Homily 30 — First Corinthians 12, verses 12 to 20

“For as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.” [a]

He has already calmed them by several considerations: that what was given was a free favor; that they all received everything from “one and the same Spirit”; that it was given “for the common good”; and that even the lesser gifts were a manifestation of the Spirit. He has also stopped their mouths by telling them they must yield to the Spirit’s authority: “For all these,” he says, “are the work of one and the same Spirit, who gives to each one individually just as he wills.” So it is not right to pry with curiosity. Now he goes on to calm them in the same way by another common example, and turns to nature itself, as he usually did.

When he was speaking about the hair of men and women, for instance, after everything else he drew material from nature as well to correct them, saying, “Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory?” (First Corinthians 11, verses 14 and 15). And when he spoke about food sacrificed to idols, forbidding them to touch it, he drew an argument from the examples of those outside as well. He mentioned the Olympic games, where, he says, “those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize” (First Corinthians 9, verse 24), and he backed up these views from shepherds and soldiers and farmers. So here too he brings forward a common example, by which he presses on and fights hard to prove that no one had really been put in a worse position. That was a marvelous and surprising thing to be able to show, and well suited to refresh the weaker ones. I mean the example of the body. For nothing so comforts the person who is small in spirit and has lesser gifts, or so persuades him not to grieve, as being convinced that he has not been left with less than his share.

That is why Paul, making this point, puts it this way: “For as the body is one, and has many members.” Do you see how precisely he weighs it? He is showing that the same thing is both one and many. That is also why he adds, pressing the point harder, “and all the members of the one body, being many, are one body.” He did not say, “being many, they belong to one body,” but “the one body itself is many,” and those many members are this one thing. If, then, the one is many and the many are one, where is the difference? Where is the superiority? Where is the disadvantage? For all, he says, are one.

And not simply one. When they are looked at strictly in respect of what matters most, that is, their being a body, they are all found to be one. When they are considered in their particular natures, then the difference appears, and the difference is in all alike. For none of them by itself can make a body; each falls short equally of making a body, and there must be a coming together. When the many become one, then, and not until then, is there one body. That is why, quietly hinting at this very thing, he said, “And all the members of the one body, being many, are one body.” He did not say, “the superior and the inferior,” but “being many,” which is common to all.

And how is it possible for them to be one? When you set aside the difference between the members and consider the body. For in respect of being a member and making up a body, the foot is the same as the eye. There is no difference in this respect. Nor can you say that one member makes a body by itself and another does not. They are all equal in this, for the very reason that they are all one body.

Having said this, and shown it clearly from what everyone agrees on, he added, “so also is Christ.” When he should have said, “so also is the church” — for that was what followed naturally — he does not say it, but puts the name of Christ in its place, lifting the discussion on high and moving the hearer to greater and greater reverence. What he means is this: “So also is the body of Christ, which is the church.” For as the body and the head are one man, so he said that the church and Christ are one. That is why he put Christ in place of the church, giving that name to his body. He says: “As, then, our body is one thing, though it is made up of many parts, so also in the church we are all one thing. For though the church is made up of many members, yet these many form one body.”

So, having revived by this common example the one who thought himself slighted, and lifted him up, he leaves the field of common experience again and moves to another, a spiritual one, which brings greater comfort and points to a great equality of honor. What is this? [c]

Verse 13: “For in one Spirit,” he says, “we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free.”

What he means is this: what made us one body and gave us new birth is one Spirit. It is not that one person was baptized in one Spirit and another in another. And not only is the one who baptized us one, but also that into which he baptized us, that is, the purpose for which he baptized us, is one. We were not baptized so that many separate bodies might be formed, but so that we might all keep with one another the complete nature of one body. That is, we were baptized into the same thing so that we might all be one body. So both he who formed it is one, and that into which he formed it is one. And he did not say, “so that we might all come to belong to the same body,” but “so that we might all be one body,” for he always tries to use the more expressive words.

