Sermon on 1 Corinthians 12:12-26, for Life Sunday 2021, "From Invisible to Indispensable"

 

Life Sunday Sermon 2021

1 Corinthians 12:12-26 “From Invisible to Indispensable”

Rev. Michael W. Salemink, Lutherans For Life

 (lightly revised by Pastor Joshua Schneider for use on 1/17/21)

 

So, you have these two tiny organs in your ears. Sort of a sixth sense. The utricle senses your head’s horizontal motion, and the saccule detects its vertical movement. They live inside the mystical semicircular canals of the vestibular labyrinth. The magic happens using otoliths—literally ear stones—microscopic crystals of calcium carbonate, the stuff that makes up chalk, stalagmites, seashells, and Tums. Curious, because when the otoliths act up, you can get quite queasy. When your cranium moves, the otoliths lag a little behind for a minute and tickle miniature hairs. Your brain interprets these signals as a shift in position and compares the input from both ears with the data from your eyes to define direction and orientation. Experts call it proprioception or kinesthesia, the body’s positional awareness.

Now sometimes one of the itty-bitty otolith particles strays from its usual location. The ear tells the brain you are tilting and twirling; but the eyes contradict this input. This creates a form of vertigo. It can cause an involuntary wobbling of your eyeballs as they try to track the imaginary travel. It’ll mess with your balance—you’ll feel dizzy, maybe fall down, feel nauseous or vomit—an altogether unpleasant experience. The whole body from head to heel either moves fluidly or goes haywire thanks to a single speck of dust. One recalls the way St. James describes the tongue: how little a rudder directs such a large ship and how great a forest gets set ablaze by such a small spark.

Our text for today from Corinthians diagnoses them with becoming disoriented to their invisibles. They’re mistaking invisible for unvaluable. Only they’ve not misplaced particles but people. First chapter, the so-called Paul followers are overlooking the Apollos folks, and the Cephas people go unnoticed by the Christ crowd. Fifth chapter, a fellow’s lust leads him to perceive his stepmother as his mistress. Chapter seven, one saint sues another, not seeing past plaintiff or defendant to the brother or sister before them. In nine, parishioners view pastor as slave labor and not paid professional. By the eleventh chapter, they focus only on the food of the Holy Communion and forget the main course of fellowship. They’ve closed their eyes to how Christ Himself became stumbling block when He went ignored by the sign-demanding Jews and the wisdom-seeking Greeks. One wonders whether they consider invisibility a shortcoming instead of a superpower.

And the fritzy vision is dizzying and sickening the Corinthian Christians. “That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died” (11:30). Eye versus ear is not just crazy but downright dangerous! A dog dumbly chasing its tail cannot catch it and chew it for too long without learning that, invisible as it often seems, turns out the tail matters just as much as the teeth to the well-being of the one body. And if one cuts off one’s nose, it won’t simply spite the face but threaten the head with bleeding and the whole body with death—including the very hand that holds the blade. Martin Luther describes it like this: “If anyone’s foot hurts him, yes, even the little toe, the eye at once looks at it, the fingers grasp it, the face puckers, the whole body bends over to it, and all are concerned with this small member. Again, once it is cared for, all the other members are benefited.”

Our time and place has its own invisibles. We twenty-first-century-believers have people among us who can become invisible. We classify them as embryos—cells, tissue, tumors, uterine contents, products of conception, not human yet. Abortion assists us to overlook them as persons, those little unpretty inconveniences, and useful only for research and experimental materials, not as deserving life in their own right. Or we categorize the invisibles as elderly and incapacitated—better off dead, burdensome, not human anymore. Physician-assisted suicide allows us to ignore them as neighbors; weak unproductive hindrances, useful only for inheritance or organ transplants. Or we label the invisibles as physically disabled and intellectually impaired—who would want to live like that, tragic and sad, not human entirely. Euthanasia empowers us to forget them and focus on “more important” matters, those embarrassing unpopular obstacles, and instead use them for excuses. “I should be free to live however I want so that I don’t end up with one of those.” Treating the “least of these” as invisibles, is deadly to the body.

Of course, invisibility can say more about the observer than the overlooked. Someone’s invisibility may very well arise from our insufficiency and not theirs. The problem doesn’t lie with their position or condition but with our vision. The problem lies with my vision, with your vision. We hide the least of these behind euphemisms because their vulnerability vexes us. We annihilate them behind our excuses because their proximity perplexes us. We eradicate them behind our own emotions because their difficulties distress us. Let someone else have concern for them, we say. Let somebody else take care of them, we think. And our culture disappears them, and our land vanishes them.

Why? Does my significance come only at his expense? Is your importance established by diminishing hers? Does “different” always mean deficient? We fear that we might not measure up. So we measure down. We compare and we compete, because sinfulness convinces us that only when it’s better than somebody else does it count as anything good. And our tunnel-vision excludes almost everyone, not just those at the edges of existence, but our colleagues and peers too, our loved ones and even our own bodies. The measuring down and jealous comparing only makes us smaller, even as we try to be great in our own eyes. Diminishing others silently diminishes us, though invisible to our eyes.

