I used to believe that knitting was taking many pieces of yarn and linking them together – like weaving a tapestry. When you knit, what you actually do is take one piece of yarn and tie it all around itself into a sock, scarf, or sweater. Do it wrong, and you have holes all over the place. Or you find yourself with a big pile of knots. It’s almost magic, really, that something knitted doesn’t just come apart. Pull too hard, and you can be left with a big mess. On the other hand, once it is knit, it becomes flexible, bendable. Capable of being wrapped around someone to give warmth, comfort, and, in the case of our prayer shawl ministry, even healing.
When Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus, he talked about the church as being like parts of the human body which are “knit” together. In the version we read today, the phrase that is used is “joined and held by all the supporting ligaments”. It is no big secret that our bodies are made up of bones – strong, sturdy, as long as they are undamaged, and muscles that allow us to move those big hunks of calcium rock around. What holds the muscle TO the bone, however, is the connective tissue. It knits the parts of our bodies together and allows them to do the work it is meant to do.
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
I have to tell you that as an English teacher, I really enjoy what Paul has done with prepositions here. He is leaving no preposition unturned, as it were. God is ABOVE the body and THROUGH the body and IN the body. There is no relationship with God, with ourselves, with others, that God is not involved in.
Above all. We are up close. We see the pieces of things. Yarn, bones, chaos. God is above all of this. Seeing the big picture. Seeing the final product even while it all looks like a mess to us. The blanket from the knots. And if that were all God was in our lives, it might not be enough. But God, Paul reminds us, is also IN all that we do. In the very structure of things. A part of us. OF me. OF you. OF each of us. So we have God within us, guiding each of us to the calling to which we are called, if we listen for God. Seeing the whole picture of our lives for the beautiful final product it is meant to be while leading us through each knot – each struggle, each decision, each moment.
Yet again, that is STILL not all that God is. God is also THROUGH all. Running through all of the disparate parts of the body and knitting it together. Binding it together. Not in the sense of being bound up, constricted, but in the sense of being held together, connected – each separate part to another. Allowing it to stretch, flex, bend and not be broken. All of the pieces. Each member of the body of Christ. Just as God is in our lives as hope, faith, baptism, so God is still one. Many different manifestations of ONE.
“Uni or unus,” the root of the word “unity,” means “one”, and when we experience unity, we are one. But here’s an interesting thing: “unique” comes from the same root. “One.” Unity is being combined into one as parts of a whole, while unique means one of a kind. This is something I find amazing about Paul’s idea in Ephesians – and indeed in several other places in his letters –that unity doesn’t mean the same thing as conformity. God has made us unique, yet calls us to unity.
Taking our one-of-a-kindness and combining it to each other’s one-of-a-kindness and making us into one. What is strong enough to do this? God. The God that is above us, watching the body take its shape. The God that is within us, guiding us from within with his wisdom and strength. God is strong enough. God who is moving through us, holding a crazy collection of different people together and forming them into the body of Christ.
This is something we at Gobin rock at. I truly believe that God is going to use this church mightily through our diversity. The fact that we can all worship together while being so different is a blessing and will be a blessing to even more people as time goes by.
God doesn’t need us to all be the same. God doesn’t WANT us each to be the same as each other. God wants us to be ONE out of our different-ness. God wants my crazy Maisy girl to wiggle and dance during church, AND God wants bell-playing, math-loving Brian Howard. Who may wiggle and dance, but he doesn’t do it in church, for heaven’s sake! God wants some of us to write gorgeous prayers like Marilyn and some of us to be Ernie and shout “Amen!” God wants Emily to belt it out and another to close her eyes and feel the blessings of it. God wants quiet contemplators to think about what the church should do AND loud evangelists to shout it from the rooftops.
There isn’t just room for all of us in the church – Paul says the church can’t exist without each and all of us. John Calvin put it this way: “No member of the body of Christ is endowed with such Perfection as to be able, without the assistance of others, to supply his own necessities.” God wants you and you and you and you so he can make us into ONE body. Knit together, bound together by one God. That one God and our love for him and worship of him and our faith in him and our desire to follow him – that trumps everything else.
That one faith is above and through and in everything else. We ARE one body. A crazy blanket of people, knit together by an invisible strength and guiding force. Bound by one spirit, one God and father of all. It’s so crazy that it couldn’t possibly work. But it does. And there is only one thing that can tear it apart. Us. We can.
It’s actually pretty simple. Grab a string and pull it apart. Take your own part of the blanket and go home. Have a stronger desire to turn us back into a big pile of yarn, and you can make it happen. Split us into different camps. Break us into cliques. Then, we are not knit or held or bound. Then we are alone.
Paul says that it takes spiritual maturity to be one body. We have to value the body more than our own part in it. To tear it apart, to be spiritually IM-mature, we have to value our own calling more than the calling of others. We simply have to value being right more than one.
Paul reminds us that, in a life of following Christ, what matters most is the unity, the oneness holding us together. Our workshop this afternoon focuses on just this idea. Our Core Values. What is it that holds us together when there are so many differences that could pull us apart? What are the beliefs that we hold in common? Those are the beliefs that hold us together.
One of my favorite writers and theologians, Frederick Buechner once said, "Wherever people love each other and are true to each other and take risks for each other, God is with them and for them, and they are doing God's will." This could describe not only a church, but our own families.
We have Core Values in our families, don’t we? Families are made up of a crazy collection of people, each of whom is different from the other. Yet our core beliefs as a family hold us together. Our love, our hope, our faith in one another binds us. Well, welcome to your church family. Welcome to the body of Christ. There isn’t simply room for your weirdness; we NEED it!
Don’t worry. We can focus on the ties that hold us together while still celebrating who YOU are. Are you called to sing? Sing! Some of us will add our harmony, and some of us will sway to the music. Are you called to heal? Heal! Some of us will run and bring you more bandages. Are you called to knit? Knit! We will gather together as the body of Christ and pray God’s blessings on the shawls that you make. We will do this with “all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Because that is the one thing we are ALL, every single one of us, called to do. To love one another, be patient with one another, humble ourselves and be gentle with one another, and maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. We are not in bondage; we are held, embraced, knit together by the bond of peace. God’s peace. A peace that passes understanding. A love and a hope that holds us together even when we feel like we are falling apart. May we all hold to those beliefs rather than ever letting our differences pull us apart.
Amen.
