I don’t know if they really were better together, but I know I still remember them from a TV show some 50 years ago. It was an episode of the Red Skelton Show with Lucille Ball as guest star. One of Skelton’s signature characters was Freddy the Freeloader, a hobo in tattered tails, dirty white gloves and a dilapidated top hat. In the sketch that I’m thinking of, Lucille Ball, in a very similar costume, joined him in comic conversation about how down on their luck they were. After a few rounds of classic physical farce, commiserating their sorry lot in life, they ended the sketch doing a delicious soft shoe while singing “Side by Side.”

It may seem trivializing to link an episode of 1950s sketch comedy to Paul’s great text on the church as the body of Christ. But there is something that compels compassion in the work of a great clown. Clowns like Skelton and Ball tug at your heartstrings while tickling your funny bone. They invite you to look at deeper meanings while howling at their antics. More than one tear of sadness and melancholy has mixed with the tears of laughter engendered by a classic clown. Watching Freddy and his companion evoked plenty of laughter, but there was something touching about the camaraderie between these two “down and outters.” Here we witnessed love, compassion and a communion of fools that spoke volumes about the basic humanity underlying the humor. Whatever happens, whatever our lot in life, wherever the road takes us, we will always have each other. Deep in our hearts we know that we’re better together than we are apart. Having each other makes life bearable, the load lighter, the road easier to travel.

This is basically the concept of solidarity that Dorothee Soelle and other liberation theologians have written of so eloquently. In the heady presumptions of our theological sophistication and first world privilege, we often find it difficult to see and understand the joy of living together among the poor folk who make up base communities, those who, through their poverty and suffering, have learned to love life and one another, “traveling the road, sharing the load, side by side.” Though I in no way mean to romanticize poverty, a song in the heart and faithful companionship does not require material wealth, higher education or political security. This is a lesson that we could well learn from our poorer sisters and brothers, how to celebrate life when we know that that is all we have.

I think that Paul is saying something similar in this morning’s ancient word. As Christians, we cannot get along without each other. We need each other to be the church, the body of Christ. Clearly we are better together than we when fight with one another or when we pull apart and put up barriers between each other. I have heard all the classic arguments about the hypocrisy of the church, how it fails to live up to its calling, how the individual can commune with God in solitude, at home, in nature, or even on the golf course better than with those sinners down at First Baptist.

But God is a god of relationships. God has made us precisely for communion - with God and with each other. That’s why we assert that God is love, that love which unites us and that ensures that we are always better together. To that end, we need to know how to speak truth to each other in love, how to forgive one another, how to care for one another and for the creation with which God has entrusted us.

In writing on this passage from Paul, Robert Hamerton-Kelly says that “Love is a relational and therefore a communal category. It is inconceivable that love should be solitary or confined to one relationship. Miming the divine desire means loving all the creatures of God, and that means at least participation in a loving community.” He goes on, “That is why the Christian community is essential to Paul’s understanding of Christian existence, and why his deepest satisfaction comes from being the founder of churches. Love is phenomenologically the ideal quality of life in the Christian community, a life whose structure is faith and hope, and whose Spirit is love.” (Robert Hamerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence: Paul’s Hermenutic of the Cross, p. 179.)

As we discussed in Bible study, Paul, though brilliant, was not a systematic theologian. The letters he wrote, while fundamental to the formulation of the Christian faith, were basically written to address specific issues among specific people in specific situations. Paul was first and foremost an evangelist. He was spreading the good news of Jesus Christ as far and fast as he could. He was starting churches and trying to monitor their faith and practice as he moved on to the next site for sowing the seeds of the Jesus movement.

The church at Corinth was one of those churches planted by Paul. Corinth was a crossroads city, a port city, a city full of merchants and sailors and travelers from all over the known world. It was a city of mixed cultures, of richly varied social and religious practices. It was strategically placed on the isthmus that separated the northern and southern regions of Greece and was crucial to the trade routes and military movements from west to east and back again. So it was not only a center of wealth for the privileged few, it also supported a large number of working poor and slaves. And, as a port city, it was also known for its riotous living and depravity. Think San Francisco or New Orleans or New York, Rio de Janeiro or Hong Kong or Capetown at their best and at their worst. Not the most fertile grounds for church planting, one might think, and yet Paul had some success there. As in other cities in which he preached, his message was met with revivals and riots. As in other cities, he began his work in the synagogue and was soon thrown out. He moved his operation next door to the home of Titius Justus and kept right on preaching. When he left after 18months, there was a small but thriving congregation of Jews and gentiles that included some socially prominent people as well as number of workers and slaves.

