Psalm 139:1-18; Ephesians 4:1-6, 25-32
May 23, 2021
- Living into the Body of Christ
The body is a good thing… until it isn’t. That is a fair bit of an oversimplification, but George Burns captured some of the spirit of this when he shared in his later years that “When I was young I was called a rugged individualist. When I was in my fifties, I was considered eccentric. Here I am doing and saying the same things I did then and I’m labeled senile.”
That quote made me laugh. I am old enough to remember George Burns. In 30 years, I might be too old to remember him. The body is a wonderful and amazing miracle, but the body also comes with challenges, shortcomings, problems, and issues. We do get older, and whether or not we try to prevent it, we do get weaker and less able. Through life, we suffer injuries or illnesses that undermine our bodies. The way we care for ourselves or do not take the care we should, determines how our bodies do in our later years. Then, there is plain old genetics and your DNA. Basically, none of us looks the way we did in our teens or early 20’s. Life does a number on us as we age.
By no means, though, am I trying to say that somehow we are worth less or less beautiful or less wonderful as aging people inhabiting bodies. In many ways, I think we could say we are more so as we get older, but life in the body gets to be harder and harder as we grow older and we suffer the things of life. I know this is no great revelation to you. A good number of you live with this every day in a way I can only begin to imagine, but I want to talk today about how it is that we live in our bodies as sisters and brothers in Christ, specifically, in Jesus’ own body, the oldest body around, in fact.
I imagine that at least a few of you have been a member of something at some point in your life. You may even still be a member of something, clubs, associations, leagues, you name it. Of course, a great number of you are members of this church’s congregation. You are part of this church body, but have you ever stopped to wonder about the use of that word “member” when talking about being associated with something?
When the Bible speaks of being members of something, it is literally speaking of us as physical body parts. That’s what the word used in the New Testament literally means: members, as we might say our arms or legs are members of our body. We still say in English today that to lose a body part is to “dis-member.” My sense is that we don’t use that word “member” very often these days to refer to our appendages, but that is exactly the usage. Over the years, we have devolved that idea to people who are affiliated somehow to a group, so you can see how the significance of that word has been eroded over the generations. In the days past when more emphasis was placed on real allegiance to service organizations and civic clubs, the word “member” may have carried more of its original weight – you were truly expected to be a connected part of that group, and it was harder to step away. Nowadays, we are a fairly disconnected people, certainly less “memberlike” when we think about how we are associated with others. People jump in and out of member situations, cutting ties and making new ones depending on which way the wind is blowing. Don’t like your pastor? Leave the church family; maybe even start a new church. Upset with the way your club is going? Just stop going; it is easier than trying to work through the things that you don’t like. We even call our family “members,” but even in families, it seems to be easier to sever our relationships with one another and the ones we should love the most. We have completely divorced the significance of being a member from its original meaning of being as body parts connected in one body, and this is to our detriment because this is part of the very value of the gospel.
Paul is adamant and committed to the fact that we are literally members of one another in Christ Jesus. Last week, we considered the original Pentecost story and the community that was created in the Holy Spirit and how God’s Spirit brought people together into a shared space of worship and fellowship. That’s great and we absolutely need that, but if we stop there, we miss the grace that actually and literally links us in Christ.
Being part of Christ’s actual body, the Body of Christ, is no small thing, no trivial idea, no simple church lingo. It is the deep and abiding reality of our life together. This is our goal as a people in faith according to Paul speaking on behalf of Jesus. We are not a bunch of individuals making our way through life, a bunch of free, loosely associated spirits working our way through salvation, but one people, one community, one literal body. You are connected to me and I to you. If you want to cut your ties to someone else as sisters and brothers in Christ, you should to think about it with the same severity of taking off part of your actual body. God has provided us connections here to work on a shared life, the opportunity to become more and more the body of believers in Jesus that we are meant to be. Certainly, there are times to make divisions, but the unity we are working toward should be our chief goal, and we should guard our oneness as we guard our own physical health. We are trying to build up our very real, spiritual body.
Being a body in Christ Jesus is especially useful for one simple reason: Jesus is no longer here in the flesh doing his ministry in our midst, so his ability to physically minister in our midst is directly tied to one thing – us. Just appreciate how incredibly profound that idea is. It is no wonder that Jesus predicted we would do more and greater things than he did during his life. Imagine how many lifetimes have followed his, how many different lifespans have worked together in his Spirit, how many ministries have been carried out in his grace in the nearly 2000 years that have followed his death and resurrection. The Body of Christ is powerful in the presence of Christ. When you add up all that we have done in those centuries to advance the Kingdom of God in the grace and power of our Lord and the blessing of the Spirit, it is amazing the good that we have done.
Yes, we have struggled a bit, too. Life in the body is a life of struggle. That is a lot of what Paul has to say, too. You might remember him talking about the fruits of the spirit and the works of the flesh. Being a people of the body makes all of this very real, very relevant, very relatable, and very relational.
Something else to consider as we appreciate what it means to be parts of the same body is the health of the body, the care of other parts, our own care, and how we can build each other up. Imagine how broad and vast this body expands. We cannot for a moment forget our connected brothers and sisters in faraway lands. We must always do everything that we can to work for their success and health and future. If something happens to them, it affects us more than we realize. The same Jesus that makes us one feels our losses as well as our joys. We should not want any of our parts to disappear from neglect. Our investment in missions and ministries both here and around the world are crucial to our service in Jesus Christ.
There is probably something that all of us would change about our own physical bodies. I doubt any of us are perfectly pleased and satisfied about everything. When I showed up for church work in Southside VA in 2003, my hair was black and I had a lot more of it. Vanity aside, we have all learned to deal with the limitations and imperfections of being people in bodies. The same goes for being the Body of Christ. There are going to be parts of the body that we might not like so much, parts that might even really cause us concern, but there is a reason that we share one body. Jesus has brought us here for a reason, and he does provide room enough and grace enough and love enough to be together, if we are open to him.
Finally, as we celebrate Holy Communion in a few minutes and every time we celebrate it, we are doing that as one people feeding our body that connects us. It is our food of faith, the willingness to share in the meal of our Lord as a spiritual body. We are never just feeding ourselves, living for ourselves, blessing ourselves, and looking after ourselves. We belong to Jesus. This means we also belong to each other because are part of the same body. We need to nourish and be nourished; we also need to nourish each other.
This is the great Pentecost promise. This is the great power of the gospel. This is the great vision of the gospel for Paul. This is the good news itself. It is a good thing to be a part of the Body of Christ, my friends, but it is even better to be able to be a part with all of you and all of our members, here and everywhere. To God be the glory. Amen.