Annual Meeting Sunday: preached by Greg in Osoyoos, Shannon in Oliver!
Last Sunday’s reading (1
Corinthians 12: 1-11) and today’s reading follow one right after the other and,
together, form one discussion about Christian Unity by the Apostle Paul. In last week’s segment, Paul listed the
spiritual gifts that different community members bring to their local Church
and encouraged people to honour this full range of gifts, rather than bragging
about their own. This, he hoped, would help a fractious group of
Christ-followers in the city of Corinth to develop some “holy manners” and
celebrate the diversity that was present in their faith community.
This morning’s reading builds
on that plea for respect, using the metaphor of body parts working together in
one body, that is, the Body of Christ.
Some of it is quite funny, with a hand, a foot, an eye, and an ear
debating their importance, and Paul also talked about body parts that are more,
um, private. There’s an absurdist humour
here that would be right at home in a political cartoon or Monty Python sketch:
our squabbling as Christians is as productive as an eye arguing with an ear. In this metaphor of the body of Christ and its
varied members, I sense that Paul is not just talking about the local faith
community in Corinth, but about the way the entire body of Christ either works
together, or it doesn’t work at all.
He writes (1 Corinthians 12: 26-27, CEV),
If one part of our body hurts, we hurt all over. If one part of our body is honoured, the whole body will be happy. Together you are the body of Christ. Each one of you is part of his body.
The way that the joys and
sorrows of others is shared by the whole is so true on the local congregational
level. The hurts borne by one are borne
by all: when Church folks are grieving or in the midst of hard transitions, or
when there is tumultuous conflict, the whole congregation is impacted. Likewise, the joys and the God Moments
experienced and spoken by one, are celebrated by all. If we consider this dynamic on a larger
scale, it speaks directly to the situation before us in 2025.
One of the three questions for
our Interim Ministry time is, “who is our neighbour”? which also implies the
question, “what are the needs of our neighbours”? This invites us to imagine
how these congregations might address some of the needs of the south Okanagan. How do we, as a manifestation of the body of
Christ, share Christ’s love with others, beyond what we do in Sunday Worship? {Osoyoos: Fortunately, we already have
some answers to that, in the work of the Thrift Shop and in the energetic
connection with Desert Sun that is now forming.} {Oliver: We can build on the
long history of the Soup Kitchen and the community engagement with historic
drives like the Christmas Hampers organized by the Knights of Columbus, and the
more current support of the warming shelter in town.} These are great
things for us to celebrate and build on. How else might we embody the love of Christ?
Are there, for example, ways in which we as Church could function as an “island
of sanity” in this time of national and global high anxiety, or come alongside
folks already doing this work? As we
seek to be faithful to our Christian calling, we also know a blunt reality: congregations
that do not serve a key role in the community around them are already in
countdown mode to their closure.
This outward movement, this
“drawing the circle wide”, connects us as a congregation to the townsfolk
around us, and there is another aspect I would like to mention: the ecumenical
aspect. When we were training for ministry at the Vancouver School of Theology,
one third of the students were United Church and one third were Anglican. The other third were everything under the
sun: students who were Presbyterian, United Methodist, Lutheran, Roman Catholic
and Unitarian, classmates who had grown up Jewish and Plymouth Brethren and
agnostic, 20 year olds and 60 year olds, Canadians and Americans and folks from
elsewhere; and in the midst of that glorious diversity we had instilled in all
of us, an understanding that every ministry we would undertake had to be
understood as part of the entire body of Christ. As we work toward our Interim Ministry goal
to build partnerships with Desert Sun in Osoyoos and St. Edward’s Anglican in
Oliver, and be open to other partnerships as they emerge – we need to ask
ourselves continuously: does this, or does this not, build up the body of
Christ?
As we prepare for our Annual
Meeting, then, a few minutes from now, a time which will focus on the past,
present and future of this congregation, I pray for the wellbeing of all the
Churches here in Osoyoos and Oliver, that they in their own way will hear the
calling of a reconciling, loving and inclusive God, and reach out to broken
hearts of all shapes with unconditional love.
Together, our United Church pastoral charge and Churches very different
from us, are all called to loving, life-affirming service, and when we get it
right, the Body of Christ is built up and our Lord smiles. As we focus on our work as a local congregation,
I pray for the wellbeing of The United Church of Canada as a whole as we
approach our 100th anniversary; and as one who believes that God
speaks in many ways to the people of the world, I pray also for the health of
all faith communities besides our Christian Churches. As so much effort is being put these days by
the world’s power-mongers into labelling people and pitting nation against
nation, the more ways we can work together for the common good, the better. Two thousand years ago, the Apostle Paul
called us to respect one another’s gifts, even those we do not understand, and
the tumult in the world today demands that we lift up the personhood of all
ethnicities, all genders and gender expressions, all personal circumstances. When we do so, we are Christ’s body.
And we hear Paul’s words once
more:
If
one part of our body hurts, we hurt all over. If one part of our body is
honoured, the whole body will be happy. Together you are the body of Christ.
Each one of you is part of his body.
I pray for health, wholeness,
opportunity and joy for every bit of that body, and give thanks for the
opportunities for service that God continues to present to us. Thanks be to
God, Amen.
For further reading:
Vancouver School of Theology.
https://vst.edu/about/history/#:~:text=Out%20of%20this%20exploration%2C%20Vancouver,officially%20became%20associated%20with%20VST.
Wheatley, Margaret “Meg”.
“Islands of Sanity” outlined: https://margaretwheatley.com/books/restoring-sanity/
© 2025 Rev Greg Wooley and Rev
Shannon Mang, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge
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