For You are All One in Christ

The Holy Spirit preserves the presence of Christ in our midst as our community’s faith is restored and renewed by His love in us and through us for one another. God and Love cannot be contained and must be shared. God is love. (John 20:19-23) 

David Steindl-Rast writes in Deeper than Words that The Holy Spirit is the awe-inspiring power of life and love. We differ only by the degree to which we open ourselves to this power. If we patiently cultivate openness and “listen”, we will become more and more aware of the Spirit which allows us to know God within.

In our Creed we proclaim our faith when we acknowledge the Trinitarian God as the ‘Father,’ the ultimate mystery from whom we come and to whom we are on our way; the ‘Son,’ in whom we find our true Self; the ‘Spirit,’ the divine aliveness within our innermost life. This is the very core of our faith.

In his epistle (1 Corinthians 12:3-13) Paul reminds us that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are given to each of us for the good of the entire community. We recognize these gifts as talents that are inherited, honed or acquired but nevertheless inspired and “activated” in us as tools by which God’s love can be shared with the whole community/body. Who is our community; who is our neighbor ?

Paul’s words are as relevant today as they were in his time. In these stressful times of Covid 19 confinement, without any precedent in our experience, grief, fear and resentment are a myriad of emotions that can overshadow our desire or willingness to get on with our lives and return to “normal,” whatever normal is or will be again? For some it is easy to externalize emotions and discharge their latent energy and find fault when looking for answers that are yet to be revealed as they yet to unfold? It’s all too easy to subordinate the interest of the community to our own self-interests, after all it’s part of our humanity. We are no different from the people of Corinth. Yet it is in the “dark night” of the unknown that personal transformation begins to seed and take root. And when, by God’s grace, our talents are redirected away from our own self-interests, they flourish and become vehicles for God’s love. This process is dynamic and ongoing.

Paul tells us that we are all interconnected parts of a single body. He was critical of those in Corinth who advanced the use of the metaphorical “body” image to strengthen the hierarchy of society. Philosophers and politicians said that human society, like a body, had to have a head that told everyone else what to do. Of course, the elite got to be the head and the poor needed to keep working as their hands and feet. Paul overturns the notion that some members are more important than any others:

There is no longer Jew or Gentile slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.
Galatians 3:28-29

In the Body of Christ, behavior is not be determined by concern for honor and status, but by what nourishes the whole body though inter-connectedness and love. The work of the Spirit will result in a unified body eventually empowering us to “renew the face of the earth.”