The Gate Hinge Nobody Notices

A gate is a plank and a latch and a hinge, and in thirty years of farming I have never once heard anybody say anything about a hinge.

People talk about gates. They admire a good gate. Hollis has a gate on his top road that men have genuinely stopped their vehicles to look at, and I have been one of them, and it is a fine piece of work and I could describe the ironwork on it from memory.

I could not tell you what hinges are on it.

The hinge is the part that decides whether a gate is a gate or a plank leaning on a post. It carries the entire weight, in two small pieces of metal, at an angle nothing else in the design has to deal with, and it does it about four thousand times a year on a gate that gets used.

And when it goes, nobody says the hinge has gone. They say the gate has gone.

I greased eleven hinges on this farm in April. It took a morning. Nobody knows I did it, including Toby, who was at school, and there is no way anybody would ever find out except that I am writing it down.

I want to say the thing that is actually on my mind, and it is not really about hinges.

There are people in this parish who are hinges. There is a woman who has done the flowers in that church for twenty two years and there is a man who unlocks the hall, and if you asked the congregation to describe what makes that church what it is, neither of those two would come up, and if either of them stopped it would be noticed within two weeks and nobody would be able to say why.

Bucky has gone through more gates on this farm than any creature alive and has never once been slowed by a hinge, which is precisely the point, because a hinge doing its job is a hinge nobody has any reason to think about.

The claim about the feeble parts

Paul is describing a body and he makes a statement that runs against every instinct anybody has about organizations.

Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary. (1 Corinthians 12:22)

Which seem to be. He does not say the weaker parts. He says the ones that seem more feeble, which puts the feebleness in the observer rather than in the part.

And then the word he chooses is not valued or appreciated or included. It is necessary, which is a load bearing word, and he says much more necessary, which is a comparison and puts them above the ones everybody was looking at.

You are in the category Scripture calls much more necessary, and 1 Corinthians 12:22 puts that above the parts anybody admires. It is the Holy Spirit who makes that read as a fact about a structure rather than as a kindness.

He keeps going, and the next part is about arrangement rather than about feelings.

And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour. (1 Corinthians 12:23)

We think to be. Twice now he has located the mistake in the thinking rather than in the part, which is careful writing and is doing something.

You have not been correctly assessed by anybody's instinct, including your own. The written word twice puts the error in the estimating rather than in the member, and His Spirit is what makes that land in somebody who has been agreeing with the wrong estimate for years.

Where the arranging was done

The passage ends by saying who did the placing, and it is not a committee.

But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. (1 Corinthians 12:18)

As it hath pleased him. The placing is described as something God enjoyed doing rather than as an allocation He got through, and the word covers every one of them without exception.

Which means a hinge is not a hinge because nothing better was available. It is a hinge because somebody with a design in mind put it there and was pleased about it.

You are where you are because it pleased somebody to put you there. 1 Corinthians 12:18 uses a word about pleasure rather than a word about necessity, and the Spirit of God is what makes that read as being wanted in the position rather than assigned to it.

And the aim named at the end of the whole passage is that there should be no schism in the body, and that the members should have the same care one for another.

You have been arranged into something that only works because of the parts nobody looks at. 1 Corinthians 12:25 makes the whole design depend on that mutual care, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves that from a metaphor into eleven greased hinges on a Tuesday.