Your body’s immune system normally protects your body from disease
and infection. But if you have an
autoimmune disease, your body attacks healthy cells by mistake; your body declares war on itself. The human body is an integrated
interdependent collection of systems and structures that work together to
strengthen and protect one another. For example, the
nervous system causes you to pull your hand away from a hot pot before the hand
is too badly burned. A body that is not
fully cooperating in its own wellbeing is sick.
In 1 Corinthians the Apostle Paul uses the human body as a
model for how the Christian church should function; we are many parts but one body. He summarizes: “So that there
should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern
for each other. If one part suffers,
every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part is honored,
every part rejoices in it [12:25-26].”
These days we seem to be increasingly aware of divisions
within our national family. This is a
product of an election cycle gaining steam, which often involves politicians fostering
divisiveness among us for the purpose of exploiting those divisions for the
acquisition of power. There have been
high profile shootings by police and of police that call attention to the
fractures in our society--racial, urban vs. rural, poor vs. rich, native born vs. immigrant.
We can come to believe that for someone else to get ahead, it will inevitably
mean loss for us. It is probably unrealistic
to think that our nation will ever grow into the image of a healthy body as used
by the Apostle Paul. We will have to
settle for something less until the Kingdom of God comes in its fullness; in
other words, we will continue to have a cultural autoimmune disease.
The Christian church, on the other hand, is a different
matter. The church is to model now the Kingdom
of God that will come someday. We are to
be a city set on a hill that gives light and demonstrates in
the present what God will accomplish for all creation in the last day (Matt.
5:14). In other words, within the
Christian church, the autoimmune diseases of the world are to be already
healed.
When we read Paul’s letters, too often we do not feel the
weight of their implications for the people who first read them. Paul writes that in Christ “there is neither
Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ
Jesus [Gal. 3:28].” We do not appreciate the divisions and animosities between these various groups. Paul lived in a decidedly autoimmune society.
In Romans, Paul speaks to the ethnic and cultural divisions
between Jews and Gentiles within the church at Rome. The Jewish believers thought they were
superior because they had the history of the law and God’s having first chosen
Israel. Paul seeks to undermine their
sense of superiority, most pointedly in 2:17-29. On the other hand, the Gentiles thought
themselves superior because of the widespread Jewish rejection of Jesus. Paul sets about undermining their sense of
superiority, most pointedly in 11:13-21.
Paul is seeking to heal within the church divisions imported in from the
broader autoimmune culture.
Many of the problems that Paul responds to in First
Corinthians are the result of ethnic and socioeconomic diversity within the
church in Corinth. Paul again tries to
heal the attitudes and practices and resentments introduced into the fellowship
from a decidedly divided culture.
From its earliest days, the Christian church was to be a
community where the divisions and alienation and injustices of the broader
world are eradicated by the power of God.
To this end, pastors and lay people from the Capital Area Baptist and
the Mid-Hudson/Union Baptist
Associations met on Saturday, September 26th,
at the Second Baptist Church of Poughkeepsie to share a meal and conversation
about the things that divide us. We came
from rural and urban communities, upstate and down state and were
Euro-American and African-American. That
last distinction generated the most conversation. We shared about our experiences of being white
and of being black in America. We
listened to one another and spoke honestly in an environment of candor and
trust. The acts of sharing and being
heard had a healing effect on the relationships of the people in the room. We readily admitted that we were all shaped
to some degree, inevitably, by the racial divisions that permeate our society. It was sometimes an uncomfortable
conversation but not one without hope; we acknowledged that we were all in the
process of being remade by the Holy Spirit.
This ongoing conversion, being made ever more into the image of Jesus
Christ, assured us that healing can take place.
On that day we gathered as Christian brothers and sisters and modeled
what a community of healing and health can look like.
These two Associations plan to gather again and wage further
war on those things that divide our fellowship and our nation. Our hope is that other Associations will take
up this endeavor and sow health among our fellowship. We as Christian brothers and sisters—claiming
the same Lord and having been baptized by one Spirit—can make progress in healing
those things that divide us. Hope for
our broader communities, our nation, and our world begins there.
Blessings,
Jim