He did well to say “we all,” including himself too. He says: “For not even I, the apostle, have any more than you in this respect. You are the body just as I am, and I just as you are. We all have the same Head, and we have passed through the same birth pains; that is why we are also the same body. And why do I speak of the Jews? Even the Gentiles, who were so far from us, he has brought into the wholeness of one body.”

So, having said “we all,” he did not stop there but added, “whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free.” Now if, when we were once so far apart, we were united and became one, much more, now that we have become one, have we no right to grieve and be downcast. Yes, the difference in fact has no place here. For if he has granted the same blessings to Greeks and Jews, to slaves and free, how could he divide them after granting them this, now that by the supply of his gifts he has given them a more complete unity?

“And we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”

Verse 14: “For the body is not one member, but many.”

That is, we have come to the same initiation, we enjoy the same table. And why did he not say, “We are fed by the same body and drink the same blood”? Because by saying “Spirit” he pointed to both, the flesh as well as the blood, for through both we are “made to drink of the Spirit.” But to me he seems to be speaking here of that coming of the Spirit which takes place in us after baptism and before the mysteries. He said, “We were made to drink,” because this figure of speech suited his subject extremely well. It is as if he had said of plants and a garden that all the trees are watered by the same spring, or by the same water. So here too: “We all drank the same Spirit, we enjoyed the same grace,” he says.

If, then, one Spirit both formed us and gathered us all into one body — for that is the meaning of “we were baptized into one body” — and granted us one table, and gave us all the same watering — for that is the meaning of “we were made to drink of one Spirit” — and united people so widely separated; and if many things become a body only when they are made one: why, I ask you, do you keep tossing their difference back and forth? But if you say, “Because there are many members, and different ones,” know that this very thing is the wonder and the special excellence of the body: that things many and different make one. If they were not many, it would not be so wonderful and so hard to believe that they should be one body. Rather, they would not be a body at all.

He states this last, however. For the present he goes to the members themselves, and speaks this way:

Verse 15: “If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body,’ is it therefore not of the body?”

Verse 16: “And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body,’ is it therefore not of the body?”

For if one member being made lower and another higher meant that they did not belong to the body, the whole would be done away with. So do not say, “I am not the body, because I am inferior.” The foot too holds the lower post, and yet it belongs to the body. Whether a member belongs to the body or not does not come from one lying in this place and another in that — that makes only a difference of place — but from being joined together or cut apart. Being a body or not being one comes from having been made one or not.

But notice, please, how considerate he is: he puts their words into the mouths of our members. Just as he said above, “These things I have figuratively transferred to myself and Apollos” (First Corinthians 4, verse 6), so here too, to make his argument free of offense and acceptable, he brings in the members speaking. That way, when they hear nature answering them, and are convicted by experience itself and by the common voice of all, they will have nothing more to object. He says: “Say this very thing, if you like; grumble as much as you please: you cannot be outside the body. For as the law of nature guards all things and keeps them whole, much more does the power of grace.”

And see how he kept to the rule of saying nothing superfluous. He does not work his argument out on all the members, but on two only, and those the extremes, naming both the most honorable of all, the eye, and the lowliest of all, the feet. And he does not make the foot argue with the eye, but with the hand, which is set a little above it; and the ear with the eyes. Because we usually envy not those who are far above us but those who are a little higher, he conducts his comparison accordingly.

Verse 17: “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the smelling be?”

Having come upon the difference of the members, and having mentioned feet and hands and eyes and ears, he had led them to think about their own inferiority and superiority. So see how he comforts them again, hinting that it was to their advantage this way, and that their being many and different is above all what makes them a body. If they were all some one thing, they would not be a body. That is why he says, “If they were all one member, where would the body be?” He does not mention this until later, but here he also points out something more: that besides the impossibility of any single member being a body, it would even do away with the existence of the rest.

“For if the whole were hearing,” he says, “where would the smelling be?”

Then, because they were still disturbed after all this, he does now what he did above. There he first pointed to what was to their advantage, to comfort them, and afterward stopped their mouths, saying forcefully, “But all these are the work of one and the same Spirit, who gives to each one individually just as he wills.” So here too, having given reasons that showed it was beneficial for everything to be this way, he refers the whole matter again to God’s counsel, saying:

Verse 18: “But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body, just as it pleased him.”

