Passage for reflection: 1 Corinthians 12: 12 - 27
“When one part of the body suffers, we all suffer, when one part of the body rejoices, we all rejoice.”
Most of you will know by now I got costochrondritis from nowhere the other week, and amazing pain around my sternum. I was in A and E two days running and was sent home with pills and it was getting better. About six weeks to be pain free they said, but I could get on, indeed last Sunday I took three services and processed round the cathedral quite happily.
Alas, on Tuesday it was discovered said pills should not have been prescribed and I was taken back to hospital and they found two stomach ulcers and that I’d been bleeding internally from them. I was immediately taken off said pills! Nearly five days later, I’m still in hospital, the ulcers are healing and the bleeding has stopped but because they can’t yet find a pill that will help the pain and not have amazing side effects, I’m stuck. They wanted to send me home on tramadol. If you want me vacant, confused and wobbly, I’ll come home on tramadol!
I am very much in tune tonight with Paul’s verse in his first letter to the Corinthian Church. Remember he wrote to that community because it was fractious. He wanted to stress the mutuality of all the people in that place and so he used the body to explain his point.
It isn't about every part of the body doing the same thing but every part of the body contributing to the same purpose. In a symphony, everyone plays different instruments, but they are all playing the same piece.
How one part feels affects all of the other parts. A stabbing pain just now which caused me to press the bell left the whole of me feeling rubbish, woozy and hot. The nurse has just looked at me and said “ is it the pain?” Er, yes. You’ve taken me off the pill which was helping because it had too ridiculous side effects and now you’ve given me another which isn’t doing anything. So one part suffers and all of me suffers!
Living in community isn’t easy. It was Sartre, stuck in a lift who concluded hell is other people! I’ve not been on a hospital ward for any length before. You are suddenly in community with five other men you’ve never met and are unlikely to ever meet again, although the nice man opposite me was lovely and he has a pub in Wetherby we might visit. Sadly the others on my bit of the ward all had major problems, and they liked to get out of bed in the night often in the nude and pull their feeding tubes out. Last night they didn’t stop, and it was desperate. I apparently said out loud at 4am with no sleep “oh for God’s sake!” We were all suffering. This morning I was moved to a quieter bit of the ward to sleep! Sometimes the action of a few can affect the whole.
We’ve seen community at its best though in recent days. The collective national mourning for the Queen has brought the nation together. The funeral on Monday was deeply moving as was the sense we were sharing in a piece of history together. We saw collective rejoicing at the jubilee. There are times when this country comes together brilliantly but there are also times we are seriously divided. The announcements from the new Truss government about tax cuts will help some but not others as the cost of living rises. It is good the churches are reminding the Prime Minister she must remember the most vulnerable. I am meeting people who are suffering locally. It is good our churches and other agencies are trying to respond to a situation of want that shouldn’t be happening. Society is weakened when one bit of it can’t function rather like when one part of our body hurts.
It’s been fascinating watching doctors and nurses and others here in Harrogate hospital work together in really difficult conditions. Paul is saying to today’s Church work together, support each other, remember those who are suffering and have a party when there is something to celebrate. Community at its best supports us when we need it. It’s easier to walk by on the other side but that isn’t Church nor is it Christianity. I’m very aware while I’m out of action, others will be looking after things. I hope there are people taking my services tomorrow! I found these words of Nadia Bolz-Weber helpful as I read them earlier:
“This ended up being one of my more difficult weeks in recent memory and I found myself having no choice but to rely on the prayers and faith and wisdom and compassion of those brothers and sisters in Christ whom God has put in my life – because frankly I was tapped out. Which is hard because I’d so rather have all the gifts myself and not have to rely on others. But when it feels like a failure on my part that I don’t have the faith or compassion or prayer life or wisdom that I need, I just have to remember that the only real failure is when I fail to recognize that I do actually have all the faith and compassion and prayer and wisdom I need – it’s just that someone else in my life is holding it for me.”
A paragraph worth reading again. We need each other. Without others, my wife, people who’ve sent me messages, the Chair of the District who turned up here this morning, the amazing staff here - I would be in a worse state than I am. I’ve needed others because I haven’t been able to do everything myself - which is no bad lesson for all of us to learn. Nor for our world where we just don’t get working together and relying on each other, and we let others remain in pain because it’s too hard or time consuming to help because we have so much to do it’s easier to just pretend all is well or tell them the pain isn’t really that bad or we numb it rather than fix it. Commitment to community where all flourish will cost us - but it’s our call and we need to be better at it.
“When one part of the body suffers, we all suffer, when one part of the body rejoices, we all rejoice.”
God beyond borders we bless you for strange places and different dreams, for the demands and diversity of a wider world, for the distance that lets us look back and re-evaluate, for new ground where the broken stems can take root, grow and blossom.
We bless you for the friendship of strangers, the richness of other cultures and the painful gift of freedom.
Blessed are you, God beyond borders.
But if we have overlooked the exiles in our midst, heightened their exclusion by our indifference, given our permission for a climate of fear and tolerated a culture of violence, have mercy on us, God who takes side with justice, confront our prejudice, stretch our narrowness, sift out our laws and our lives with the penetrating insight of your spirit until generosity is our only measure.
Kathy Galloway
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