“Indeed, the body is not one part but many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I’m not a hand, I don’t belong to the body,’ it is not for that reason any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I’m not an eye, I don’t belong to the body,’ it is not for that reason any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God has arranged each one of the parts in the body just as he wanted.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Earlier this week we spent a bit of time with Paul’s characterization of the church as the body of Christ in Romans 12. I noted then that in 1 Corinthians 12, he explores this theme in a great deal more depth and detail. I also noted then that we were going to come back to the idea today through the lens of the latest season of Wednesday on Netflix. Well, here we are. I reviewed the first season here. We’re not going to do a full review of the second season today, but there was one scene and a minor theme that jumped out at me as filled to the brim with Gospel implications. Let’s talk about cousin Thing and disembodied parts.

Wednesday, at its heart is a mystery series, and a pretty good one. The first season did a better job on the whole of keeping you guessing who was a friend and who was a foe longer, but the overall story and how all the various parts and pieces came together in the end was better in the second season. And, given the surging popularity of the series, there will be more story to tell in subsequent seasons as well as a spinoff series about Uncle Fester.

While the whole Addams family was given a much larger role this season than last, Wednesday and her friends are the clear stars of the show. The only other character that really features as prominently as the kids is Cousin Thing.

Thing, as you might remember from the 1990s movies (the first was vastly superior to the second), is just a hand. He’s a right hand to be more specific. As for how you can tell that a right hand is a he, you’ll just have to take my word for it. You can just tell. That assumption is proven correct in the dramatic revelation of Thing’s origin at that end of the season.

It honestly doesn’t much matter to where we’re going, but just for fun, he’s the right hand of an old friend of Gomez who tried to kill him in an attempt to save his sister. Morticia chopped it off in a successful attempt to save his life. Once detached, he was brought to independent life as a disembodied hand by a surge of electricity. Now, many years later, he has no memory of the event.

Speaking of that lack of memory, other than being the loyal servant to Wednesday throughout her various misadventures, Thing’s secondary plot line in the second season is an attempt to feel seen as more than just a detached hand. To this end, in a funny, but touching scene in the second half of the season, Thing attends a support group for other isolated parts led by one of the Nevermore Academy professors who is himself just a head. Professor Orloff is delightfully played by Christopher Lloyd who played Uncle Fester in the 1990s films. You can watch the scene for yourself here.

What caught my attention here is that last line: “We are more than just the sum of our parts, but sometimes the parts are greater than the whole.” It’s rather rich irony for all of these detached body parts to be told they are enough all by themselves while attending a support group together. Their longing to be part of a larger whole makes sense. We all have that longing in one way or another. But if they were really enough to make it on their own, it doesn’t seem like they would be attending a support to gain the encouragement. They may all be enough on their own, but they still need community with others who share a bond of commonality with them and their situation. The truth is that they weren’t made to be on their own. They needed to be a part of something larger than themselves.

We have the same need. From almost the very beginning of our story God looked down and said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” We need community. That need is made obvious by the fact that we reflexively form communities everywhere we go. We are driven to find points of commonality with other people, and to build those points of commonality into a group of at least companions if not friends, who can support us and vice versa through the various ups and downs of life. We need to know that we are not alone. That we have purpose. That our lives have meaning. Without that, we don’t carry on courageously like the disembodied parts in Thing’s support group, we whither up and die.

If Paul had been standing in Professor Orloff’s place, he would have given encouragement that was similar, but also different at some key points. He might have said something to them not so different from what he said to the believers in Corinth. Riding on a theme that appears in Romans 12 and Ephesians 4, Paul wanted to encourage the believers there in Corinth that the church mattered. A lot. Not only that, but they mattered to the church. God had made them to be a part of a body. No, they weren’t all the same, but that was precisely the strength of the body. God built in the variety on purpose. What they had to do was avoid the twin errors of thinking they were either too unimportant to matter to the rest of the body or too important on their own to need the body.

“Indeed, the body is not one part but many.” There are obviously lots of different parts of the body. A few dozen organs, a couple hundred bones, miles of blood vessels, and so on and so forth. The body is not an undifferentiated whole. This is actually borne out in Thing’s support group. The room was filled with all sorts of different body parts. If you look carefully you’ll see an ear, a pair of eyes, at least two hands, an elbow, a foot or two, a leg, a knee, and a head leading the whole thing. No two parts were the same. So it is with the body.

But for all the differences, all the parts are still part of the body. “If the foot should say, ‘Because I’m not a hand, I don’t belong to the body,’ it is not for that reason any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I’m not an eye, I don’t belong to the body,’ it is not for that reason any less a part of the body.'” Now, yes, in a strictly medical sense, there are some parts of the body that are more necessary for the continuation of life than others. Let’s not press Paul’s illustration too far. Thinking in that direction actually contradicts his points. His point is that while not every part’s role in the body is the same, all of them have a unique role to play without which the body is not as complete as it was designed to be.

On the other side of this illustration, Paul swings the pendulum the other way to warn the church members against the thinking that one part or another is not necessary. More specifically, he warns against thinking that because another part is not like you, you don’t have any need for that part. Every part matters.

Sandwiched in between these two warnings is the real heart of Paul’s argument. There is a designer of the body whether we are talking about the human body or the body of Christ. And that designer did not do His work haphazardly. He was careful and intentional. He made the choices that He made specifically and with certain ends in mind. “But as it is, God has arranged each one of the parts in the body just as he wanted.”

Just like all the parts of your body have specifics and specialized roles to play in your overall operation that cannot be fulfilled by any other parts, so too is the body of Christ. If you are a follower of Jesus, you need the church and the church needs you. You need the help and support that other members will be able to provide for you. They have gifts and abilities that you don’t have access to without them. The reverse here is true as well. God designed you to be able to do a certain set of things that they can’t do on their own. If you aren’t there, filling the role God designed you to play, you are stealing from them what they need to be fully who God made them to be.

Orloff was wrong that the parts are sometimes greater than the whole. They aren’t. In the church, the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. Yes, you can have a particularly charismatic pastor or worship leader, and that kind of an individual can almost by force of personality grow a big church, but a big church is not the same as a healthy or faithful church. A big church does not advance God’s kingdom and accomplish His purposes simply by virtue of their bigness. A small church in a small town being led by a pastor who understands that every part matters, and has built a culture of equipping and empowering all of his members to do the work of ministry God has designed and called them to do can do a whole lot more positive kingdom advancement than a church that is just big.

If you are a follower of Jesus, you need to be connected to a local body of Christ. You don’t need a support group to tell you you’re okay on your own, you need the church. That’s not incidental to your effectiveness for God’s kingdom. It’s essential. Your ministry there matters, and you need their ministry to you. If you are a pastor, you need to constantly remember that you can’t do everything, and focus your primary attention after preaching the word faithfully on developing and equipping your members for the ministry God has designed them to do. That’s literally your job. Preach the word and equip the saints. You won’t find two more central tasks assigned to pastors in the New Testament.

When we get all of this right, God’s kingdom advances to His glory and our joy. There really isn’t much that matters more than this. Let’s get to it.