Title: The beauty of the community
Contents
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14. The body is not only one member, but many.
15. If the foot says, “I am not a hand, and I am not of the body,” it does not mean that it is not of the body.
16. And if the ear says, I am not an eye, and I am not of the body, this does not mean that it is not of the body.
17. If the whole body is an eye, where is it to hear, and if the whole body is to hear, where is it to smell?
18. But now God has placed each of the members in the body just as he wished.
19. If all are one member, where is the body?
20. Now there are many members, but one body
21. The eye will not say to the hand, I have no use for you, nor the head, to the foot, to say that I have no use for you.
22. Not only that, but the parts of the body that appear to be weaker are rather useful.
23. We clothe ourselves with more precious things in our bodies, which we value less, and our less beautiful members gain more beautiful things.
24. Our beautiful members need not be; but God has evened the body and added value to the lacking members.
25. There are no divisions in the body, but the members are made to take care of one another.
26. If one member suffers, all the members suffer together; if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice together.
Content
Title: The beauty of community
Text: 1 Corinthians 12:14-26
Today, I would like to begin the story of the community by telling the story of the struggle that my wife and I experienced in the process of becoming a couple, or, to borrow the words of some, the history of ‘sleeping with the enemy’. Since the couple is the most basic unit of the community, I believe that the couple's community can be the touchstone for judging the potential of all communities. For those who are married, I hope you will think about your marital relationship while listening to my story, and if you are not married, please listen while thinking about a relationship or a friendship.
I don't think there is any community in this world where it is difficult to become one like a couple. This is because two completely different genders, male and female, are trying to create a new one. Among them, it is not easy for a woman who majored in mathematics and a man who majored in theology to meet and become a couple. At the beginning of our marriage, my husband and I realized that they were too different to become one, to the point where we seriously considered whether it was a ‘wrong meeting’, as in the song title of singer Kim Gun-mo.
But over time, I gradually realized two things. For one, I realized later that she was right, or at least made sense, in some of the things I thought my wife was probably wrong. Of course, I did not admit this, for a long time after marriage. But the second realization, more important than this, is that many of my wife's judgments, which I have denied with so much religious conviction, have, ungodly, already been in my judgment. One day, I was thinking about something, and no matter how I looked at it, it wasn't my thoughts. So, on reflection, it was my wife's style of thinking. It wasn't just a thought. At times, in my words and actions, I could find traces of my wife's words and actions, which I thought were not me and denied.
One year when this realization became certain, I plucked up the courage to confess to my wife. “Actually, up until now, I had a premonition that your judgment would be wrong because of the conviction that my judgment was right. However, I later found out that many of your judgments that I had denied were correct, and more importantly, I discovered that your judgment, which I have denied so far, has already become mine. You, whom I denied, who were outside of me, came into me and became a part of me.” When I confessed this, my wife made the same confession, as if waiting. “In fact, I also agreed with your judgment in a significant number of cases, but apparently denied it. But later, I realized that you were already in my thoughts, words, and actions. You too have already been inside me.”