One of the things we do on Annual Meeting Sunday is install new Vestry Members.  Even though only one third of the Vestry rotates on and off each year, I always remind Vestries that we become a new, changed body every year.  Each of those nine members bring different gifts, talents, and insights.  Each of those members shifts the tone and tenor of our work, and helps us dance a little bit differently.  I was reminded of this reality last week.  When talking about a retiring Vestry member, another member said, “What’s so cool about him is that he does not speak often, but when he does everyone gets really quiet because the insight he offers is so profound.”  That feedback was entirely true – and that feedback reminded of me of another Vestry member much earlier in my tenure at Hickory Neck who would do the same thing – come in toward the end of a conversation with an insight none of us had seen but was entirely needed.

That is the funny thing about bodies – we need all our parts to be the best versions of our bodies.  I think that is why Paul leans into the metaphor of a body to describe the followers of Christ in first Corinthians.  As one scholar writes, “The human body has 206 bones, 693 muscles, and about 6 pounds of skin, along with ligaments, cartilage, veins, arteries, blood, fat, and more.  Every time we hear a sound; every time we take a step; every time we take a breath, hundreds of different parts work together so that what we experience is a single movement, our minds and bodies working as one unit.  Even the great engineers struggle to achieve anything like [the body] in mechanical form.  The human body represents one of the most complex systems in existence.”[i]

For Paul, that super complex system represents the body of Christ – the way each part of the body (or in this case, each member of the church) is not just a belonging member, but is a member whose participation is vital – the whole body is thrown out of balance when we are not all using our gifts.  Scholar Raewynne Whiteley explains, “Every single person in the church matters – the homebound elderly, babies, those with disabilities, and well as the generous givers and hard workers.  This is a reality we can name, which has less to do with equality than with wholeness.  Only with all our members can the body of the church be whole.”[ii]

This last year, we saw what wholeness looks like at Hickory Neck.  Tech team members and pop-up prayer leaders who stream worship online connect us to homebound members, overstretched families who cannot make their way to church but want to pray with us, and those unchurched in our wider community who want to see if they have a place in this body before braving the doors that open to super friendly (sometimes overwhelmingly so) Hickory Neckers.  Retirees who live far from their families and have very little interaction with children in the daily lives connect with children whose own grandparents may live far away and whose parents may be frazzled just by trying to get the family in the car on Sunday mornings.  College students who love to sing but maybe have an estranged relationship or no relationship with the Church connect with a community who cares about the poor and hear sermons from clergy that help them think about faith and politics a little differently. 

And that is just the everyday Sunday at Hickory Neck.  If we are to believe Paul’s metaphor that we are a complex body of parts that need one another, we need only to look at the long list of moving parts in our community in the last year:  from 5 baptisms, 2 first communions, 11 confirmations/receptions/ reaffirmations, and 1 wedding; from 19 members of Discovery Class, 25 participants in Godly Play classes at the Kensington School, and countless volunteers during the Winter Shelter; from a brand new Choir Camp with 20 children, guest concerts with well over 100 attendees each time, to a guest choir of 38 high school students from New Jersey; from over 13,000 points of pastoral care from clergy, an increase in pledges by over $17,000, and an increase in average Sunday attendance by 8%.  This is a complex community, who is not only content with daily operations but is ever trying new things like a Cursillo Eucharist, St. Patrick’s Day Liturgy, a children’s Chorister program, Holy Vino fundraiser, a new organ, a Finance Committee, and even a priest as a dancing star in Williamsburg.  When Bishop Haynes visited us in 2024, and said we are a vibrant, thriving community, this is what she meant.

Now, there is an inherent tension about being a body with varying parts, as Paul reminds us.  As scholar Karen Stokes explains, “There will always be differences with a congregation – differing opinions, experiences, priorities, needs – and it is dangerous to try to play down those differences in the interest of some superficial harmony.  When this natural diversity within a congregation is not allowed to be expressed openly, subtle judgments are communicated:  when the ear gets the message that it would really be better if [the ear] were an eye, when the foot realizes the community values hands more highly.”[iii]  If we do not let the uniqueness of each part be celebrated, when we face changes, anxieties can increase.  And Stokes goes on to say, “Anxiety lessens once’s ability to be imaginative, creative, and self-reflective, and instead causes reactivity, defensiveness, even paranoia”[iv] 

We have been talking a lot the last couple of weeks about our finances and our need for increased revenue to support our vibrant, varied ministries.  Those conversations have brought up a lot of anxiety.  After nine years at Hickory Neck, I have come to recognize that every January is similar – talk of finances gets all of us anxious.  As I have been marinating on Paul’s body metaphor and thinking about the miracle of such diverse parts working so harmoniously together, and as I reflected on 2024 and how we started with anxiety around budgets twelve months ago and managed to power through a tremendous year of vibrant ministry, I find I am looking toward 2025 with renewed confidence.  Perhaps this is the time of year when we are reminded that we are not all ears or feet or eyes.  We will not see ministry the same or hold the same opinions.  Even though we might approach ministry differently, we are all here to see the body do what the body of Christ does best – love God, love self, and love neighbor. 

Just a few weeks ago, I was talking to a first-time visitor who was looking for a new church home.  She heard about Hickory Neck from another new family to Hickory Neck and was able in that one Sunday to see a place for her family here.  That experience tells us all something powerful:  we may be a body that is complex, and beautiful, and sometimes anxious because of our differences; but we are also a body who honors how every person who comes through that door is a part we did not even realize we were missing and who we are thrilled to welcome into their unique contribution to our whole.  Having seen church communities who are not open to new body parts being added, I can tell you, having that experience made me realize we are a beautiful, complex, fabulous body, made possible by the gifts of the Spirit, who works in and through each of us.[v]  Our work this year is to let the Spirit use us to be awesome ears, eyes, feet, tendons, and muscles.  I cannot wait to see what the Spirit does with this fabulous body in 2025!  Amen.

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[i] Raewynne J. Whiteley, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 1 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 279.

[ii] Whiteley, 283.

[iii] Karen Stokes, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 1 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 280.

[iv] Stokes, 280.

[v] Whiteley, 283.