A reminder: this church in Corinth were struggling with some hierarchy spirit and much division. Basing their evidence on the spiritual gift they had some members were seeing themselves as more important than others. Having gone through a list of the spiritual gifts explaining they all come from the one Spirit and for the common good and that no one has achieved anything to receive a gift, Paul explains that for the church to be what it is meant to be then diversity is essential.
“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized byone Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.” (1 Corinthians 12 v 12-14)
Through the Spirit we become part of something greater than ourselves. The Church isn’t just a one-gift church but rather made up of different gifts no matter what ethnicity or social class it is made up of.
One of my claim to fames is I achieved an ‘O’ level in music! What I strangely remember is Beethoven’s Sonata called Pathetique. I think because though I always thought the word meant pathetic when it means passion I also could play the opening bars!
But it is the opening movement that is remembered more than the Sonata itself. In fact that has been one of the developments of our times. Most can recall movements but they don’t know where they come from. They sit independent to the whole composition. The rest being discarded, ignored and totally forgotten.
Local Churches and even streams of churches/networks/denominations have become similar to movements and other than a Churches Together annual service have forgotten the symphony or sonata that they belong to.
There are 3 or 4 movements in a symphony or sonata. Each are different in pace, different keys, sometimes there is a correlation to the opening but not always. The movements build independently to the final movement where the composer is envisaging everything coming together journeying to the great crescendo as the audience stand to their feet in the auditorium with rapturous applause.
The church should remember it is a movement. The composer created you as a movement. Some are loud and some are quiet, fast, slow, but all are needed. The second movement cannot say let us get rid of the third movement because it is not in the same key. They have no voice. It is the composer’s voice. He is the Head. His name, Jesus.
Missions Paul 