With Whom Do I Belong?

What this week’s readings say to me:

Becoming the person I’m meant to be means continually re-examining who and what I need to let go of and who and what I need to take hold of. It’s a continuous journey of discerning what to do when and when to let go of doing so I don’t get in the way of the Holy Spirit’s movement. The psalm says that God calls me to these cycles of surrender and action.

The third reading reminds me that I’m made for relationship — with nature, with others, and with God. It reminds me that to be in relationship means to give and to receive with commitment. A relationship isn’t fleeting, and it takes effort and maintenance. It takes openness.

God demonstrated that I’m made for relationship by living a human life. The relationship between the created and the creator is perfect in Jesus, and the Spirit that joins me to Jesus when I’m open to him can patch the imperfections in my relationship with God.

Because Jesus has a human body and consciousness, the body is just as much a part of God as the spirit. So treating my body and the bodies of others as if I believe this is true is vital. Doing so nurtures relationships between people and God. Treating bodies as and spirits if they are meant for eternal relationship — relationship between body and spirit, between one body and spirit and another, and between those sacred persons made of body and spirit and God — makes them open to eternal relationship.

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore glorify God in your body,” the third reading says (1 Cor. 6:19-20). I don’t know about you, but thinking of myself as a possession bought by God makes my stomach churn. I’m not comfortable with the idea of a parent buying his or her children. But I guess if a child sold him or herself on the promise of receiving a reward that didn’t pan out, and the only way to get the child back was for the parent to buy him or her, I feel a little better about the analogy.

Nonetheless, I find the analogy of being part of God’s body more helpful. A head and an arm have different functions, but, of course, both are part of the whole that is the body. It makes sense to try to reattach an arm that has become separated from that body. To use another analogy that doesn’t come from Scripture (and, granted, doesn’t quite square with what I understand of Christian theology, but I’m going to use it anyway) the cards in a deck or the pieces in another type of game don’t own each other, they don’t control each other, but they belong to each other. If one piece of the set or one card from the deck is missing, the set or deck is incomplete and the game can’t be played as intended. Unlike a deck of cards or a chess set of which I might be a part, God doesn’t need me to be complete, yet God has a vision in mind, and that vision includes a place and a purpose for each of us.

The Gospel passage reinforces that God calls us to relationship, a place, and a purpose in the Divine plan. In this passage, Jesus doesn’t call his disciples in an obvious way. Rather, he walks by, and John announces who he is (John 1:36). Two disciples respond to the announcement by following Jesus and by asking where he’s staying (John 1:37-38). They aren’t seeking knowledge alone from Jesus. They want relationship with him, to know him, and to be known by him, to go where he goes, do what he does, and stay where he stays. They want to be a part of his group, his set, you might say.

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