The Contribution Game

January 21, 2007

“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

            I love to play games.  The Scrabble board is always somewhere close at hand in case I can convince John to join me in a game.  A deck of cards sits close to the Scrabble Board for a quick game of solitaire and dice aren’t too far away for a game of Yahtzee!  Growing up, we played lots of games – Monopoly, Hearts, Clue –  whatever was the craze at the moment.  When our children were young we continued this tradition and even today, when we get together as a family, you will often find us playing some kind of game.

            Truth be told though, there was a period of time when playing games wasn’t a lot of fun.  Oh, it usually started out as fun.  We’d pull out Monopoly… count out the money, set up the real estate, choose our game marker, and start playing.  But before too long Joel, our oldest, would convince Erin, our youngest that she should buy the pretty purple properties since purple was her favorite color and he would buy the royal blue properties because he liked blue.  Then he would convince her to trade her railroads for his utilities!  He, of course, knew that the game would be his once he owned all four railroads and Boardwalk and Park Place while all she owned was Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues and the power and light companies!  Winning was always important to Joel.  Losing was always hard on Erin!

In hopes of finding some games that wouldn’t always end with Erin dissolving into tears while Joel stood triumphantly on his chair holding fists full of play money in the air, John and I came across a whole series of cooperative board games.  These were games where each player made a contribution toward the completion of the game.  The winning was always accomplished together.  While Joel still appreciated a good game of Monopoly now and then, we finally found a way to keep both the gloating and the tears to a minimum!

            So, we might ask,  what’s wrong with a little healthy competition?  We live in a competitive world… school, sports, drama, jobs, music, dance, relationships, business, even hobbies… you name it, everything is competitive!  So why fight it?  Why not just let the kids play Monopoly and learn that in our world, at least, Park Place and Board Walk are always more important than Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues?  Why not let our daughters toughen up and learn not to cry and encourage our sons to keep on excelling and winning?  Or our sons toughen up and daughters excel!  Why move away from competition and toward cooperation?

As people of faith, we know the answer… because we are the body of Christ and individually members of it.  This is what Paul affirms in his letter to the church in Corinth.  He says, “You are Christ’s body – that’s who you are! You must never forget this!” 

You see, Paul knew something about family dynamics… about winning and losing… about gloating and tears.  He worked with people!  From today’s New Testament reading we begin to realize that Paul had a troubled, troublesome church on his hands.  The Corinthian congregation was being torn apart by arguments and divisions and hostilities.  They were far more concerned about being better and best… with being winners while others were losers than being the body of Christ.  Will Willimon calls the church in Corinth “a candidate as poster child for Paul’s worst congregation!”

While our New Testament combines all of the letters that Paul wrote to the congregation in Corinth into two epistles, biblical scholars believe that Paul wrote at least three letters and maybe as many as six, trying to help them live up to their potential as followers of Christ.  There is even evidence that Paul wrote one letter when he was a little too angry and frustrated with their behavior and sent it off with a messenger and then had second thoughts about his harsh words so wrote another letter of apology which quickly followed! 

Paul wanted the church in Corinth to stop playing the competition game.  He wanted those who thought themselves to be better than everyone to recognize that each individual had important gifts to share. And, he wanted those who believed that they were second best and had little or nothing to contribute to recognize that they were important members of the body of Christ.  So Paul wrote to them and said, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” The body of Christ needs us all.

The situation hasn’t changed all that much.  The church today is still made up of people with differences and divisions and more.  The church today is still made up of those who want to win and those who think that they are somehow only second best.  But despite our limitations… despite our grumblings and mumblings about each other… despite the mistakes that we make… despite our differences and divisions and all… Paul still says “you are the body of Christ.”  We might expect him to say something else.  We might expect him to hammer away at our inadequacies and mistakes… at our fussing and feuding… at our pouting and petty divisions.  But instead, Paul says, “you are the body of Christ.”  He doesn’t say “you could be the body of Christ, if only….”  He doesn’t say, “maybe someday, when you get everything right, you will become the body of Christ.” He doesn’t say “you ought to be but you never will be.”  No, Paul says “you are the body of Christ.”   It is as if Paul says to us “whether you realize it or not, whether you feel it or not, whether you like each other or not, you are the body of Christ and there is nothing you can do about it but act like it or not!” (Barbara Brown Taylor)  How are we going to be the body of Christ?

Several weeks ago I shared with you an experiment that involved giving students an A at the beginning of the term and asking them to live into that exceptional grade.  In the same book, The Art of Possibility, the authors, Ben and Roz Zander, describe another step in this experiment.  Recognizing that so much of our lives are spent playing the competition game where we are constantly judging ourselves and others as successes or failures… where we are comparing what we do against the achievement of others… the Zanders offer a new game… the contribution game. 

Experimenting with the same students, the Zanders began the contribution game with the first assignment by asking the students to take a moment in class to write down how they “contributed” over the past week.  At first, the students thought that the contribution had to be related to music since it was a music performance class.  But that is not what was expected.  They were simply to write down anything they said or did that they were willing to call a contribution – anything from helping an old woman cross the street to setting their boyfriends straight.  There was no room in the assignment to talk about winning or losing… about success or failure.  The second assignment followed.  It was to notice throughout the next week how they were being a contribution.  They weren’t supposed to do anything about it.  They were just supposed to pay attention and then be ready to share when they were in class the following week.  Finally, after sharing what they had noticed, the third assignment was to look ahead into the week to come and think of themselves living as a contribution instead of living  in competition. 

Think for a moment… how have you contributed over the past week?  How will you contribute in the week to come?

In the contribution game we declare ourselves to be contributors.  We decide that we will live as people who make a difference.  Put into the language of faith, we claim our place in the body of Christ.  Unlike the competition game with winners and losers, with successes and failures, in the contribution game there is no opposite side.  And in the contribution game it is never just a single individual who is transformed.  The whole body is transformed.   The winning, if you will, is always accomplished together.

So “whether [we] realize it or not, whether [we] feel it or not, whether [we] like each other or not, [we] are the body of Christ and there is nothing [we] can do about it but act like it or not.”   The choice is ours.  We can play the competition game of winners and losers or the contribution game of the body of Christ.  How will we be contributors?  How will we be the body of Christ?