Wednesday 21 May 2025
For in the one Spirit we were all baptised into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (v. 13)
Background
The new communities of followers of Jesus that Paul set up around the Mediterranean as a result of his missionary journeys were very diverse – in terms of ethnicity, language and their previous engagement with forms of religion.
So, in this passage, Paul is saying much more than that each person has gifts to contribute to the life of the worshipping community. Paul is saying that, through Jesus, God is creating a new, true humanity. He is saying that the Church, the worshipping community is the place where together we learn how to be God’s fully human beings. The Church, the body of the Messiah, as stated in this passage, is God’s true people – the new Israel of Jesus’ followers, and it includes Jews and Greeks, slaves and free. For Paul diversity is of divine origin and intention and he uses the analogy of the human body which has many parts that all work in harmony together, with no one part being more significant than others. Just as the suffering of one part of the body affects the whole, so the suffering of one member of our worshipping community affects the health of the whole.
To Ponder:
- With the arrival of many people around the world, especially in our large cities, churches of different languages and national fellowships have been set up to work in parallel with congregations where all worship. Are the consequences of this good, not so good or ambiguous?
- Do we actually know whether people in our congregation are suffering – from physical or mental problems, poverty, discrimination or whatever?
Prayer
Heavenly God, we give thanks for the presence of your Holy Spirit with your people down the generations. We believe that diversity is of divine origin but we struggle to work out how to deal with this in practice. Give us grace, we pray, to work with challenging issues, to acknowledge our own biases and to seek inspiration from the experiences of the Early Church. Amen.
Bible notes author: The Revd Jennifer Potter
Jennifer is a supernumerary minister living in the Croydon Circuit. She works as a part-time chaplain at the local MHA (Methodist Home for the Aged). She was previously a minister at Wesley’s Chapel in London.