Every time I read the text from Corinthians I get this mental picture of a rowdy nursery school class where the teacher has just asked the children: "Who wants to get the first choice of snack today?" "Me, me … I do, I do!" Can't you just hear the clamor of the children's voices, and see their hands waving in the air hoping for attention? And then see them crowding around their teacher all hoping to be noticed first and get the best snack? The children are out for themselves the moment the idea of the snack is raised … for who wants to miss out on that opportunity?! Or picture the scenes at stores when a shipment of the hottest Christmas present is in – the lines of people that appear hours and sometimes days before the shipment is due, all hoping to snag the present. There are more than enough news stories out there of fights and near riots that break out when someone feels their place in line has been taken.

With those scenes in mind we look at the text from I Corinthians. The church community that Paul writes to in the Greek town of Corinth could be labeled as "church behaving badly." They were having theological issues over such things as baptism – fighting over who had baptized them, as if baptism by any one person counted more than another person. Their worship services had turned into chaos. But most disturbing, the members of the church fought over their place in the church community. They had gotten the idea that some people were more important than others in their community because of the spiritual gift they had. (Do you remember the old Ken-L-Ration commercial that sang: My dog's better than your dog My dog's better than yours My dog's better 'cuz he eats Ken-L-Ration My dog's better than yours. I have this image of the church singing this about their God given spiritual gift – my gift's better than your gift … ) In the early church, the ability to speak in tongues rose to a level of prominence and those who had this gift felt more important to the community than those without. There seemed to be something about the ability to be taken over by the Spirit uttering words in a language that no one understood. Paul counters this by saying that to have the gift of speaking in tongues is great, but the ability to interpret the gift of tongues must also be present. Notice the list of gifts: Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. It's not an accident that he places the gift of tongues last. We rather tame people don't spend a whole lot of time on the gift of speaking in tongues, so the fight over that gift is lost on us. But I suspect if we were inclined to list God given talents and gifts on a rating scale we'd have something that seemed more crucial, more important that the rest. Haven't you ever longed to be able to do something – sing like, play the piano like, teach like … feeling as if your contribution is just not as crucial as the next persons?

To all of that … to the members of the Corinthian Church … to us, Paul says: For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. This is not simply yet another way of reminding us that we need to work together, or get along. It is much more crucial than that. It is about being the body of Christ. And as such, if we don't work together, don't consider ourselves interdependent on each other and don't find ways of using our God given gifts … then we are not the best representation of Christ in the world that we can be. Just as Paul says that a body can't be all feet, we as the church can't be all of any one thing. We can't all be running the sound system, or playing the organ, or teaching Sunday School. Imagine us all sitting at the organ bench at once. But we all are given gifts so that we can be the body of Christ in the world. To function as such we need each other – not just the people we like or who are like us. It is not just the poor who need the rich, but also the rich who need the poor. When one member is hurting, we are all hurting.

For some unfathomable reason God has chosen us to be the very presence of God in the world, the body of Christ. I often find myself saying – only in the church. Sometimes that is humorous when I look at the people God has called to work together, but most often it is said with much seriousness. When The Apprentice reality show first came out I was a fan. I watched Donald Trump give assignments to his teams and given them a budget. As the teams pulled off their events I often thought about the things the church pulls off when we are at our best – and we don't have near the resources the Apprentice teams have. We see that ability at the local level – just think about our Vacation Bible School program. UMCOR, The United Methodist Committee on Relief does amazing work in responding to needs and issues around the world. We can know that they will do amazing work in Haiti in the months and years ahead … and that we were already there doing amazing work.

We are trusted with this work of being the body of Christ, given all we need to accomplish it and sent forth to do so. It's not an option for us. Following World War II a group of German students volunteered to help rebuild a cathedral in England that had been badly damaged in the bombing runs of the war. As the work progressed, they weren't sure how to best restore a large statue of Jesus with has arms outstretched and bearing the familiar inscription, "Come unto Me." They were able to repair all the damage to the statue except for Christ's hands which had been completely destroyed. Should they even attempt to rebuild these? Finally, the workers reached a decision that still stands today. They decided to leave the hands off and changed the inscription to read: "Christ has no hands but ours." Christ has no hands but ours.

Lord Christ,
You have no body on earth but ours,
No hands but ours,
No feet but ours.
Ours are the eyes through which your compassion
Must look out on the world.
Ours are the feet by which you may still
Go about doing good.
Ours are the hands with which
You bless people now.
Bless our minds and bodies,
That we may be a blessing to others.