However, it is not long before Paul receives word of conflict in Corinth. At least some in the congregation are eager for his advice on how to handle these disputes. Most of the battle seems to center around issues of status and how a diverse group of people – Jew and gentile, rich and poor, slave and free, locals and foreigners, men and women – are going to get along in a common setting. In this first letter to First Church, Corinth, Paul attempts to address their concerns one by one. Which teacher should they follow? Paul, Cephas, Apollo? Borg, Wright, Wills, Tillich, Barth, Reuther, Soelle, McFague? What sort of behaviors are to be tolerated? Marriage to one’s stepmother, eating the meat sacrificed to idols in pagan temples, engaging Aphrodite’s prostitute priestesses, celibacy – in and out of marriage? What are acceptable religious practices? Asceticism, euphoria and ecstatic speaking in tongues? And what of status? Should the wealthiest be served first at the communion meal, leaving the poorer members the crumbs, or nothing at all? Which of the Spirit’s gifts are privileged over the others? Does speaking in tongues or preaching with authority or teaching with persuasion rank first in importance in the church? Are possessors of the privileged gifts also privileged people who may lord it over those with so-called inferior gifts? Who counts the most in First Church, Corinth, and why? How is the congregation organized to recognize and perpetuate such privileged roles, while neglecting or even denigrating other gifts?

These were the dilemmas which Paul faced. Of course, we know nothing of such conflicts in today’s church. We never see people battling for power or jockeying for position or reaching for privilege. There are no conflicts in the larger church or in our little congregation. So Paul’s ancient words aren’t really all that relevant for us. Or are they? One body with many members – our text begins with this powerful affirmation of unity in diversity. Many members – “Jews or Greeks, slave or free,” Paul says, writing to the Corinthians. Who would make your list, if you were updating Paul’s letter to First Church, Corinth? Liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor, gay and straight, citizens and foreigners, soldiers and pacifists, men and women, the differently abled, the theologically diverse? Who are those who need to, want to, find new life in the one body of Christ? Who are those, if you were completely honest, you might exclude? How do we go about setting the table so that all feel welcome and respected and cared for, with all really meaning all?

Paul’s answer is the Spirit into which we have all been baptized – the Spirit of God, of truth and justice, of peace and love. It is the Spirit who infuses all of God’s gifts with the power that makes them full and rich and effective. If the gift is of God’s Holy Spirit, its efficacy is undeniable and its exercise will be gracious and loving. There is no room for hierarchies in the work of the Spirit, no place for privilege and aberrations of status, no elevation of any gift to an ultimate position of power over others.

Though Paul claims to be a fool for Christ, he may not quite qualify as a clown. Still, I think there is great humor in his exaggerated comparison of the various body parts to the members of the body of Christ. Here we have feet envying hands and ears jealous of eyes, both threatening to leave the body or at least stop working if they can’t change roles. Here we have an arrogant eye telling the hand it is not needed and a fat head telling the smelly feet to begone. I tried to think of a way to illustrate this this morning with the children, imagining the absurdity of being a foot or an ear, an eye or a hand, a kidney or a spleen, trying to go it alone, without the rest of the body. They might have found themselves walking into walls and talking over everyone else and hearing things they couldn’t share and getting fingers burned on a hot stove. It is an absurd and powerful way to see what it means to be the church, the body of Christ. Every part is needed and has its role. We are always diminished when we lose a part or the use of a part. We are many members, each exercising her gift, each playing his part, so that the body may function fully as a whole.

Nor is this simply a matter of body function. There is also a word here about the nature and quality of the interrelatedness of the body’s parts. Paul says it eloquently and truly, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” “We travel the road, sharing our load, side by side.” We share our joys and concerns every Sunday and Tuesday and Thursday when we gather, because we are the kind of community that wants to know how the other members of the body are doing. It seems to me that we truly care about one another – in our pain and in our joy, in our suffering and in our celebration. In this regard, we get it right. I know there are conflicts and tensions in this place, unresolved hurts, old wounds, unreconciled disagreements and misunderstandings, strong opinions passionately held, some gossip and intrigue and bullying and intimidation. I know there are people who have gone away angry and disappointed, hurt and rejected. I suppose in some ways we may be guilty of hypocrisy when we fail to measure up to the high calling of our discipleship to Jesus Christ. But a healthy body is also one that is growing – and so the body of Christ is a living, growing organism, growing through the empowerment of the Spirit in faith and hope and love. I am reminded of the old woman who said so wisely, “I ain’t what I wanna be and I ain’t what I’m gonna be but, praise God almighty, I ain’t what I used to be.” The whole body prospers as we grow together in the Spirit, each part claiming its place and role, each fulfilling its function.

Paul ends this chapter with his list of the roles of the various church members, the parts of the body – apostles, prophets, teachers, workers of deeds of power, healers, helpers, leaders, those who speak in tongues. Now perhaps Paul lists these roles in a hierarchy because he is trying to make the specific point that speaking in tongues is not to be a privileged gift of the Spirit. No one gets to say, “If you don’t speak in tongues, you obviously haven’t got the Spirit.” Eugene Peterson expressed it so clearly in our contemporary word, “God’s various gifts…all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various ministries are carried out everywhere, but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various expressions of power are in action everywhere, but God…is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows who God is. Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits.”

Maybe we really are better together, “traveling the road and sharing the load, side by side.” Amen.