As we discussed last week, when Paul talks about worship with the Corinthians, he also emphasizes equality among Christians. The Corinthians were really messing up in this department by granting privilege to their higher income community members, and as Paul moves into the topic of spiritual gifts, he hammers home this theme of equality once more.

Paul rattles off a quick list of spiritual gifts at the beginning of chapter 12: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, and speaking in or interpreting tongues. Paul identifies these as different gifts which all flow from the same Spirit, and as such, the Corinthians shouldn’t prize one above the others or envy another person’s gifts.

From here, Paul goes into one of my favorite metaphors in the bible:
The Church is a body with many parts.

A variety of parts make up the human body, and all of these parts have different functions. A body composed entirely of pancreases couldn’t accomplish very much, but a body without a pancreas would be greatly inhibited as well. In the same way, an eye isn’t fulfilling its purpose when it tries to be a foot. The whole body needs its component parts, and those component parts all need the larger body.

So it goes with the church.

On a local level, individuals in the church need one another because we all bring different gifts and talents to the table. We come from different backgrounds and offer different insights and serve in different ways, but we all need each other. Even if we disagree, I can’t do what you do the way you do it, and you can’t do what I do the way I do it. Paul wanted the Corinthians to understand this: when you privilege some members over others, you abuse the body. Instead, treasure and nurture the whole body, and you’ll have a thriving community.

In our modern global church, this analogy goes even farther. If we look at the church only through a 21st Century North American lens, we miss out on so much. If we focus exclusively on white church or black church, we miss out on the traditions of the other. If we write off other denominations which have other strengths than our own, we miss out. The Church of the modern era is a complex system where different communities offer different gifts, and we can learn from all of them.

So are you paying attention to all the parts of the body?
Have you perhaps elevated some organs over others lately?
Paul calls us to reflect on our attitudes and learn to love the whole body.