3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time: Unity

Isaiah 8:23-9:1-3
I Corinthians 1:10-13, 17
Matthew 4:12-23

When I was studying theology, we read all the great theologians — Karl Rahner, one of the fathers of Vatican II, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, and St. Paul.  Have you ever thought of St. Paul as a theologian?  He was.  He thought about the stories he had heard about Jesus, about his own experience of Jesus, and wondered, what does it mean?  What does it mean about our relationship with God and what does it mean about how we are to be together as Christians.  In his letter to the Corinthians we hear some of his conclusions.

Those Corinthians were a difficult bunch.  Paul had been there, preached the good news, and established a church.  But later he received reports of divisions in the church.  Some people were declaring allegiance to Paul, some to the charismatic leader Apollos, some to another leader named Cephas, and a fourth faction claimed to be just Christ followers.  But that division was a big problem.  It split the community.  Paul was emphatic that there was only one community, just as there was one baptism, one gospel, and one source of wisdom that united people in Christ. 

Paul was saying that being a follower of Christ binds a person with every other follower of Christ.  But how does that work?  How does the Spirit unite us all without wiping out our diversity?  Paul never answers the “how” question and I sure haven’t figured it out.  It’s a mystery, one that we can’t understand and one that we certainly can’t control.  But it is one that we can observe.  We can see it. 

It reminds me of that joke that sitting in the pew doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sitting in the garage makes you a car.  We can look in the garage tell by looking, you’re not a car.  St. Paul is saying the same thing about Christians, we can tell a Christian community just by looking — it is a community empowered by Christ to be of one love, one heart, and one mind.  He’s not saying that it’s a community without diversity because only a short bit later in this letter to the Corinthians is his beautiful description of the many gifts and the one Body.  St. Paul is telling us that I can be quite different from other people and still be bonded to them, bonded in love.  The love which binds us together is our love for Christ, but more importantly, it’s Christ’s love for us, and every other person who Christ loves.

I was thinking about this as I was watching my little son stringing beads.  I think a string of beads is a good way to think about this unity St. Paul is describing. 

We are like the beads.  Like, this one, it’s a yellow cube, is Mia.  I can set it out here by itself.  It’s an individual.  It can’t do much.  It’s pretty, but it’s only one bead.  But then I take it and put it on the string.  The string is the Holy Spirit.  Suddenly that yellow bead that is Mia is part of a whole artwork.  The string is holding me together with a bunch of other beads.  They are all different from me – different shapes, different colors — but we have one thing in common.  We all have a hole for the thread.  Just as with all of us, we have different gifts and charisms, but all of us have a hole where God goes.   And when we are strung onto God, we are held together.  When my son’s done stringing his beads, he asks me to tie a knot in the end, just as Christ is the knot that holds us all on.

Apart from the string, we are just individuals.  But on the string, we form a community, a Christian community – strung by God the Father, held on the string that is God the Holy Spirit, and knotted securely by God the Son.

One thing I like about this image is that the beads don’t change.  They don’t have parts cut off, they are smashed into new shapes.  They are put on the string exactly as their are.  That’s how it is in Christian community for us, we come as our true selves, nothing more, nothing less, with the giftedness God has imbued in each of us.  But being strung on that string, we have gotten so close to God that God has become part of us and we part of God.

I think that’s the secret between the kind of community like the Corinthians that broke apart and the kind of community St. Paul was describing.  When coming together means that some of us have to be smashed in order to make room for others to expand, there’s problems.  But when we all come together, exactly as we are, expecting nothing other than the love of God to hold us together, then there is an easy bond that supports but doesn’t control.

In the end, the beads don’t know how they are held together, they just know that they are.  They observe that they are.  They don’t know how it works. They may not even see the string, they may not know about beads down the way, and they certainly don’t see the overall design.  They know that they’re held together.

So how is this helpful to us?  If we are those beads, sitting on that string, how does that change our life?

You know, I’ve often thought of my community as the people who I like.  That the bond of friendship holds us together.  These beads aren’t held together by themselves, it is only the string holding them together.  Christian community is being held together by nothing other than the love Christ has for each of us.  That changes a lot for me.  That I means I don’t have to like every person in my parish community to be bonded them.  Even more, they don’t all have to like me.  We’re still held together. 

Just like I’ve thought of my community as the ones who I like, I’ve thought of my community as the people who are similar to me. But these beads aren’t all the same.  In fact, the design is more beautiful because they’re different.  Christian community is a bunch of people who are different, being woven into a design that is bigger than any of us.

What does it mean for you?  Are you a bead right in the middle of the design.  Maybe you’re on the string but you’re looking down a seeing another bead, thinking, oh I wish I was red cube.  Look at how much attention he gets.  Or maybe you’re telling all the other beads around you, you really should be red cubes.  Maybe you’re on the string, but you keep trying to jump off, and taking the whole string along with you, God acting through the other beads calling you back every time.  Or maybe you’re out on the table and you need to jump on the string.

Christian unity is something we called to, but it isn’t something we create.  Our unity comes from God the Father, who threads us on, from God the Holy Spirit, the string we all ride on, and from God the Son, the knot at the end holding us all together.