Proper 13

Diptera muscidae.

In other words, the common housefly. The ubiquitous insect that can spread diseases and contaminate food.

Over 700 varieties of diptera exist – horseflies, dump flies, dung flies, the Mediterranean and Oriental fruit flies, sand flies, cluster flies, robber flies, stiletto flies, flesh flies and the biting midges – to name just a few.

They don’t live long, typically, about 20 days in the adult stage. Adults of many species bite or passively vector pathogens for diseases such as typhoid fever, dysentery, anthrax and African sleeping sickness.

But that’s not why scientists study them. Flies do something else besides mate, contaminate food and irritate us.

They walk on walls and ceilings. Scientists would like to know why and how they do that. What keeps them on the ceiling defying gravity, when they should be spinning off and dropping into our soup? These scholars work in the field of zygology – the science of joining things together, named from the Greek word for “yoke” – and any insights into this field can have very important practical applications.

Think about it. Rivets, nails, screws, welds and threads play a large part in the zygology of our world, keeping roofs over our heads and clothes on our backs. And where would we be without adhesives? Furniture would rattle and shake, tiles would drop from walls, books and shoes would fall apart and we couldn’t cap our teeth. Imagine life without wallpaper, stamps, Scotch tape or Post-it notes!

The science of adhesives is obscure, to be sure, but oddly interesting … and it raises the question of what binds and joins together the Christian community. You gotta wonder: What is the “zygology” of the church? In a world that seems to be coming apart at the seams, what keeps us from becoming unstuck to Christ and one another and falling apart?

These questions are anything but new ones. In fact, they are at the heart of a sticky situation that the apostle Paul addressed back at the beginning of the first millennium. Concerned about the unity of churches in Asia Minor, the apostle implores the Ephesians to make “every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (4:3). Paul knows full well that there exists a diversity of spiritual gifts among the Christians of this region and that this diversity can lead to either a splintering of the community – or a binding together of the body of Christ.

Here is where modern zygology comes in. Any investigation of stickiness really has to begin at the microscopic level. It requires us to think small, microscopically small, before we can draw any big conclusions. Research shows that for something to act as an adhesive and bind things together, it must have at least two molecular qualities: mobility and the ability to form strong links.

For starters, an adhesive absolutely must have mobility – its molecules must be able to flow into the nooks and crannies of a broken object such as a plate, bringing molecules close enough to attract one another. Just think of what happens when a little honey is placed between two fingers. You can feel an attraction – it’s a sticky mess. It has mobility, as we all know when we spread some on a porous piece of toast. But would honey be a good glue for a broken plate?

Of course not! 

Mobility alone is not enough. To act as an adhesive, a material not only must flow onto both surfaces, but its molecules also must form strong links to each other so they are not separated as the surfaces are pulled apart. While honey has sugar molecules that are attracted to each other as well as to other molecules, it’s not sticky enough to use as an adhesive. For that, we need something like the flour-and-water paste once familiar to schoolchildren.

How does that stuff work, anyway? When wet, the paste is mobile. But as it dries, the long starch molecules in the flour become intertwined with each other and thus very difficult to separate. Protein molecules can also do the job, as can synthetic materials such as polyvinyl alcohol, which can be dissolved in water to make “white glue,” a current household favorite.

But what about our broken plate? We still haven’t found an adhesive strong enough to bind this break. An even better way to stick things together is to use small, very mobile molecules that, through a chemical reaction, link to form a matrix of giant molecules, or polymers. This is the way epoxy glues and Krazy Glue work.

This stuff is super-sticky. If you doubt this, just ask the patron of an Irish pub who sat on a toilet seat that vandals had coated with Krazy Glue. He had a long time to contemplate the wonder of flies walking up and down the walls before he was transported to a hospital with the seat still attached to his drooping derriére.

But enough high-browed technical talk! What’s the significance of all this zygology for ecclesiology? That is to say, what’s the link between the science of binding and the science of the church? What do mobility and strong-linkability have to do with the unity of the ChristBody?

Everything. In the person of Jesus Christ, the church has the one “adhesive” that binds the church together. He is highly mobile, the apostle tells us, active in a variety of spiritual nooks and crannies as he gives his followers an entire spectrum of spiritual gifts. “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers,” asserts Paul, “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God” (vv. 11-13).

If Jesus were not mobile, not willing to flow into areas of light and darkness, health and brokenness, he would be unable to bind together the many diverse pieces of his sanctified and sinning church.

Jesus Christ is in the church, always moving, exploring, infusing, infiltrating and inspiring his people in new ways. There is not a single soul surface that he cannot reach, nor a single crisis in the community that he cannot cover and correct. If the church needs a prophet, he provides one; if an area lacks an evangelist, he calls one; if people hunger for a pastor, he delivers one; if students are missing a teacher, he empowers one. The spiritual gifts of Jesus Christ are not one size fits all, but instead they flow in various forms into the places they are needed most. Our challenge is to receive them and to let them stick.

Of course, the mobility of inspiration is not enough. Jesus Christ also forms incredibly strong links within the community of faith. The ChristBody can experience a kind of chemical reaction in the course of its ministry and mission, one that forms an epoxy-style matrix of giant spiritual molecules. This binding reaction is called “speaking the truth in love” (v. 15).

Both truth and love are essential ingredients in this reaction because Christ is committed to both justice and mercy. Truth without love can be harsh and judgmental, while love without truth is often soft and undisciplined. But together these two form an unbreakable bond. When both honesty and compassion are practiced within the church, links develop between surprisingly diverse groups of people, and the ChristBody is strengthened.

Speaking the truth in love, predicts Paul, allows us to “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love” (vv. 15-16).

The church needs to recover a sense of what and who it is that holds it together. It is not the color of our skin, our preferences in music, our socio-economic status, our political affiliation, our gender, our marital status, our clothes, our language, our clergy or even our doctrinal idiosyncrasies that matters.

Until we remember that we are bonded together in the person of Jesus Christ, adhering to one another in a culture of love and truth, we’ll be more like floor-bound, embarrassed believers walking around with our flies open rather than wall-walking flies defying the world’s conventions of community.

It’s all a matter of spiritual zygology. We Christians have what it takes to stick together.