Partners

             In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, (Philippians 1:4-5)

Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?  But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.  If they were all one part, where would the body be?  As it is, there are many parts, but one body. (I Corinthians 12:15-19)

            I’m keying on one word in this passage. Paul prayed with joy because of the Philippian’s partnership in the gospel. The dictionary defines a partner as someone who is engaged in the same activity. I think that’s a little two general. You could be gardening in one city and I in another, and that would not be a partnership. One of us might be growing something or growing something in a way with which the other had ethical difficulties. We might be competitors. I know of husbands and wives who are partners, some who are not. They live in the same house, and supposedly love one another, but there’s no collaboration. He does his thing. She does hers. I’m not saying they can’t be in love and stay together. They’re just not partners.

            So being a partner is more than just being engaged in the same activity. It involves having the same goals, purposes, and (to a lesser extent) practices. At the same time, if the thing in which people are partnering is complex enough, people can be partners while doing things that are very different. This is where the metaphor of the different parts of the body come in. A truck driver could be a partner in an enterprise even though he doesn’t run the company or make the product.

            But this is where I get tripped up, and I know I’m not alone. When others talk about this or that as a mission - or the mission of the Church, I will often agree that it’s important but feel incapable of participating. Sometimes, I feel like if I’m part of the Body, it’s a part that most of the rest of the Body would gladly do without, and there have been those who have made it clear that they would prefer to do without me. I’ve no doubt that I have made it equally clear that I would prefer to do without them. Neither they nor I may have meant to express that sentiment - quite so clearly. We might not even realize we’ve done so.

            I’m not saying this to point fingers. I’m partly trying to figure out how to get it through our thick skulls that we are partners, and partly trying to figure out if there is a language, a process, or a “dance” of partnership that we can learn because this is an area in which we are too often attacked.