Sermon – Orinda Community Church
February 3, 2008
Sonja L. Ingebritsen

One Body, One Spirit

Please pray with me:  May the words spoken and the words received be in your service, great God of Love.

Many of you know that I got back from a study trip to Uganda and Rwanda a little over a week ago.  I want to share an image that I carried with me. 
A couple of days before I left for Africa I saw a giant head strapped on top of a car.  I kid you not.  A gianthead.  First I was startled.  Then I said out loud to myself, “Oh, right, I live in Berkeley.”
The head was that of a young woman.  It was about five feet in diameter, lying on its side, facing backwards towards me.  The car that it was attached to was parked in front of the dollar thrift store on the other side of the intersection.  Since I was stopped at a red light, I had time to get a good look at her. 
She must have been made out of plaster, because her nose was crumbled off.  She had pale skin, and flowing blonde hair that curled up at the base of her neck. 
Her face was striking.  Her eyes seemed empty and her lips were turned down at the edges.  She looked sad, a kind of sadness that seemed born out of long-term grief, as if she’d been mourning the loss of her body, the rest of herself, for a very long time, but had resigned herself to the permanence of the situation.
The image of the disembodied woman stayed with me so powerfully that I ended up writing about it in my journal on the plane ride from San Francisco to Amsterdam, which was the first leg of our trip to Uganda.  Two things in particular came to mind.  The first was an awareness of how often I fail to live wholly embodied.  In my particular Euro-American and mainline Protestant context, I inherited an inclination toward all kinds of dualisms that create artificial separations:  mind from body, spirit from body, spirit from intellect, and contemplation from action. 
The second thing that came to mind about that disembodied head was a reminder of the individualism and superiority that is part of my inculturation as a white American.  Those of us who are white grow up with a largely unconscious sense of entitlement to access, achievement, resources, and power.  This sense of entitlement continues to perpetuate inequity and injustice within our own country.  And it fuels our grab for global access, resources, and power.  We live in a time when the United States acts on the global stage as if we are the political, cultural, and economical braintrust and standard-bearer for the world.  We view ourselves as the head, so to speak—the body part we most honor—and many of our actions convey that we have little need of or use for the rest of the body, the rest of the human family, and even creation itself unless it can be exploited for our benefit.  Yet, we carry a grief, recognized or not, because of this disconnect.
Euro-Americans in relation to other ethnic groups within the United States, the United States in relation to other Western or developed nations, and the West in relation to the rest of the globe are arenas of privilege and power at this time in our world’s history.  The complex and devastating effects of colonization linger in contemporary African crises and challenges.  Yet no culture is immune from creating dismemberments and distortions of power within their own spheres of influence.  This is as true in Uganda and Rwanda as elsewhere.  Our travel group learned about some of these situations through others’ testimonies and occasionally in personal encounters of our own.   
But following Jesus, whether in the United States or Uganda or Rwanda demands another way, a way that re-members—literally puts back together—the body of God’s creation.  One of the critical tasks of communities of faith is to be an inclusive body:  inclusive of the body and inclusive as a body. 
We witnessed this way of Jesus many times throughout our travels.  Let me give you a few examples: 

1. Everywhere we went, our group was greeted with the words, “You are most welcome” or even “Welcome home.” 
2. People without many material possessions pooled resources to provide us with banquets of hospitality. 
3. As often as we heard testimonies of desperation and pain, we also heard hope and faith and trust. 
4. People who have been affected by unimaginable traumas are working toward restoration and forgiveness in order to unify communities that have been torn by violence.
5. And worship and other community gatherings we attended incorporated dancing or drumming or clapping or other movement.  Praise and prayer was literally an experience of the whole body, not only the spirit and intellect.  

I’ll talk more about my trip at a forum on March 9.  But right now I want to bring us back to our local context of Orinda Community Church.  How do we call ourselves to be accountable to this task of re-membering the body of God’s creation? 

1. We are an open and affirming congregation, and are a prophetic voice for justice in the ways we welcome the gifts of gay and lesbian ministers. 
2. We care for the tangible needs of others through our involvement in the Winter Nights shelter program and our support of other missions and ministries.  
3. And we further a holistic vision of the realm of God’s love through our growing commitment to the greening of our church.

I invite us to consider other ways the re-membering of God’s creation is embodied here. 
I also invite us to consider any ways that we might be contributing to the marginalization of some of God’s children or sustaining an inequitable status quo, either by our action or our inaction.
Jesus calls us to be part of the re-membering process, to become one body, one whole, where no part of creation—not one person, not any creature of the earth, not the earth itself—is considered dispensable.
As with every metaphor, the image of the body of Christ is not without its pitfalls.  It comes out of a context in which the good of the collective, as defined by the mores of Hellenistic society, trumps the interests of individuals, and it was written specifically to address a conflict in the early church about the value of various spiritual gifts.  It has been used historically to justify keeping women, children, and slaves “in their place.”  It is legitimate to be concerned with who has the power to decide who plays which role in this analogy and who or what is designated as respectable or not respectable and what limitations about human beings are inferred.  As with any scriptural text, we have to be mindful of its potential to be misused, contrary to the purposes of love and justice. 
However, if we listen to this passage from I Corinthians as a word about inclusion rather than exclusion, it is good news for the people of God. 
If we listen to this passage as a word that diversity is not only acceptable but necessary for the health of community, it is good news for the people of God. 
If we listen to this passage as a word promoting the equal worth of every person rather than an artificial hierarchy that privileges some at the expense of others, it is good news for the people of God. 
It is good news indeed.  Without you and you and you and you and me and all the others we could name and whose names we do not know, the creation at this moment would be incomplete. 
But this good news does not necessarily come as a word of ease.  Living in our bodies and living as one body in God’s love requires that we actively participate in restoration and re-membrance wherever we find we have become separated from our own physicality, the physical needs of our neighbors, or respectful relationships with others around the globe.

This morning we celebrate the Eucharist, which is a ritual that by its very nature reminds us that we cannot live our lives of faith either in isolation from community or as intangible spirits.  We take the bread in our hands; we taste the juice-soaked bread on our tongues; we swallow it to nourish our embodied souls.  And we do this, together, in remembrance.

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