3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Cor. 12:12-31)
Who is most important? In church life that is often debated. Jesus regularly criticized his apostles for arguing about this. We remember in the Gospel of Luke that the apostles were even competing for attention after the first Eucharist. How disappointed Jesus must have been!
A story is told about how the parts of the human body once got into an argument about who was most important. The brain spoke first and said, “I am the most important since I am the command center of the body. I do all the thinking.” The heart spoke next, saying, “I am most important since I pump blood throughout the body. The blood carries oxygen everywhere in the body. If I am not around, the body would not live.” The eyes spoke next, saying, “We are most important. If the body can’t see, how can it detect danger when it is coming?” The ears spoke next. “If the body can’t hear, how can a person communicate with others?” Each body part in turn spoke of how important it was.
Finally, the colon spoke up and said, “I am most important. I help digest food and carry waste away from the body.” The rest of the body parts laughed at the colon saying, “That is like saying the garbage collector is the most important person in a community. We are all more important than you.”
The colon got mad and decided to quit working. When it did, the body’s stomach began to ache as the food it was digesting backed up. Heartburn started. The eyes began to water. The ears began to ring. The legs became weak. The knees began to knock. The brain sent out orders to all of the body parts, but they only felt pain. The body parts finally admitted, the colon had the most important job.
In the epistle from the Letter to the Corinthians in today’s liturgy, St. Paul says the Church is the Body of Christ. He also shares how just as each body part is connected, so is each member of the Church. Every church member has gifts to offer to the Church. His reminder that each Christian person can contribute to the life of the church is very true. We might carry this comparison even further.
In the Declaration of Independence some of the most stirring words are: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.” As school children we heard these words. Maybe we memorized them. During our nation’s history, unfortunately, there have been times when certain ethnic groups were considered less than human. Women, for much of our history, didn’t have the right to vote or to hold public office. We forget these things. Somehow it is like a repressed memory. Hypocrisy isn’t what we like to think about. We like to think that our country is the “shining beacon on a hill.”
We have no organizations or institutions that are perfect at guaranteeing human rights. We can think of our own church. Our church endorsed slavery until the 19th century. Our church has always been suspicious of the democratic experiment, and in some ways still is. Our church operates out of a power structure modeled after a pyramid. The people at the top of the pyramid are the ones who wield power. We still struggle as a church to respect each person’s human dignity, to get rid of the pyramid organizational structure.
Is it wrong to have lofty ideals which we try to live out in real life? Roman Catholics have come to see that what we hope for is a church that resembles the Body of Christ, like Paul talked about. We want a church where all are called to holiness. All feel a sense of ownership. Do our words match our actions?
Sometimes it seems like we are getting closer to such an ideal church. But lots of times we fall backwards. If we want to be like Jesus, we can’t be satisfied if any segment of the church feels disrespected. As we celebrate this Mass we consume the Body of Christ. We ask again what St. Augustine prayed for; that one day we will become what we eat, that we will be bring Jesus to a world that needs his message of charity and tolerance more than ever.