As he said of the Spirit, “as he wills,” so here, “as it pleased him.” So do not inquire further into the cause, why it is this way and not that. Though we had ten thousand reasons to give, we could not show that it is well done so convincingly as when we say that it came to be as the best of craftsmen pleased. For as it is to our advantage, so he wills it. Now if in this body of ours we do not pry with curiosity into the members, much less should we do so in the church.

And see his thoughtfulness: he does not name the difference that comes from their nature, or the one that comes from their work, but the one that comes from their position. For “now,” he says, “God has set the members, each one of them, in the body, just as it pleased him.” He did well to say “each one,” showing that the benefit reaches to all. For you cannot say, “This one he placed himself, but not that one.” No, each one is situated just as he willed. So it benefits the foot too to be stationed where it is, and not the head only. And if the foot turned the order upside down and left its own place for another, though it might seem to have bettered its condition, it would be the undoing and ruin of the whole. For it both falls from its own post and does not reach the other.

Verse 19: “And if they were all one member, where would the body be?” [f]

Verse 20: “But now there are many members, but one body.”

Having silenced them well enough by God’s own arrangement, he gives reasons again. He does not always do the one or always the other, but alternates and varies his speech. For the man who only silences his hearer confounds him, and the man who, on the other hand, trains him to demand reasons for everything harms him in the matter of faith. That is why Paul constantly practices both, so that they may believe and yet not be confounded; after silencing them, he again gives a reason as well.

And notice how earnest he is in the contest, and how complete his victory. The very things that made them think themselves unequal in honor, because there was great variety among them, are the things from which he shows that for this very reason they are equal in honor. How? I will tell you.

“If all were one member,” he says, “where would the body be?”

What he means is this: if there were not great variety among you, you could not be a body; not being a body, you could not be one; and not being one, you could not be equal in honor. It follows, again, that if you were all equal in honor, you would not be a body; not being a body, you would not be one; and not being one, how could you be equal in honor? As it is, because you have not all been given some one gift, you are a body; and being a body, you are all one, and you differ in nothing from one another in this, that you are a body. So this very difference is what most of all makes you equal in honor. And accordingly he adds, “But now there are many members, yet one body.”

Let us, then, consider these things too, and throw out all envy. Let us neither resent those who have greater gifts nor despise those who have lesser ones. For this is how God has willed it; let us not set ourselves against him. But if you are still troubled, remember that your work is often something your brother cannot do. So even if you are lower, you have the advantage in this; and though he is greater, he is worse off in this respect. And so equality comes about.

For in the body even the little members are seen to contribute no small part, and the great ones themselves are often harmed by them — I mean, by their removal. What in the body is more insignificant than the hair? Yet if you were to take away even this, insignificant as it is, from the eyebrows and the eyelids, you would destroy all the grace of the face, and the eye would no longer look so beautiful. The loss is a trifle, and yet even so all the good looks are destroyed — and not the good looks only, but much of the eyes’ usefulness too.

The reason is that each of our members has a work of its own and a work it shares with the rest; and likewise there is a beauty in us that belongs to each part, and another that is common to all. These kinds of beauty seem to be divided, but they are completely bound together, and when one is destroyed, the other perishes along with it. Let me explain. Suppose there are bright eyes, a smiling cheek, a red lip, a straight nose, an open brow. Still, if you spoil even the slightest of these, you have spoiled the common beauty of all. Everything is full of gloom; everything that was so beautiful before will look ugly. If you crush only the tip of the nose, you have brought great disfigurement on the whole, and yet it is the maiming of a single member. And in the hand likewise, if you take the nail off one finger, you will see the same result. If you want to see the same thing happen with their work, take away one finger, and you will see the rest less active and no longer doing their part as well.