Just to secure a scrap of gratification? A shred of self-indulgence? Satan gets us to wound ourselves—survive by the sword and die by the sword. We can’t swing it at a neighbor without also slicing us. Cutting at their humanity costs us our own. Count their life worthless if you wish, but in sacrificing it to safeguard your own, you’ve reduced yourself to nothing as well. You may have claimed the throne, but only over the ones you’ve already branded nobodies. Disconnecting any of us dooms us all. Cloaking one member with invisibility casts us each as invaluable.

But invisible isn’t nonexistent. And it doesn’t mean insignificant. In fact, many of the most invisible things are pretty indispensable. How about a list of indispensable invisibles? Start with tomorrow. And memories. Angels. Love and gravity and God. Also, Paul writes of another superpower, a real one without shortcomings. What is this superpower? It undoes invisibility. It comes from outside of us and is available to everyone. This superpower eases and even heals the terror that we can’t measure up. It undoes the disconnections, the discrimination, darkness, despair, and death itself.

It’s the superpower of belonging. You belong. I belong. They belong. We belong to each other and to something bigger and to One greater. We belong to God the Father Almighty, who called us out of nothingness and non-existence and handmade us, with His very life giving Word and by breathing His own breath into our lungs; creating humankind as His precious treasure. We belong to the One Christ Jesus, who put our insignificant flesh on His bones and our sinful blood into His veins, our guilt on His hands and our punishment upon His shoulders, by redeeming humankind with His incarnation, compassion, and crucifixion. We belong to the One Lord and Savior God, who put His forgiveness into our consciences and His resurrection into our broken little bodies and lives, by calling humankind His dwelling, His temple, from fertilization to forever—His family, His household, and His inheritance. He has made us each for Himself, our hearts restless until they rest in Him, and that renders us all indispensable, part of a community, members of the kingdom, a system, a structure, a body together. We belong. That is real power!

This body of Christ looks for you and every invisible embryo. This family of Christ longs for you and each unborn child. This community of Christ calls for you and all overlooked infants and toddlers. This kingdom of Christ lives and dies and serves you as the left-out youngster or forgotten teenager. As a student, an adult, when afflicted, when impaired, when elderly, Christ prays, comforts, intercedes, and hurts with you. That calls us to stop and open our eyes to those we don’t see around us.

Stop right now and do it. Look around. Who has been invisible to you? Who has sat silently near you, without a word of love, greeting, friendship, or prayer? How can you open your eyes to the invisible members of the body of Christ? How can you leverage your superpower of belonging—belonging to them, and they belonging to you? To use that superpower of belonging so that you are the love of Christ to the invisible, the overlooked and forgotten? To extend that sight and that belonging to those still outside these walls, in Christ’s love for them and for you? But begin right here with those who are the body of Christ with you. Notice each other. Speak to each other. Pray for each other. Find someone you have not yet gotten to know and introduce yourself and one thing you are thankful to God for or one prayer need.

In the body of Christ we don’t overlook abortion as somebody else’s business. You can’t ignore physician-assisted suicide as someone else’s problem. You won’t forget about surprise pregnancies, or infertilities, or embryo experiments, or terminal diagnoses. You won’t forget about the persons with disabilities, or about procreation and parenting, or about sanctity of life as if invisible. Every one involves our neighbor. Every single one affects our brother, our sister, our body, our blessing and treasure. Every last one concerns a gift, a privilege of life(!), a responsibility of ours and of our God, indispensable neighbors whose absence would not only make our lives but our world and our one human race poorer for missing them.

You get to speak heart-changing truth with them. You get to show life-saving love. They will benefit from your courage and compassion, and you will behold our Lord in theirs. No one lives to himself alone, and no one dies to himself alone. For whether we live or we die, we belong to the Lord—and also to one another. We need each other, and we have each other. And this gives our existence and our identity as humanity its delight; not indulgence and gratification, not comparing and scorekeeping, but fellowship, communion, interdependence, belonging.

Lutherans For Life exists for this. Lutherans For Life wants to equip every congregation in declaring it. Lutherans For Life works to assist every community in demonstrating it, that God creates and redeems and calls every human life as His own precious treasure from fertilization to forever. His grace, not anyone else’s age, appearance, or ability, gives value to each human being. Nobody’s size or shade can improve it, and nobody’s skills or circumstances can impair our value. With this Gospel of Jesus Christ, we help you find motivation, get education, and take action to respect and protect especially the least of these.

And with us you can help so many others. The Gospel’s given you a front-row seat not only to witness but also to participate in Almighty God’s miraculous salvation, making a real immediate and eternal difference in individual souls and our whole society. May even those who permit, promote, or take part in using death as a solution know that their lives matter to our Heavenly Father as much as the lives that have been lost. May He grant that the victims of lies and violence receive relief and healing in His forgiveness and faith, joy and hope, until the anger and the fear that drives these evils dissolves in the promise and presence and power of the Lord Jesus. And may we see every human being as neighbor and celebrate with them as brothers and sisters unto the ages of the ages. Amen.