A portrait of God’s alternate community
A devotional on 1 Corinthians 12:26
One day after teaching a class at Pacific Union College, I walked out of the classroom and straightaway came across the college’s president, Malcolm Maxwell, who was walking toward his office. We chatted about a number of things as we made our way across the campus. A few minutes later we came across an employee. Dr. Maxwell stopped and began to engage this person in conversation. He asked how he, his wife, and children were doing. He knew them all by name and was well acquainted with many aspects of their family life; the conversation was far more than a brief “hello how are you doing,” lasting quite a few minutes. Dr. Maxwell wished him a wonderful day and expressed his appreciation for his service to the college. As we walked away, I asked Dr. Maxwell, “who was that person?” He said, “Oh, he is one of our custodians who has worked for the college for quite a few years.”
I thought to myself, “Here is the president of the college, someone who is very busy, taking the time to give focused attention and show genuine interest and concern to an employee whose position and duties were far removed from that of the president’s.” By contrast, through the years I have seen persons, who fancy themselves to be of a higher status, arrogantly treat custodial staff with disrespect, finding their work to be lowly and demeaning.
The apostle Paul had a similar problem in the church at Corinth; attitudes of arrogance on the part of the elite members were leading to social tensions and destabilizing the church. Certain members fancied themselves strong and knowledgeable and exalted themselves above those whom they deemed to be weak, dishonorable, and unpresentable. For example, when the church gathered for communal meals and the Lord’s Supper, the wealthier and higher-status Corinthians were having these meals, where food was quite abundant, only with one another, not inviting the poor and lower-status Corinthians to participate. Paul was aghast at this kind of behavior and said, “What? Don’t you have your own homes for eating and drinking? Or do you really want to disgrace God’s church and shame the poor!?” (1 Corinthians 11:22).
The apostle confronts the high-status, arrogant Corinthians, who look down at their lower-class brothers and sisters by declaring that they must be bestowed with greater honor and respect: “and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect” (1 Cor 12:23). Biblical scholar Richard Hays points out that Paul recognizes the Corinthians have come from very different ethnic backgrounds — Jews and Greeks, as well as different social backgrounds — slaves and free. Yet he firmly believes that “they have been bonded together by the Spirit into one body. Consequently, the old markers of identity should no longer divide the community.”
Once the Corinthians understand the diversity and interdependence of the members of the body and embrace God’s vision of a unified church where the inferior members are given greater honor, divisions will cease, and they will be able to care, suffer, and rejoice together (1 Corinthians 12:25-26).
May each one of us embrace this incredible vision of the body of Christ, where the transforming power of the Spirit of God is creating a renewed humanity in a community of believers that is unified, loving, caring, and celebratory of the gifts and talents of every single member, thereby witnessing to the wider world the dawn of the new creation and the arrival of the powers of the new age.
—Leo Ranzolin, ThD, is dean of the School of Religion.