Since, then, the loss of one member is a disfigurement to all, and its safety is beauty to all, let us not be puffed up or trample on our neighbors. For through that small member even the great one is fair and beautiful, and the eye is adorned by the eyelids, slight as they are. So the one who wars with his brother wars with himself. The harm he does reaches not only the other; he too will suffer no small loss.

So that this may not happen, let us care for our neighbors as for ourselves. Let us carry this image of the body over now to the church as well, and take care of all as of our own members. For in the church there are many different members, some more honorable and some more lacking. There are, for example, companies of virgins, gatherings of widows, and fellowships of those who shine in holy marriage; in short, the levels of virtue are many. And the same is true of almsgiving. Some empty themselves of all their goods; others care only for enough to live on and seek nothing beyond necessities; others give from their surplus. Yet all these adorn one another, and if the greater should look down on the less, he would harm himself most of all. Suppose a virgin treats a married woman with scorn: she has cut away no small part of her reward. And again, the one who emptied himself of everything, if he reproaches the one who has not done so, has emptied himself of much of the fruit of his labors. [g]

And why do I speak of virgins and widows and men without possessions? What is lowlier than those who beg? And yet even these fill a most important office in the church. They cling to the doors of the sanctuary and provide one of its greatest ornaments, and without them the fullness of the church could not be made complete. It seems the apostles saw this too, and made it a rule from the beginning, as with everything else, that there should be widows; and they took such great care over the matter that they even appointed seven deacons over them. For as bishops and presbyters and deacons and virgins and those who live in self-control enter into my count when I reckon up the members of the church, so do widows.

Yes, and it is no small office they fill. You come here when you please, but these women sing psalms and stay in attendance day and night. They do not do it for the alms alone; if that were their aim, they could walk about the marketplace and beg in the alleys. No, there is also no small devotion in them. Look, at any rate, at the furnace of poverty they are in; yet you will never hear a blasphemous word from them, or an impatient one, as you do from many rich men’s wives. Some of them often go to bed hungry, and others are constantly frozen with the cold; yet they spend their time in thanksgiving and in giving glory. If you give them only a penny, they give thanks and call down ten thousand blessings on the giver; and if you give nothing, they do not complain, but bless you even so, and count themselves happy to have their daily food.

Someone replies: “Yes, because whether they like it or not, they have to bear it.” What do you mean? Tell me, why have you said such a bitter thing? Are there not shameful trades that bring profit to the old, both men and women? Could these women not have supported themselves by such means in great abundance, if they had chosen to throw off all concern for upright living? Do you not see how many people of that age live — and live in luxury — by becoming pimps and procurers and by other services of that kind? Not these women. They would rather die of hunger than dishonor their own life and betray their salvation. And they sit there the whole day long, preparing a medicine of salvation for you.

For no physician who reaches out his hand to use the knife works so effectively to cut the rot out of our wounds as a poor man does who stretches out his right hand and receives alms, to take away the scars the wounds have left. And what is truly wonderful, they perform this excellent surgery without pain or anguish. We who are set over the people, and give you so much wholesome advice, do not preach more truly than the man who sits before the doors of the church does by his silence and his face. For we too sound these things in your ears every day, saying: “Do not be proud, my friend. Human nature soon declines and is ready to fall away. Our youth hurries on to old age, our beauty to ugliness, our strength to weakness, our honor to contempt. Our health falls away into sickness, our glory into lowliness, our riches into poverty. Our affairs are like a violent current that never stands still, but keeps rushing down the slope.”

They give the same advice, and more than this, by their appearance and by their very experience, which is an even plainer kind of advice. How many of those who now sit outside were once in the bloom of youth and did great things? How many of these people, so repulsive to look at, surpassed many others in strength of body and in beauty of face? Do not disbelieve it, and do not laugh. Life is surely full of ten thousand such examples. If many have often risen from low and humble station to become kings, what wonder is it if some, from being great and glorious, have been made humble and low? The first is far more extraordinary; the second happens all the time. So one should not refuse to believe that some of them once flourished in the arts, in arms, and in abundant wealth. Rather, we should pity them with great compassion and fear for ourselves, that we too may someday suffer the same things. For we too are human, and subject to this swift change.

