A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA
by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025
Third Sunday After Epiphany – Year C • January 26, 2025
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a * Luke 4:14-21
In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. [Genesis 2:4b-7]
That’s how the New Revised Version translates the story of our beginning. But it’s a bad translation. The word that’s being translated ‘man’ isn’t gender-specific. It would be better to say, “the Lord God formed a human being” from the dust of the ground. The word that’s being used in Hebrew is ‘Adamah’, and we take it for granted that’s the same as our ‘Adam”, a male name.
But adamah is also the name of dolls made by children in early times. We’ve always made dolls; Jacquelyn has one that’s well over a hundred years old and one of our Christmas traditions, stretching back over 40 years, is that I give my oldest daughter a Barbie. So we know what Genesis is describing here. Like a child, God goes out, scoops up some dirt, and forms a doll, an adamah. And then God shares some of the ruach, the Hebrew for spirit, also the word for breath, into the doll, and the adamah, the doll, becomes a living being. Right from the start, we are made as a union of Spirit and Body. The other creation story in Genesis 1, adds the detail that in this we are an image of God.
I mention this because bodies are front and center in the lesson from First Corinthians today. What Paul tells us ultimately is that Christ is doing the same creative thing God did in Genesis except now the body which receives the spirit is us, the church. Paul is ultimately going to say, “ Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” [1 Corinthians 12:27] So we have to talk about bodies to understand who we are meant to be and become. It’s an especially important image for the Corinthian Christians. Last Sunday I introduced Corinth but because of the weather not many were here, so let me take a moment to remind you of what I said then.
Corinth is a relatively new city, founded about a century before Paul’s time, that sits on a narrow isthmus. It’s a seaport and a meeting place for many cultures. It’s a blue collar place; the original settlers were mostly retired soldiers. It’s a place where some get rich and there are slaves and foreigners. Corinth’s main deity is the goddess Aphrodite, in Roman terms, Venus, and her temple is a brothel: the worship of Aphrodite involves temple prostitutes. About ten years before Paul’s time, one of the emperors deported the Jews from Rome and it seems some settled in Corinth. Some of the members of this new church Paul founded in Corinth were among them. The church is only a few years old but it’s become divided because some of the members are speaking in tongues and claiming they are more spiritual than others. Paul is writing to them to help solve their divisions.
He starts with the image of a body, perhaps because bodies are so important in Corinth, perhaps because it’s something we all know. We live in bodies, and we all know some of the things that flow from that. Every culture has its image of beautiful bodies, and we measure how we match or don’t match that standard; it influences how we are in the world. My daughter May is 5’2”; the other day she remarked she was short but it was ok because she’s a girl and that it was harder for a guy to be short. I know that in my heart of hearts, I always wished I was taller and had that deep preacher voice people love, but that’s not the body I got. Our bodies age and I suspect most of us here today remember being stronger; many of us can list aches and pains we have these days.
From this commonality of bodies, Paul says we have an equality that also extends to the spiritual.
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body–Jews or Greeks, slaves or free–and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. [1 Corinthians 12:12f]
Jews and Greeks, slave and free: these are the most fundamental social distinctions among the Corinthian Christians. We make the same kind of distinctions, don’t we? We don’t have slaves but we come from different circumstances. We know without being told that some are long time members and some are new. Paul says these distinctions mean nothing compared to the unity of being one body.
We find the same equality in the gospel. Luke invites us to imagine Jesus preaching his first sermon in his home synagogue. I’ve spent my whole life as a preacher and I can tell you that there is nothing more terrifying than preaching to a congregation of people who watched you grow up. After my first sermon in my home church, someone said to my mother, “You must be very proud.” She said: “Well, it’s hard to listen to someone preach when you remember changing his diapers.” I suspect there are people there who remember changing Jesus’ diapers, who remember him as a kid, who maybe remember some dumb thing he did when he was younger. But there he is, getting up at the synagogue, going to the lectern, reading the scripture for the day.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed,to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. [Luke 4:18-20]
The good news is for the poor; the mission of Jesus is to release prisoners, to open the eyes of the blind, to set free the oppressed. In Christ there is no east or west, one of our hymns says: in him n Christ there is no east or west, but one great fellowship of love, throughout the whole wide earth.
Paul goes on to illustrate how this works: all of us are members of one body, he says, and we all have functions. All the talents are needed, just as our body needs all its different functions. Maybe you’re a great accountant: we need that. Maybe you’re a great singer: we need that. Maybe you’re a great listener: we need that. Maybe you’re great at empathy, we need that. Every thing we can do is needed and equally needed. Just like our body needs all its parts functioning, we need all the talents of every single person sharing in the mission of Christ here.
We know what it means to come to worship, for example. But before we come to worship, there are lots of people involved. Sometime back around the beginning of January, I looked at the scriptures for today and the hymnal and suggested hymns; Cara Beth approved them and made sure there would be music for the pianist. Linda printed the bulletin. Some folks in the past had the goodness and foresight to create this meeting house and we all share in paying for it and paying to make sure there’s heat and light. We take those things for granted, but people just like us worshiped by candlelight without heat for hundreds of years. This morning, someone came and turned on the lights and the sound system. Thanks to the work of scholars over many years, I could share a deeper insight into the texts this morning.
We are not alone in Christ; we are part of a greater body, animated by the Holy Spirit, just as Paul says: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” [1 Corinthians 12;27] And Christ doesn’t change: Christ’s mission remains the same: releasing captives, helping people see their way, lifting the poor. This past week, we celebrated the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., a man whose life became animated by this cause. He asked simply for us to recognize the dignity of people of color. He reminded us that Christ calls us to a unity that recognizes the fundamental dignity of all people because we are all children of the one God, all united as human beings with bodies, filled with Spirit, made in the image of God. God gives us everything we need, just as the song says: everything we need to do Christ’s work here. When we do that work of unifying people, caring for all, then indeed we are the body of Christ.
Amen.
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