The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



The Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 24, 2010, Church of Our Saviour Gallatin

“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:27).

Over the past few years, members of the Church of Our Saviour have had a crash course in what it means to be a part of the Church, to be members of the Body of Christ. This congregation has been taken down to its metaphorical foundations and put back together again. People have had to reassess their commitments to the Church and to think again about their call to this community of faith. People here have had to try their hand at new ministries and to stretch themselves in new ways. Old patterns have disappeared and new patterns have emerged. Christian community has been challenged, and in the process all have had the opportunity to think again about what it means to be the Church.

In our reading today, Paul talks about the Church as a body, as the Body of Christ, made up of different members who are one body. The members of the body are dependent on each other, and there is no part of the body that can be dispensed with, left out because it is of lesser value. All have their place, their part to play in the body.

It’s an apt metaphor, especially so on a Sunday like this, when some folks here today are being welcomed as confirmed members of the Episcopal Church, through prayer and the laying-on-of-hands. We become members of the Body of Christ through baptism, as Paul says in our reading, and it is the vows of our baptism that we re-affirm today. Coming together for an occasion like this, we see how God is taking the gifts of each baptized member of the body and making them a part of the ministry of this day. There are the folks who made the coffee, cooked the casserole, set up the altar, turned on the lights, paid for the heat, kept the books, taught the class, got confirmed, and so forth and so on. Christian community requires all of us, each individual member of the Church (as Paul says), for all of it to come together in this great act of Christian witness and worship this morning.

There are two further reminders about Christian community embedded in our reading. God has so arranged the body... that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another (1 Cor. 12:24-25). Within the Body of Christ, we’re called not to fight with each other but to care for one another. This body is not called to tear itself apart, but to build itself up in love, as Paul says elsewhere (Eph. 4:16). We’re called to unity, to the unity of the Body of Christ, where Jesus is the head of the Church. Each of us can find our place here, within the unity of the Body, and each of us has a responsibility to care for the others.

Times of challenge are times in which we depend upon God, and depend upon each other. Pastoral care, which I define as every action that builds up the Body of Christ, is not something that depends upon the clergy but upon each one of us within the Church. Now I know you are well cared for by Fr John, but his job here is really to help you take responsibility for each other in every area of parish life. Times of challenge are times when the mutual care of Christians for each other is crucial. We have all the gifts among us for the ministry that God has called us to do. Times of challenge simply reveal to us that God needs each and every one of us to constitute the Church.

It’s good for us to be transparent with these folks who are being confirmed today; to let them know that God is calling on them to be full participants in the life of this congregation. They need to know what they’re getting into! And we need reminding too. We are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

- The Rt Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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