But perhaps one of the thoughtless, one of those who are used to scoffing, will object to what has been said and mock us outright, saying: “How long will you keep bringing poor people and beggars into your sermons, prophesying misfortunes to us, threatening us with poverty to come, and wanting to make beggars of us?” It is not out of a wish to make beggars of you, my friend, that I say these things, but in my eagerness to open to you the riches of heaven. When someone speaks of the sick to a healthy man and describes their anguish, he does not do it to make him ill but to keep him healthy, cutting off his slackness by the fear of their sufferings. Poverty seems to you a fearful thing, to be dreaded even at the mere mention of its name. Yes, and that is why we are poor: because we are afraid of poverty, even though we have ten thousand talents. For the poor man is not the one who has nothing, but the one who shudders at poverty. [h]

So too with people’s misfortunes: it is not those who suffer great evils whom we mourn and count wretched, but those who do not know how to bear them, even when they are small. The one who knows how to bear them, as everyone knows, deserves praise and crowns. To prove that this is so: whom do we applaud at the games? Those who are beaten hard and do not fret, but hold their heads high, or those who run away after the first blows? Do we not crown the first as manly and noble, while we laugh at the second as unmanly cowards? Let us do the same, then, in the affairs of life. The one who bears everything easily, let us crown, as we do the noble champions; but let us weep over the one who shrinks and trembles at his dangers, and is dead with fear before he takes the blow. It is the same at the games: if a man ran away before he had even raised his hands, at the mere sight of his opponent stretching out his right hand, he would be laughed to scorn as feeble and effeminate and unpracticed in such contests, though he took no wound. That is just what happens to those who fear poverty and cannot even endure the expectation of it.

Plainly, then, it is not we who make you wretched, but you yourselves. For how could the devil not make sport of you from now on, when he sees you afraid and trembling at the threat even before the blow? Or rather, once you count this a threat, he will not even need to strike you anymore. He will leave you your wealth, and by the mere expectation of its being taken away he will make you softer than any wax. It is our nature, so to speak, to find the things we dread less fearful after we have suffered them than before, while they are still untried. So, to keep you from gaining even this virtue, he holds you at the very height of fear, melting you like wax in the fire by the fear of poverty before you have any experience of it.

Yes, such a man is softer than any wax, and lives a more wretched life than Cain himself. Over the things he has in excess, he is afraid; over those he does not have, he grieves. And again, over what he has he trembles, keeping his wealth shut up indoors like a slave who is determined to run away, and beset by I know not what varied and unaccountable passions. For unaccountable desire, fear of many kinds, anxiety and trembling on every side toss such people about. They are like a ship driven by contrary winds from every quarter and battered by many heavy seas. And how much better would it be for such a man to depart this life than to endure an endless storm? For Cain too it would have been easier to die than to be trembling forever.

So that we may not suffer these things ourselves, let us laugh the devil’s scheme to scorn. Let us burst his cords, snap off the point of his terrible spear, and fortify every approach. For if you laugh at money, he has nowhere to strike, nowhere to take hold. Then you have pulled up the root of evils; and when the root is gone, no evil fruit will grow either.

Well, we are always saying these things, and we never stop saying them. But whether our words do any good, the day will declare — that day which is revealed by fire and tests every person’s work (First Corinthians 3, verse 13), which shows which lamps are bright and which are not. Then the one who has oil and the one who has none will be made plain. But may no one be found then without that comfort. Rather, may all bring in with them an abundance of mercy, and with their lamps bright, go in together with the Bridegroom. [j]

For nothing is more fearful or more full of anguish than the words that those who departed without abundant almsgiving will hear then from the Bridegroom: “I do not know you” (Matthew 25, verse 12). But may we never hear these words, but rather that sweetest and most longed-for voice: “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25, verse 34). For so we will live the blessed life and enjoy all the good things that surpass human understanding. May we all attain them, through the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom be glory, power and honor to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, now and always, and forever and ever. Amen.