Living Together on Uncommon Ground: Respect

Pastor Adam Hamilton said that if you “bring five Christians into a room, you will find plenty of disagreement,” plenty of uncommon ground. Although we are one body as Paul refers to, we are different. We have different abilities. Different gifts. Different opinions. Different vocations. Different families and upbringings. Scot McKnight says that the church will always be a Fellowship of Differents.

Scot McKnight says “Understand that these early Christians did not meet in churches and sit apart from one another in pews, and then when the music ended get in their chariots and go home. No, their churches were small, and they met in homes or house churches. A recent study by a British scholar has concluded that if the apostle Paul’s house churches were composed of about thirty people, this would have been their approximate make-up:

• a craftworker in whose home they meet, along with his wife, children, a couple of male slaves, a female domestic slave, and a dependent relative • some tenants, with families and slaves and dependents, also living in the same home in rented rooms • some family members of a householder who himself does not participate in the house church • a couple of slaves whose owners do not attend • some freed slaves who do not participate in the church • a couple homeless people • a few migrant workers renting small rooms in the home

Add to this mix some Jewish folks and a perhaps an enslaved prostitute and we see how many “different tastes” were in a typical house church in Rome: men and women, citizens and freed slaves and slaves (who had no legal rights), Jews and Gentiles, people from all moral walks of life, and perhaps, most notably, people from elite classes all the way down the social scale to homeless people.” The fellowship of the different.

But how, in this fellowship of differents, do we respect one another? How do we R-E-S-P-E-C-T? Yes, I did almost have us sing along to Aretha this morning. The Latin root for respect means “the act of looking at one often, to consider, to observe.” So we might ask ourselves, how are we considering one another? Do we consider where one another is coming from and what gifts they offer and bring?

Paul here is addressing the church in Corinth because they have begun to prioritize some gifts in the church over others. Particularly during this time, those who spoke prophetically or in tongues were considered to be more affluent and perhaps enjoyed a higher social status than other members of the church. In other words, the social hierarchy of the world around them was making its way into the church, making it seem that some gifts of God are more important than others.

But Paul isn’t having it. First off, he makes a point to remind the members that all gifts are gifts of God’s grace. Furthermore, these gifts have a purpose and that it is to build up the body of Christ. Then he goes into his speech about how the hand isn’t the ear and the foot isn’t the mouth and so on and so forth. We can’t have a body made up of all eyes, for who would hear? We can’t have a body made up of only feet, for how would it walk anywhere without legs? That’s my own interpretation, but you get the idea. We need each and every one.

The movie Encanto beautifully illustrates this. Mirabel lives in a magical casita with her multigenerational family, each of whom has a special gift. Her mother can cook and heal. Her sisters all have unique gifts as well, from impossible strength to growing flowers to changing the weather. Another family member has remarkable hearing. Mirabel’s younger brother is a shapeshifter. Her older brother Bruno, who no one wants to talk about, has the gift of seeing the future but left years ago (apparently that wasn’t a welcome gift). The family is a mixed bag to say the least. But Mirabel doesn’t have a gift. She keeps waiting on a miracle, feeling overshadowed by her family’s gifts. At a family party, the magical house begins to crack, the miracle candle that holds their power goes out, and everyone else in the family begins to lose their gift. Mirabel sets out to help discover why the house fell apart, even without a gift of her own. Mirabel finally leaves, thinking she is the source of things falling apart since she doesn’t have a gift. Eventually, the family has to rebuild the house together without any magic. As they get ready to enter their newly built house, the formerly estranged Bruno looks at Mirabel and says “you’re a real gift, kid” before handing her the doorknob with an M enscribed on it. When Mirabel places the doorknob on the house, the magic returns and the magical casita is restored and the rest of the family’s powers come back as well. When Mirabel was seen as a gift, accepted for who she was,magical or otherwise, the family was restored.

Mirabel thought if she just had a gift, then she would be accepted. She would have common ground with her family, but maybe common ground is more than what we have in common. As Katy McCown says “unity holds hands with uniqueness.” Maybe the fellowship of the uncommon is about how in Christ, our uncommonness can work together for the common good.

When we step away from the divisions around us and enter into the purple space of respect, of deep consideration of the other and the gifts he/she brings,we build up the body of Christ.

Amy Kenny challenges the prioritization of gifts within the church in her book titled My Body is Not a Prayer Request. She talks about what her disability has taught her about God and disability justice in the church. She says, “Throughout Scripture, we encounter disabled people at the forefront of the work that God chooses to do with humanity. Isaac became blind. Jacob walks with a limp. Leah has “weak eyes.” Moses has a speech disorder. Elijah feels depressed. Timothy has stomach issues. Paul has his thorn in the flesh. And who can forget Mephibosheth’s two lame feet? The Good Shepherd brings abundant life, with and without our bodies being “able” or cured…We need to disentangle ourselves from any system that claims there is a hierarchy of bodies and minds.” Instead of a mindset of lacking and loss, Amy suggests that “the more we expand our understanding of human experience (the more we consider one another), the more we can learn about one another and imagine how each disability illustrates God to the world. ..Imagine the possibilities if we experienced bodily differences not as a defect or loss but as a unique opportunity to experience the diversity of a vast creator God. It just might make the body of Christ healed and whole.”

Unity can hold hands with our uniqueness. We each have gifts to share with the body of Christ, and we need one another. Henri Nouwen talks a lot about the importance of gifts in community. He says in community, “our unique talents are no longer objects of competition but elements of community, no longer qualities that divide but gifts that unite .” Is there someone you have been competing with that God might be inviting you into communion with?

Nouwen says “Hidden in the ground on which we walk together are the talents that we can offer to each other.”

In Christ, competition transforms into community. In Christ, the uncommon gather together to offer what they have for the common good. In Christ, Taylor Mertins says, “By the grace of God we have been placed, or graced, into the church - a community of wild and weird and wonderful people we would otherwise never have encountered.”

This morning, I want you to here that you are needed. That you have something to offer. That you have a gift that can build up the body of Christ. For we need the fellowship of the differents. We need a space for our uniqueness and unity to hold hands.

We need those who are always early and those who are perpetually late.

We need those who know when to bring dinner to someone who is in pain and those who get a gift card because they don’t go into a kitchen.

We need those who can stay on top of finances and know how to pop open Excel and draft a beautiful spreadsheet and we need those with a dream of where we can give to the community.

We need those who can pick up a guitar, a flute, or sit down at a piano and create something beautiful.

We need those who sing loudly, sing beautifully, and even those who sing happily and off key like myself.

We need those who are scattered in thought and focused in prayer.

We need the overly generous and the ones who are scraping by.

We need the ones who show up to fix things and the ones who know where everything belongs and the ones who can’t remember where they put it and the ones who are just plain clumsy.

We need the ones who serve in the same way for years and the ones who say yes even though they’ve never even been to a VBS before.

We need those who love to teach and those who are eager to grow and those who have a million questions.

We need the infants who babble and cry, the children who always grab a billion pieces of candy and have paint on their hands from Sunday school and the toddler who just isn’t in the mood for any of it that day.

We need those who love to rock the babies and play with the children and handle the messes.

We need those who remember our history, who hold our stories, and those who dream of our future.

We need those who prepare the bulletins and clean the sanctuary and set up the tables and send a hundred email reminders when the rest of us forget.

We need the ones who have grown up in church and the ones who are still figuring it out.

We need to consider one another.

We need the fellowship of the differents.