Third Sunday of Epiphany

Third Sunday of Epiphany – St Mary Aylesbury 24.01.10

Nehemiah 8.1-3, 5-6, 8-10

Psalm 19 [or 19.1-6]

1 Corinthians 12.12-31a

Luke 4.14-21

A little over six months ago, there was a furore over a new presenter on the CBeebies Channel (for those of you who aren’t sure what I mean, the CBeebies Channel is the BBC Channel that caters for toddlers and pre-school children). Her name is Cerrie Burnell and she was born with her arm only developed to the elbow on one side. Apart from this fact, it is reported that she is an accomplished actress with a good career on stage and screen, and that she secured the job on the toddler’s channel on the basis of particular merit. She is a mother to a small child herself, and manages ably to entertain my girls in her anchor slots between the programmes that they enjoy watching. To my mind, she is very good at her job, is a very pretty and pleasant young woman and I am sure that she has much more to offer the world of entertainment in the years to come.

To some, however, this list of positive qualities is eclipsed to the point of being completely obscured by the fact of her arm. She has, on one side, half an arm. On a forum on an internet site, an enlightened chap who goes by the name of Barry said:

Is it just me, or does anyone else think the new woman presenter on CBeebies may scare the kids because of her disability? I didn't want to let my children watch the filler bits on the bedtime hour last night because I know it would have played on my eldest daughter's mind and possibly caused sleep problems

Sadly, Barry, it isn’t just you. Our world is pinpointed with myriad examples of people being mocked and sidelined because of a physical abnormality. People have been mocked, derided, bullied, beaten, abused, passed over, sacked, even murdered – all because they didn’t have the body beautiful. Like any of us do...

The body forms a large pre-occupation in the minds of people, and always has. How we look is often far more important than how we feel, how we behave, how we ‘are’. Modern press is littered with an calls for an ideal waist size, and ideal cup size, aspirations elsewhere...

The body has served another purpose in the minds of people since antiquity – and that is as a model to describe society. Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians offers perhaps the most helpful version of this, with it forming a part of the development of this idea that permeates all of his theology. In the letter to Rome, Paul talks of different gifts in one Church, this being the first step in the development of the body-metaphor. We have heard the Corinthian version this morning. Paul goes on later to formerly place a head on the body in the person of Christ when he writes to the Colossians and the Ephesians. In these last two examples, Paul is clear that the church is the body of Christ, this forming a three-stage process: God is embodied in Christ who in turn is embodied in the church.  The human body as metaphor for society has been around for since earliest days, and has had mixed fortunes. Many exploited the imagery as a way of justifying suppression, but Paul uses it expressly to justify an argument against hierarchy. In describing the inter-dependence of the members of the body, he ascribes a position of equality to all.

So we have an imagery that is laden with helpful hooks upon which we can hang our understanding. If the church is a body, then it is for the most part united, especially with Christ as the unifying head. All members are in relation, all members having an effect on the other.

This week has been the Week of Prayer for Christian unity, and the churches in Aylesbury will mark this important week with a service at the Methodist Church this afternoon. It is useful because it reminds us that we are not in isolation in this town, that we are part of a larger whole. If we imagine ourselves to be the arm of the body in our metaphor, we can how easily we become wrapped up in how the hand is doing, whether fingers are doing what they are doing, whether the elbow is doing elbow things. It is important for the arm to have regard for the hand and fingers, of course, but it needs to remember that there is          another arm, a couple of legs, a head and an array of organs that also have an effect on that arm, its hand and its fingers. How would that arm fare, for example, of the part of the Aylesbury Christian community that represents, say, the lungs failed? Any other body would fail and die very quickly in that case.

So, we are inter-dependant. We survive more successfully as a unit comprising separate members. We survive injury as a body of different members, with other parts of the same body compensating. The TV presenter who I described at the beginning with her reduced arm has to rely on the increased capacity of other limbs and altered behaviours, but she copes and admirably so.

The final aspect of this is implicit in this interdependence. It is the care that we must have for the other members of the body. If a human being abuses one part of their body by substance or behaviour, then the whole person is diminished. Equally, if a person doesn’t attend to their diet, or doesn’t live a healthy life, then the whole person is rendered unhealthy. And so it is for us as Christians. If we stop caring what the Christians down the road are doing, or they for us, then Christ’s church in Aylesbury as a single unit is less vibrant, less healthy.

It is true that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and the Church is a prime example of this. Yes, we operate as individual churches across Aylesbury, not as a Church. We don’t understand one another, we don’t often communicate well. So yes, what we need is a care. What we need is to care about them and what they do, their communities, their lives. Families, like our bodies are made up of bits that aren’t the same. The needs and concerns of a parent are often very different to that of a child. It is the need that they both survive that holds that family unit together. A child only thrives within the context of a family where it is by necessity different. Families do fracture, churches fracture. We have so many examples of this. Families can and do heal because they are stronger together than apart. Indeed, the health and wellbeing of the members of a family is enhanced by the proximity of its members to one another. People suffer in isolation, as do Christians, as do Christian communities.

I invite you all to join us at the Methodist Church at 3pm this afternoon. I invite you all to consider it a family re-union; an opportunity to look at those people who live around us, believe the same things, have the same hopes and fears, have the same relationship with God, and realise – you need them as much as they need you.