Tuesday, September 17, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
One body
Brothers and sisters, as a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many are one body, so also Christ.
At ADRN’s thrift shop, which helps fund the Disaster Relief necessary throughout Texas during times of hurricanes, floods, and ice storms, I volunteer once a week to sort books. Yesterday I found a short one that took me on a trip through my digestive system, published by Time Magazine, for kids.
And me.
I also found a book about what not to eat, and what TO eat instead at chain restaurants. Along with a map of New Mexico ghost towns, crumbly but still readable. If I could spend more time in New Mexico, I would love to visit some of those ghost towns. Tony Hillerman’s novels starring Navajo Tribal Police detectives Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito send my imagination into the far country around Shiprock and the Four Corners of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah. On my one recent trip along Route 66 to Albuquerque, I discovered a little of that very beautiful, quiet country.
Navajo traditions, religious and medical perspectives all point me toward God, whether I’m in New Mexico or not.
So also Christ.
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body.
Whether red or yellow, black or white. When I read the history of American unwillingness to “be baptized in one Body,” or recognize the same judgmental spirit in myself today, or hear the sounds of insult and attack on TV or anywhere else, my skin crawls. Adrenalin pumps me up and I feel that old redemptively violent urge to protect someone weak.
In The Chosen Jesus and his disciples, walking along a road toward Bethany, pass a cohort of Roman soldiers, who harass them and then demand that they carry their armor and baggage. For a mile, right? Jesus calms his disciples, who are outraged even though they know the rule.
When they reach the mile marker, Jesus just keeps walking. The soldiers shout for him to stop, reminding him they are only allowed one mile. Jesus calls them out, turning into the sun. “By coercion, yes, but there is no law against fellow citizens assisting them further of their own volition. We are near your base, right?”
Jesus keeps walking, and the centurion comes up beside him, much quieter now. Humbled? “Maybe, uh, let us take back the helmets, so there will be no confusion at the outpost.”
“If you like,” Jesus says, looking into the Roman soldier’s eyes. Within a moment or two the soldiers have taken back their helmets and their packs. Walking along, Nathaniel and Andrew are smiling. “Hey! If anyone forces you to go one mile …” and Andrew replies, “Go with him two!” The knowing look they exchange shows how much and how fast they are learning the art of being “baptized into one body.”
Judas reprimands Jesus, and Jesus reminds him of that giving lesson. But Judas, like me at least at first, is too angry to respond with humility. He is right and the others, eventually all the others, are wrong. Perhaps Judas is headed away, rather than toward, his Father. Still, there are no borders to Christ’s body.
Now the body is not a single part, but many. We were all given to drink of one Spirit.
(1 Corinthians 11, Psalm 40, John 3, Luke 7)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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