By Rev. Todd R. Lattig[i]
ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.” (Romans 12:15 NLT)
Ministry can certainly have its ups and its downs. There have been seasons when I have experienced tremendous joy, moments when I have wondered how I could possibly be blessed enough to do what I do, and others that have hurt more deeply than I expected.
I imagine you could say something similar about your own life.
Over the years, I have experienced what it feels like to be genuinely welcomed. I have walked into communities where people made room for me, trusted me, encouraged me, accepted me for who I am, celebrated with me, and allowed me to become part of their lives. I have also experienced rejection…harsh and hurtful rejection. I know what it feels like when welcome disappears, relationships fracture, or you discover that a place where you thought you belonged no longer feels like home.
But here is something I have learned from both experiences: neither welcome nor rejection stops with the person who receives it.
When I have been welcomed, my family has felt that welcome too. They have watched me come home energized and grateful. And when I have experienced rejection or pain, they have felt that too. They have listened, sat beside me, carried some of the weight, and even physically shared my journey as ministry has moved us from place to place. People who were never directly involved in what happened still experienced its effects because they were connected to someone who was.
Suffering rarely belongs to one person alone.
Perhaps that is why Paul’s words to the Corinthians strike me differently now: “If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad.”
Paul is describing more than sympathy. He is describing connection.
Corinth desperately needed to understand that. The church was fractured by wealth, status, spiritual gifts, personalities, and competing claims of importance. Even around the Lord’s Table, some ate well while others went hungry. Their common life in Christ was being contradicted by the way they treated one another.
So Paul is not describing what Christian community automatically looks like. He is describing what the Body of Christ is called to become.
Think about what happens when you injure part of your own body. Stub your toe badly enough and your entire body reacts. Your other leg shifts your weight. Your hands instinctively reach toward the injury. Your face contorts. Your brain suddenly has difficulty thinking about anything besides that throbbing toe.
Your body does not respond, “Well, that’s really the toe’s problem.”
The suffering of one part changes the behavior of the whole.
That is what makes Paul’s image so challenging. It is easy to know another person is hurting. Suffering with them asks more. It asks us to allow someone else’s pain to affect us.
And suffering with someone does not require agreeing with them about everything.
We sometimes behave as though compassion is a verdict. If I acknowledge your pain, perhaps that means I have decided you were right. If I sit beside you, perhaps someone will assume I have chosen your side. But we can disagree with someone and still suffer with them. Several people can even be wounded by the same situation without compassion having to be rationed to whichever person we decide deserves it most.
The Body does not have to settle every disagreement before it can recognize a wound.
That truth extends beyond individual relationships. Churches, workplaces, families, governments, and other institutions can become much better at managing suffering than entering it. Complaints can be investigated. Policies can be followed. Cases can eventually be marked resolved.
But wounded people cannot.
Procedures may be necessary. Accountability, facts, and justice matter. But none of them relieves us of the responsibility to recognize the human beings standing inside the process.
People are not problems to be resolved.
Paul then turns the image around: “If one part is honored, all the parts are glad.”
That may be just as challenging. We live in a culture that teaches us to compare. Someone else’s success can feel like evidence of our failure. Even churches compare attendance, finances, ministries, and growth as though another community’s flourishing somehow diminishes our own.
Paul imagines something different.
In the Body of Christ, your joy does not threaten me. Your flourishing does not diminish me. Your gifts do not make mine less valuable. Something good happened to part of the Body, and I belong to that Body too.
In Part 11, we considered Paul’s insistence that there are no disposable parts. Now Paul takes us further. If no member is disposable, then neither is that member’s suffering irrelevant nor their joy inconsequential.
We belong to one another.
Someone is grieving. Someone has been rejected. Someone is exhausted. Someone is celebrating. Someone is healing. Someone has discovered something beautiful about themselves. Someone is becoming more fully alive.
When one part suffers, we suffer with them.
When one part is honored, we celebrate with them.
God is creating a Body—many parts, different parts, indispensable parts—learning to share one another’s burdens and one another’s joy.
Because in the Body of Christ, none of us belongs alone.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY
To belong to the Body of Christ is to let another person’s suffering and joy matter to us.PRAYER
God of compassion, teach us to suffer with those who suffer and celebrate with those who rejoice. Give us hearts that listen without judgment, remain present in pain, and rejoice without comparison. Form us into one Body, bound together in your love. Amen.
Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).