she set off with her assorted bags to wherever she spent the night, he offered to help. She said “No.” He calls this their first conversation. The story is long, and I won’t tell you all of it...but one day Rennebohm finds Mary sitting on the street corner on top of her laundry bag holding a worn, leather bound book: a Bible. They have their second conversation. Rennebohm writes, “I smiled and said, “A good book.” She glanced up and said, “Yes.” Then she turned her head down again.. “It’s a book I use a lot, too,” I said. She looked up once more and nodded. Ever so slowly, over the months to follow, he begins to know Mary’s story. But more than that he begins to see what he calls her fuller, more familiar self: the woman behind the illness and homelessness. He writes, “What I saw at first was only one side of her; her street self, her illness self. But even in those earliest moments of our relationship, more of Mary was available: the ability to make a number of decisions, the strength to move and to carry her bags, a level of intention, a hidden history, a journey, a today, a tomorrow.” The story of course continues, but through it all this is his message: “Mary is a soul, a wholeness that includes the realities of her illness and homelessness, her healing and recovery, her history, her fullness and ever-emerging completeness as a person.” In other words, Mary is a somebody. She was largely invisible, even in plain daylight on a crowded Seattle street corner; invisible, that is, until a passerby paused long enough to truly see her “somebodiness”.
Meister Eckhart said this: “The seed of God is in us. . . . Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God-seed into God.” I think the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther King, Meister Eckhart and Craig Rennebohm are all saying the same thing: as children born of God, we each have an exquisite internal self that is us alone. It’s like our unique God thumbprint. No matter what we do, who we become, how much or little we own, whether or not we are addicted or ill with paranoia or even criminal, we are each - in our deepest souls – a divinely crafted somebody. There are no exceptions.
I think that’s pretty good news. You and I have God-seeds in us...kind of like God DNA. . But what does that really mean for us? What are the implications? Here’s what I think. First of all, from the very beginning we are somebody; and while we might lose our way, we cannot lose our somebodiness. That seems so simple, but every day, I forget. I find myself “out there”: accomplishing, getting more stuff, doing all kinds of things... and none of that’s necessarily wrong. Unless...along the way... I begin to delude myself that somehow all of the activity...the doing... is the same as the real Liz, the essence of who I am. No matter who we are, the journey toward our true self...our soul...the god-seed within, is not outward. It’s inward. And it involves stopping more than going. Creating space for listening. More than anything else, journeying toward our authentic selves means not so much “finding ourselves” as coming home to who we already are.
That might all sound a bit woo-woo . . . but I think it’s the reality Paul was getting at in his letter. His point was, “Don’t be misled by all this extraneous ruckus. You are unique and holy, each and every one. Because why? Because that’s how God does it.” Each person is given something to do that shows who God is. That is our divine inheritance. I know I’m kind of hammering this twenty different ways, but I think unless we’ve got this point we’re not so different from Mary on a street corner in Seattle... our true self invisible, disguised by what we’re wearing and carrying. We miss out, and the world misses out.
Second implication: If I truly believe we are each created with a unique divine thumbprint written into our very being, then logically, not only am I somebody, but so are you. We’re in this deal together. That changes everything...because it means I can’t just think about myself. Suddenly I’ve gone from you as an individual and me as an individual to “us”....siblings, fellow travelers. Going back to our lectionary reading, if we were to pick up where we left off with today’s scripture we would hear Paul say something like this: “The body is a whole unit, even though - as we’ve already discussed - there are many distinct, unique, beautiful parts. And every part is necessary. Should the foot look at the hand and think itself inferior? Or superior? Should we have twelve ears and no eyes, or be one great big nose? Bottom line: God has arranged all the parts (or gifts) so that when you put it all together, the various pieces become a body. And every part is necessary.” What a crafty move on God’s part. Create us in such a way that our individual “somebodiness” is brilliant, and then hard wire us for community. You see where we’re headed here. Yes, we have unique gifts; we have differences we bring to the human experience. That’s the way it’s meant to be. At the same time, we are all one body, and whatever impacts one of us reverberates throughout the entire body. This is the genesis of social justice.
