God arranges the body

Rhona Cathcart June 13, 2024 4 2

Playlists

Add to Favourites

Save for later

Listen to this daily worship

1 Corinthians 12: 24-26 (NRSVA)

24 whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, 25 that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.

One of the consequences of the historical shift from a weaving industry managed mostly by local craftspeople to one conducted on an industrial scale was the loss of individual agency.

The ability to mass produce cloth had a seismic effect on the UK. Along with the other innovations of the industrial revolution comparatively cheap goods became accessible to more people. For many, this enabled a quality of life which their forebears could hardly imagine. It made some people very rich.

At the same time, others began to lose not just a way of supporting their families but also their sense of value as individual producer/creators. Many flocked to the urban centres for work where, sadly, they were often treated as replaceable and interchangeable. The divide between ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ became starker than ever.

Paul’s words to the Corinthians speak to this human tendency we have to treat some lives as more valuable or important than others. We are not supposed to use Paul’s metaphor as ‘proof’ that we are all supposed to stay in some preordained place. Rather we are called to recognise that none of us are accidents, or unnecessary appendages, or waste wool, however humble or difficult our circumstances.

We are all connected, all uniquely gifted, all arranged by the skilled hands of our Father, around the central nervous system of Christ. If one part suffers, we all suffer. If one part is honoured — especially those who are usually overlooked — then we, and our Father, rejoice.

Prayer:

God who sees and knows all

Help us to know our place

Not the place where society, or family, or tradition, or circumstances, or our own sense of self-worth would put us.

But the place you give us, next to Christ’s heart.

Help us to accept that through the ongoing miracle of your holy arranging we are all connected

None of us further or closer to you than any other,

All held in the pattern.

All necessary and loved.

Amen