Body and Soul by Rev. Dr. Jay Marshall Groat – January 26, 2025, at Mount Vernon, Ohio based on 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, 27-31  

The experts and the biblical historians tell us that the city of Corinth at the time that Paul wrote his letter to the church in Corinth, that Corinth was, quote, “a wealthy trading center. It was also a wicked city known for its vice throughout the Roman world.” Vegas – Corinth. Who knew? Paul established a church there, and in this particular story it goes on to say essentially that it was a new undertaking, this new thing called Christianity. There were arguments and controversies going on in the church. People were arguing about and discussing the proper way to act now that we are this thing called a faith community. How do we act? How do we respond to the world around us? And so Paul writes a letter, and he lives up to what is probably his best known metaphor, the image for what Christ is and what the church is – that you and I and those people in that airplane this morning at 6 a.m. going God knows where, that we are like the body. Some of us are hands and some of us are elbows and some of us are eyes, and the point being that we are all connected.

Thomas Merton said, “Anything that appears to divide us is illusion.” Anything that appears to divide us is illusion. These are the sorts of things that made Thomas Merton Thomas Merton. What he was saying when he wrote that, I think it was in the 1950s, anything that appears to divide us is illusion – gender, race, faith, sexual orientation. Anything that appears to divide us is illusion. We are all one in Christ. This is radical, radical stuff, and it’s what Paul was shooting for. So, I paid particular attention this past week – the way I try to be creative when I’m preaching, I intentionally don’t start to work on a sermon until that week. I work best that way. So, Monday I started thinking about this and wondering about this notion of the body and that we’re all connected. I’m going to pay particular attention to the belief that we are all one, that we are all connected, and we’re all here for each other. So, I’m going to pay particular attention to the news, and I’m here to tell you things are great. (Laughter.) We are all just so there for each other, right? It’s so important that from time to time we go back to the basics and listen to Paul and listen to Merton and listen to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who said, “We’re all in the same boat now.” That’s haunting, he’s talking about slave ships. We’re all in the same boat now. Is it possible to say that never before in the history of our nation do we need to hear this? Is it possible? I think it is.

There’re these things the neuroscientists – you probably have heard about this or read about it, neuroscientists have this theory, they call them mirror neurons. Neuroscientists have this theory that we have these things in us, in our brains, mirror neurons, and when we’re in the physical presence, not necessarily there but either watching through television or our computers, whatever you’re experiencing in your life, whether it’s good or bad or happy or tragic, that we are hard-wired to be able to mirror those feelings and those experiences, and we connect. The neuroscientists go on to theorize that some people have a double dose of mirror neurons. Some of you are very aware and sensitive of what’s going on. So, let’s spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week watching the news. When we are aware of the news it is a good thing to listen to Paul and listen to Thomas Merton and listen to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and experience the world knowing that we are connected. We are one, and anything that appears to divide us is illusion.

Because of your generosity as a congregation and support of me I got to go to Florida again a couple weeks ago. As I say every January, it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make. (Laughter.) Because of your support in our church budget, I got to go again. This was probably my 25^th or so time to go to St. Petersburg, Florida and gather with about 60 other UCC pastors from around the country. I’ve been going for about 25 years and when I started out, I was one of the youngsters and now I’m one of the oldsters. So, I got to go and I had a really meaningful time, it’s always very meaningful, and as the years have passed it’s become even more meaningful.

A couple of Thursdays ago it was time for me to come home, and I flew out on Southwest Airlines. Has anybody ever flown Southwest Airlines? I guess I’m giving them free advertising. Southwest is a little bit different, it’s not unusual for a flight attendant or a pilot to make a joke every now and then. I was flying Southwest once from Oakland, California to Midway Airport in Chicago. The weather was bad. It was raining and it was storming and there was thunder, there was lightning. We were landing the plane at Midway, and it was absolute silence on the plane, everybody was just sitting there. I played this little game as a coping mechanism, I looked out my window, I was traveling alone, and I thought, “I can’t see anything.” I wondered when I was going to be able to see some ground, and you couldn’t see anything until you were on the ground. The plane was turbulent, the whole thing took like half an hour, we finally landed, there was silence, and the flight attendant got on the microphone and said this – “We made it!” (Laughter.) And the plane erupted in joy. No extra charge for that story.

So, I flew Southwest, and I had a connecting flight in Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington, D.C. Thankfully, it was a short stop because that airport was just filled with people. We got on the plane to go from Washington to Columbus, to John Glenn International Airport. Something happened that had never happened to me before. On Southwest you can sit wherever you want as you get on the plane, and I had a really low number which is good at Southwest, so I was one of the first ones on the plane. The flight attendant got on the microphone, and she said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we only have about 60 people on this flight.” The plane holds a lot more than that. And I never heard anybody say this before, she said, “We need you all to spread out for the weight distribution,” which really surprised me. I was like, really? I believe what they tell me.

So, people were getting spread out, and I started thinking about Paul. And I started thinking about the body, how we’re all one. I looked around and I realized I was sitting inside this metal tube. It’s what a plane is, this big, metal tube. There were other people with me, and I looked around and I thought, “This is my congregation. We’re all in this together. We’re one.” You talk about a definition of one. Whatever happens – now listen to this – whatever happens, it happens to all of us. That’s why it’s so interesting when female bishops speak to power and essentially say, “Whatever happens, it happens to all of us,” and to see how that message is accepted or not. So, I thought this is my congregation and I went up to the flight attendant and I said, “Hi, I’m Pastor Jay. Is it OK if I preach a sermon into the microphone to this congregation?” And she looked at me and said, “Absolutely.” So, I took the mic, and I preached a sermon about how we’re all one, and everybody applauded and threw money at me. (Laughter.) And then I woke up. Well, I didn’t preach that sermon, and I think that’s probably a good thing, but that’s when it came to me, when I was sitting on that plane. Body and soul. Carl Jung said, “You don’t have a soul, you are a soul.” Carl and others talked about the collective soul. Body and soul. That’s what Southwest Airlines gave me, and I want them to give it to all of us. Whatever happens, we’re all in this together. Amen?