Feet, Kidneys, Eyes, and More

1 Corinthians 12:12-31, Luke 4:14-21 

When I was in high school, I took a lot of tests.

Not just the kind to find out whether I’d learned what I was supposed to in trigonometry and history and French, and not the kind that trigger opt-out and government interference backlashes these days, but the kind that put you in categories, the kind that are supposed to tell you who you are.

My experimental, high school was very interested in studying the students, (because it would help prove the need for the school) so I took learning style tests, personality profiles, aptitude studies, longitudinal assessment questionnaires, you name it. 

But in spite of all those tests, I never had as much confidence in who I was, and what I could do as Jesus gets from reading a little piece of scripture.

He goes home to Nazareth, and they invite their home-grown up-and-coming rabbi to preach.

So he stands up, reads the prophet Isaiah’s words promising that God will anoint someone to release the captive and the oppressed, overturn the order of the world, transform the lives of the poor, and heal the blind, puts the scroll down and says,

“Done. That’s me. I got it.”

He knows who he is, and what he’s meant to do; finds it in scripture and declares it to the world.

How many of you have had that experience?
The powerful conviction of who you are, and what you are meant to do, so certain that you can announce it not only to the world, but to the folks who know just how awkward and difficult you were as a teenager.

How many of you have that experience about faith, church, and spiritual gifts?

And how many have ever felt uncertain, confused, or perhaps unnecessary?
Like everyone else is better at prayer and preaching and healing and scriptural interpretation and leadership than you, your skills aren’t spiritual gifts, and even if you live a faithful life, it doesn’t make much difference to the church or the world?

Me too, actually. Even with seminary training and official discernment processes, profiles and tests and deep immersion in scripture, Jesus’ confidence today and all those biblical lists of spiritual gifts make me feel inadequate or a little irrelevant sometimes. 

So I take all these spiritual gifts assessments, and my results always include things like “administrator,” which doesn’t seem to show up much in the Bible. I mean, it’s useful, but…spiritual?

There are clearly folks who are a lot better equipped as prophets and evangelists and healers than I am - some right here at Calvary. I have very definitely never spoken in tongues, and I don’t really feel more confident about my ability to pray extemporaneously in public than most of you,  even though I do it because it’s my job.

And that’s what Paul’s talking about.

God has made us, Paul says, as a body with all kinds of different parts.

Feet, hands, eyes, ears, and the bits we put clothes over and don’t honor in public.

And even the bits we generally ignore are absolutely necessary — even the bits that seem pretty irrelevant; even those of us whose spiritual gift appears to be the appendix.

I think Paul is telling us not just that eyes and intestines and little toes and hips are equally important — which is good for balancing out the ego and sense of value between those who lead the march and those who clean up after — but that we have to consider what all those parts do for the body, to know how many things we get to do for God in the world.

So think about it for a minute.

Let’s start with the feet.

What do feet do? stand, walk, balance….

So what you do - in the church, in the world - as a foot or feet for God?

run errands, fetch things, support work, keep things balanced…

How about a mouth?

What do mouths do for God in the world?

not just speak, but eat, taste, kiss and make intimacy

How about eyes?  What do eyes do for God? 

see, observe

What would you do if you were an eye for God?

search, see opportunities, recognize friends, see what others are overlooking….

How about the parts of the body we can’t see (at least not without an X-ray)?

Like kidneys.… Your kidneys clean up your blood stream, separate the toxic from the healthy.

If you’re being a kidney for God, you might be the one who finds joy in putting things back in order so we’re functional and ready to go, but you also might be someone who pays attention to sorting the good from the bad, helping communities lose unhealthy habits, feeding healthy nourishment into the world.

Or the spine, the skeleton. What does your spine do for your body?
What would it be like to be a spine for God in the world

(give shape and structure, stand up for things…..)

And there’s so much more.

Lungs, skin, fingers, wombs, colons — all those bits of our reproductive and digestive systems we’re not comfortable analyzing in church — there are so many different things our bodies do, so many things to do for God in the world.

I think Paul is not just telling us to honor all the different things people do for God, but helping us recognize that there are so many more things to do for God, so many more things we can do that are of God. And that we don’t get to opt out by considering our gifts and our work unimportant, because it’s “just” the feet.

I think he’s telling us that some of us may be called primarily to be a mouth, but all of us may be called upon at any time to be the fingers, the nose, the lungs, or the kidneys, because together we are all of the body.

So it’s okay if the spiritual assessment tests, and the ambitious instructions in scripture, 

don’t make a spiritual call clear to you, or tell you exactly who you are and what to do.

Paul’s telling us that these gifts that fill us with the Holy Spirit are more obscure and more obvious, more practical and more intangible, than we are used to thinking.

Paul’s telling us that indeed, you have gifts and call that are as important as mine, as important as his, as magnificent and as important as Jesus’ - because they are Jesus’.

Because we are all part of each others’ gifts and call.

Because the pancreas and the mouth both matter, in our bodies and in the Body of Christ, even when we aren’t exactly sure what one of them does. And the way the Body works together is a miracle of God’s own creation, an ongoing, holy, act of love.