Romare Bearden, Family Dinner. Collage on masonite 1968.
This Sunday we'll gather around Paul's vision in Romans 12 of what it means to be the body of Christ—a community where our differences don't divide us but make us whole. In a world that often emphasizes what separates us, Paul offers a radical alternative: "We have many parts in one body and the parts don't all have the same function. In the same way, though there are many of us, we are one body in Christ, and individually we belong to each other."
I've been thinking about Paul's image of the church as a body this week, and it strikes me how beautifully imperfect this metaphor really is. Bodies aren't uniform or symmetrical. My left hand doesn't look exactly like my right. My eyes serve a completely different function than my feet. Yet somehow, in their glorious mismatch, all these parts work together to create something far more beautiful and functional than any single part could be alone.
The same is true in our church family. We bring different gifts, different perspectives, different stories. Some of us are the steady hands that keep things running smoothly. Others are the eyes that see new possibilities. Some are the voices that speak truth with courage. Others are the ears that listen with extraordinary compassion. We're wonderfully, necessarily mismatched—and that's exactly how God designed us to be.
Competing in Kindness
Paul's instructions for life together acknowledge this beautiful complexity. "Outdo one another in showing honor," he writes. Not outdo each other in being right, or in having the most spiritual-sounding prayers, or in looking like we have it all together. Outdo each other in treasuring one another, in seeing the sacred worth in every person who walks through our doors.
This kind of honoring doesn't happen automatically. It requires showing up with open hearts, willing to be known and to truly know others. It means moving beyond Sunday morning pleasantries to the deeper work of community—the messy, grace-filled business of learning to love people who see the world differently than we do.
Unity, Not Uniformity
Sometimes I think we imagine unity means uniformity, that being "one body" means we all think alike or have the same temperament. But Paul's vision is far richer than that. True unity isn't about erasing our differences—it's about discovering how our differences can serve a greater wholeness.
Poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer captures this beautifully in her poem "Unity":
Today we lose the words
yours and mine and find
in their absence a song
that can only be sung together.How did we ever think
we could attempt
this humanness alone?To the table of love,
we bring soup, bring cherries,
bring the bread of our own
sweet communion.We bring scissors to cut away
the tresses of the past,
bring dark wine to toast
the courage of showing up exposed.And when we forget
the words to the song,
well, there is always laughter.And when we forget to laugh,
well, there is always
the union of tears—
the way many rivers
become one river,the way many voices
become one song.
This Sunday, as we gather as the beautifully mismatched body of Christ, may we remember that our unity isn't found in our sameness, but in our shared commitment to love well, to honor deeply, and to sing together the song that can only be sung in community.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Julie