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it's always such a great pleasure to preach at this particular service. All these new people here, some of you with your families, some of you scared to death holding your bulletins upside down, all of

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you sensing the excitement of this new venture, you've moved here maybe, and started to get settled in a new apartment that is smaller than the place you used to live and to meet people or you've quit

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your job and pulled on your savings to stay in your home and commute to this place. And now on this occasion, the new ones among you take the vow and sign the book and then commit your

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names to the history and future of this place. As you begin knitting your lives into a new community , it is a community of learning for sure, but there's always the hope that this community will be

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so much more and with that hope in mind, I've chosen as my text for tonight one of the most supremely generous descriptions of a group such as this that you will ever find in scripture. It's from

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Saint Paul writing to the church in Corinth and here's what he says to them and to us, you are the body of christ paul had a thing about body language. It's laced all through this text.

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There's a hand, there's a foot, there's an ear, there's an eye, there's a nose. There are those parts of the body that we don't just show anybody. And there are those other parts

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that we enjoy doing up a little more. And if you read through this text to quickly, you might assume that you are in med school instead of seminary. But this is not an anatomy lecture.

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This is paul making a serious point that if one body part suffers, all body parts suffer with it . And if one body part is honored, all body parts rejoice together with it. But why all

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this body language? To begin with? What's going on in that church? In Corinth? Well, let me break this to you gently. Some of you are young and impressionable and I don't want to

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freak you out. But friends, sometimes there is what we call a church fight. I hate having to mention this to you at the beginning of this new year. But sometimes the eye writes off the

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hand and the hand, the head writes off the feet. And some of the more special members of the body get a little attitude about themselves and make the less special members of the body feel badly.

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There was a fight like that in Corinth, A fight over things which frankly baffle us 21st century church people. The things they were fighting over were things that don't translate well to our contemporary ears. Things

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like the eating of food previously offered idols, things like what to do with people speaking in tongues. Things like certain roles and functions in the church being given higher prestige than other roles and functions. Some

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of these specific issues are kind of hard for us to understand, but the main issue is not hard at all, is it? The issue paul was addressing in this text was a fight in the church

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because that church in Corinth was being turned into a playground and a battlefield for religious virtuosos, ego people , we don't necessarily understand all these particular issues, but we understand, do we not? The fights

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in church? Sometimes as I look at my own communion, the Presbyterian Church, it is as if for a very long time we have behaved like one or another of different packs of greyhounds chasing a mechanical

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rabbit around the track. The rabbit goes by different names. Depending on the decade we've been in race , women's ordination, gay and lesbian ordination, Marriage equality, Israel Palestine. But the act of chasing

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them is the same thing in every decade. In every moment, the act of so focusing upon our side of things that we demonize the other sides in the matter. Oh, we know that game very

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well. We know about fights in the church. And so does paul. If you ask me, he should have jerked and knothole in those Corinthians, don't you think he should have called them? Surely

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. What? They were a dysfunctional family hole smaller than the sum of their parts. He should have brought in the bishop or the Presbyterian Committee or the Alban Institute. Yeah, But instead, curiously enough

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, he uses body language, the language of the body, the language of interconnectedness in which the foot and the hand and the eye and the ear and all the vital organs are part of a greater and

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necessary hole. He used body language to remind us that strife filled churches like the one they're in Corinth , have great dissimilarities that the church itself, she could no more lop off a part of itself and

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survive then could a body continue to function if it were a single organ? He used body language to make the point that contrary to the prevailing assumption that some members of that church mattered more than other members

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, the fact was that even the smaller, apparently less significant parts of the body were indispensable and that even the parts of the body that seemed less honorable were invested. In fact, with greater honor.

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He used body language, but not just as a convenient point of comparison, not just as a motivational tool, not just to say to that church now , get out there and become such a body.

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No paul used body language to pay that fractured, fractious church. One of the most generous compliments in all of scripture, he said you are the body of christ and the good news that is wrapped up

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in that generous compliment is the very thing that we cannot create by ourselves is given to us. It comes to us as a gift. I'm going to say that again. The very thing that we cannot

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create by ourselves is given to us. It comes to us as a gift and for what purpose, for the purpose of proclaiming in word and deed. The gospel of jesus christ, the body that paul

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says we already are, comes to us as a gift, a gift not just for us to marinate in as if it's all about us and aren't we so special, but rather as a gift that is

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intended before God is through with us to be given away as a communication to the world. I'd like to think that in this year and in the years to come in this place, we could take that

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gift, that gift that is already given to us more seriously in this community because we too are a many splendored body made up of so many parts. We are presbyterians and Methodists and lutherans, and even

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a few Catholics in all manner of Baptists and Pentecostals and Unitarians, three unitarians. And we have one trinity arian, we are liberals and conservatives, we are republicans and democrats. And some of us watch

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Fox News and others of us watch MSNBC. In other words, we are potentially potentially an amazing pedagogical ecclesial spiritual blessing for one another. And it strikes me that it's a crying shame when we don't explore

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more intentionally. The beauty of this body. It's a crying shame when we sort ourselves at different tables of like mindedness and starts hall, when we socialize only with those with whom we share a comfortable zone

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of similarity. When in a spirited discussion inside and outside the classroom, we slam or blog to death , the ones who offer a different opinion. Such behavior is inevitable, perhaps in a club, but

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it is inexcusable in a seminary. The beauty though , that lies within the way this particular body is arranged is that we have the opportunity again this year and in these years ahead to refrain from simply displaying

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what is already the church's fractiousness in favor of modeling for the church in this place, what paul says that we already are. We already are the body of christ, turn to somebody next to you and

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say you already are. The body of christ here . Yeah, stop what a gracious thing to say . And what a gracious thing to hear. Did you sense that? And it appears. But paul

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means that back to those greyhound dogs fred craddock, who I quote all the time these days I've been reading and rereading a lot of his books across the summer. Retired Professor of Hamelin X, one of

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the greatest preachers in the english speaking world, wrote recently of visiting in a home where they had rescued one of those greyhound dogs after their racing days were over. He was a big spotted greyhound Craddick Rights

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and he was lying there in the den. One of the kids in the family, just a toddler was pulling on its tail and a little older kid had his head on top of that old dog's stomach

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, using it for a pillow. The dog seemed so happy. Critics said to the dog, are you still racing? No, the greyhound said, I don't race anymore. Critics said, do you

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miss the glitter and excitement of the track? No , he replied. Well, what was the matter ? Did you get too old to race? No , I still had some race in me. Well

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, what, then did you not win? He asked. Oh, I won over$1 million dollars for my owner. Well, what was it? Bad treatment? Oh no. The dog said they

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treated us royally when we were racing. Did you get crippled? No. Then why? He pressed . The dog said I quit. You quit? Yes, he said I quit. Why did you

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quit? I discovered that what I was chasing was not really a rabbit. So I quit. Uh huh. Years before the dog said all that running and running and running and running and what was I

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chasing? It wasn't even real. Yeah. Yeah . Friends. The rabbits we chase are real enough but they are not ultimately real. They are not the ultimate prize. They are not the reasons finally

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that we run this race that we run so strive for the greater gifts, the gifts of faith, hope, love and above all else, the sense that we belong to one another. We who are

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together the body of christ strive this year and for the rest of your lives to be what God has already given you to be in the name of God creator, christ and holy spirit. Amen. Yeah