The Church is a people just as the citizen of the United States are a people. Jesus Christ is our leader. Loving God and our neighbors as ourselves is our law. We have common rituals in the sacraments and a common destiny in heaven. The Church is also like the human body with many parts that work together and in which all parts are important. Christ is the head.
Both Israel’s history and Jesus’ ministry show God calls us into community. The bishops at the Second Vatican Council observe that God “has willed to make women and men holy and to save them, not as individuals without any bond between them, but rather to make them into a people who might acknowledge and serve God in holiness” (Lumen Gentium, #9).
The first-century Christians in the Greek seaport city of Corinth struggle to become a stronger community. In fact, these Christians get two letters from the apostle Paul about how to deal with their conflicts. The Church still reads these letters to help communities thrive today. During January and February the second readings each Sunday come from the letters that the missionary Paul wrote to the Christian community in Corinth.
When Paul became a Christian, he set out to spread the good news to people in cities all around the Mediterranean Sea. He continued the work of gathering people into Jesus’ new community.
Paul brings the good news to people in Corinth about AD 50. Many problems surface in this community, problems we still face in our communities today. Paul twice wrote long letters to these Christians that we still read to help us.
The community in Corinth has cliques. Some people claim they are better Christians than others because Paul baptized them. Some claim because Apollos and Cephas baptized them they are the most authentic Christians. Paul writes there is one Jesus, one Spirit, one message.
Cliques are not the Corinthians’ only problem. Both women and men lead the community in prayer. The Spirit has poured out gifts for praying and prophesying in both men and women. This equality of gifts shakes up the usual social order. Paul himself thinks like others in his time that men are the image and reflection of God and that women share in that image through being the image and reflection of men.
Paul suggests the women veil their heads when they pray and prophesy. This would express their inferior social status at the same time they celebrate their spiritual equality.
Paul wants the women to follow the social custom and veil their heads when they lead the community in praying and reflecting. He doesn’t object to them leading the community in prayer, only to their lack of head covering. Men can pray and prophesy bareheaded. Scholars are not sure why veils were important to Paul. Some suggest that veils might set Christian women apart from worshipers in other religious rituals.
The conflict over veils shows the Christian community struggling with the social order of the time. As Christians, men and women are equals but in Roman society women have lower status. Over the centuries the Christian experience of unity and mutuality in prayer and worship has helped transform societies into communities of equals. For example, many Christians over the centuries freed their slaves and finally slavery has been condemned.
In this problem we see the Spirit at work creating new forms of community. Over the centuries the Christian experience of oneness and mutuality in community has helped condemn slavery and transform societies into communities of equals. This is work that continues today.
The Corinthians have a third problem still common today. The rich don’t always share with the poor. The Corinthians share a meal after they have their Eucharist. In Eucharist, they share one loaf and one cup, one Body and Blood of Christ.
But afterward when they eat their meal, the rich, who brings all kinds of food, keep it for themselves and don’t share with the poorer members of the community. Paul wants these Christians to discover the potluck — all sharing all the food.
To teach the Corinthians, Paul compares community to how the parts of the human body work together.
Just as the body is one and has many members, but all the members, though they are many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jew or Greek, slaves or free. All of us have been given to drink of one Spirit.
You, then, are the body of Christ. Every one of you is a member of it.
Now there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
1 Corinthians 12.7, 12-14, 27