While he was in jail in Birmingham for non-violent protest, Dr. King wrote a now famous letter to his fellow clergy, who were uncomfortable with his involvement in Birmingham’s demonstrations. King wrote: “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” I can almost see the apostle Paul nodding in the background, “Now that’s what I’m talking about. One body!”
A few minutes ago, we recalled Dr. King’s words to school children about the guiding blueprint each one has that lays out that sense of dignity and worth...our somebodiness. If I understand Paul’s words to Corinth, and King’s writing to his fellow clergy, Christ’s message takes this a step further. As elegantly crafted as we are, we do not exist as lone travelers. Connectedness with one another is woven into the very fabric of our interior architecture, and is as necessary to us as our ability to breath.
Craig Rennebohm speaks of this over and over again as he recounts his encounters with men and women impacted by mental illness. One of the tragedies of mental illness is isolation...the disintegration of that experience of relationship and companionship. But isolation happens in many other ways as well. Prejudice, poverty, violence, and oppression all breed separation, segregation, and aloneness. In fact, I’m not an expert on the concept of sin, but here’s my made up definition: I think sin is behavior (including thinking) that we have a choice about that either isolates us from ourselves or that inflicts isolation on others. For me, this might be my busyness, perfectionism, money, conscious or subconscious belief systems, judgmentalness, fear. I could actually go on and on. Every one of us could. We all have our ways of detaching from ourselves, separating from one another. Our job on the planet, then, is to stop, to pause long enough remember who we are. To love who we are, and to love our neighbors...our brothers and sisters... even as we love ourselves.
A friend of mine lent me a great little novel just before Christmas, entitled Breakfast with Buddha. I want to wrap up by reading a passage to you. The storyline is this: Otto is a good soul, a wonderful husband and father with an interesting job as an editor for food publications. In an odd turn of events, he is kind of “tricked” by his sister into taking a road trip from Pennsylvania to North Dakota with a crimson robed monk for company. Along the way, as Otto struggles to move through his skepticism, he questions his companion, who, as it turns out, is a great teacher. He asks about evil: Why did they kill Jesus, and Ghandhi, and Martin Luther King, and so on? Here is the monk’s reply, and I’m going to shorten it a bit: “I don’t know the why. I know the is. . . . Inside the big world that you cannot control, you have the small world of you that you can control. In that small world, if you look, you can see whether to go this way toward good, or the other way toward bad.” “Or remain neutral.” Said Otto. “Yes,” said the teacher. “But if you see good and don’t go, that is not neutral. To me, to my lineage, .it is not the case that God is up in the sky looking at you and judging you. It is more easy than that, and more hard. .. . . God is just giving out love and giving out love and giving out love, like a...like a very nice music always playing. If you hurt people you make yourself deaf to this music, that’s all. Not God’s fault, your fault. Not God’s judgment, your choice, you see? You make yourself no chance to feel God, or the moon going up, or any good life.” He goes on... “then one day maybe you start to change, and be a little quiet inside, and listen to this music that is always there – for you, for the bad people, always there. Even the most bad people live in their trouble for thousands of lives, and then, one moment, “he clapped his hands together hard, “they chose a different way. They go this way and not that way. One choice, another choice. They start to come on the long trip home.”
Home is in us, waiting for us. That’s how we are made. Doing right, being just, loving our neighbor as ourselves... it’s already inside. Sometimes we just wander so far away. Not even intentionally – just little choices that eventually leave us deaf to ourselves, to our brothers and sisters, and to the Spirit’s call.... a call for unity so steeped in love and dignity and worth that it’s strong enough to hold an entire universe of diversity. And then one day in the quiet we hear the music, and – by pure grace – we make a different choice. We start on the long trip home.
