Epiphany 3 Body building (2) 24th January 2009

We’re thinking again this week about Body building as we continue through 1 Corinthians Chapter 12. Body building changes flab to muscle, weakness to strength. So it is with the body of Christ.

We looked last week at how the ministry gifts of individuals are given to strengthen the church for the common good. To best use these gifts God’s given us we need to be organised and not freelance. Otherwise we’ll see body breaking and not body building! This truth is taken up in verse 28 and following at the end of this week’s section when Paul speaks of the special authority of apostles, prophets and teachers and so on.

On Saturday we launch our stewardship renewal at a special supper. In coming weeks we’ll be inviting church members to consider what God has given them and how they can put their gifts to the best use. I believe this scripture passage is God’s gift to us at this time.

Let’s turn to the passage then and read together verses 12 to 14: 12The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13For we were all baptised by one Spirit into one body – whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Now the body is not made up of one part but of many.

You and I are one with Christ. When they say Jim and Sue are an item we know what they mean. Paul is saying you and I and Christ are an item, a unit.

Saint Teresa of Avila’s made a famous commentary on this passage Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours, yours are the eyes with which he looks in compassion on this world, yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours, yours are the eyes with which he looks in compassion on this world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

It’s a rich passage but there’s a problem with this interpretation of 1 Corinthians 12. We are sinners but Christ is sinless. Yet the Church is Christ’s body of which he’s head and he needs our gifts to do his work. Last week I was listing some of the ministry gifts we exercise here at St Giles. Richard Harrison is to share about the ministries that keep our buildings in order at the end of the service.

Some would question how the body of a man who lived and died in poverty could live on associated through his members with the splendour of St Giles. Richard will have an answer!

More profoundly when you read through Paul’s laboured description of different body parts working together its uncomfortable to recall there are now 39,000 Christian denominations. At least tonight the three or so local variants of Christ’s body will be coming together. This is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity – but if Christians really were one with Christ there wouldn’t be need of such a week and we’d be one body and not 39,000!

Do we see what Paul is saying about the church as Christ’s body as just an image? Or is the body of Christ to be seen as an organic reality? I believe the second myself and lament the visible disunity of Christians. Would that nothing we do as Christians worked against the maximising of Christian unity!

One illumination of the word and concept is found in the Hebrew understanding Paul would share. Hebraic thought is different to Greek thought which is interested in the meaning of things in themselves. The Hebrew and biblical understanding sees things by contrast in relation to what they’re called to be. The meaning of an object doesn’t come from analysing it but in its purpose.

Just to illustrate this, the consecration of the Eucharist is an event that’s linked to biblical Hebrew thinking. When Jesus says, or I as his priest say for him over bread, ‘This is my Body’ that bread does not cease to be bread but becomes what it is not. By the biblical promise it becomes the instrument and bearer of God’s presence.

In the same way when we say we’re Christ’s body – or Christ has no body here on earth but ours – we’re talking not of what we are – gifted but sinful beings – but of what God’s calling us to be – sharers of the divine nature!

If you read through Paul’s letters, again and again he tells you Christ is in us. Again and again he tells us that sin is in us. The church is sinful yet Christ-filled. As such it’s a place of hope. As the French theologian Péguy once wrote, a Christian is a sad man saved from despair by the Cross of Christ.

St Paul says he’s ‘a Hebrew of the Hebrews’ and he also regards the Church as the organ of Christ’s presence uniting his members to himself and to one another. He’s talking though more of what we’re to be than what we are now. Our calling is like the consecration of the bread of the eucharist which becomes his body despite its ordinariness. Jesus gives it new purpose.

For us the obstacle to being used by God – our sin - is more than our ordinariness. It’s the destructive virus of sin. Christ by his death has the antidote to sin. Christ by his resurrection life has the empowerment we need to hallow God’s name, build his kingdom and effect his will.

As we read earlier we were all baptised by one Spirit into one body. Our unity as a church within the universal church is given us by our baptism and the associated determination to drown our sin and drink of the one Spirit to use the imagery of baptism. Christ’s body is a body of death – a body that’s discovered how to do away with sin – and a body of life – a body that’s got within it a fluorescent stream of life that shines out from all who bear the Holy Spirit.

Let’s look back one last time at our passage, skipping over the large repetitive section and read verses 26 and 27: 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it. 27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

We’ve just come out of a time of hardship weather-wise that confirms this sort of thinking for us as a village. We’ve seen people baking for one another, sweeping snow and giving lifts to one another. This is the very sort of solidarity Paul speaks of when he writes of how in the church If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. Isn’t this also true of the international response to Haiti? It has also been impressive to see Christian priests and nuns in the vanguard of caring for the distressed in that troubled situation. People ask where God is in this tragedy but all the evidence is that God’s people and priests are there getting there hands dirty.

The solidarity we know in Christ’s body is built both on human fragility and divine purpose.

Just as human beings gain solidarity from severe weather or an earthquake so we members of Christ’s body find unity in our need for the forgiveness and healing God gives us in Christ.

Just as human beings gain solidarity to serve a purpose such as earthquake relief so we as members of Christ’s body find unity in our desire to hallow God’s name, build his kingdom and effect his will.

To live as Christ’s body is to live united both by our need of grace and by a common cause, the cause that’s been served 800 years on this hill and that will outlast all of us. The coming weeks are a time to consider the investment of our lives and to commit ourselves more fully to this cause which is Christ’s cause no less.

If Jesus Christ be God, and died for us, then no sacrifice can be too great for us to make for Him. His sacrifice is being recalled now at this altar. Will you be more fully part of his body, his cause and his sacrifice?