09.01.04 Steve Being the Body of Christ (1)
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Theme text: 1 Cor 11:23-33 - " This is my body that is for you.....do this.." Incarnation - the embodied God - (Epiphany) - Incorporation.... into his body - 'discerning the Lord's body' (v29) - becoming his body in the world
This is the first of a short series of reflections on being The Body of Christ. We have just enjoyed the season of the incarnation of Christ - and today the story of Christ's offering of himself in the bodily solidarity of baptism by John. My hope is that in the next few weeks we will come to grow more into the understanding of ourselves as a people of that incarnation - a living embodiment of Christ in the world. That we will grasp better the vital idea that we are, and are becoming the Body of Christ.
I feel as though I have had a fairly bodily couple of weeks. Most of us have been enjoying treating ourselves - feeding our bodies more extravagently than usual - clothing them and treating them in various ways - spending time with friends and families, who embody who we are and what matters to us. In sharp contrast we've been confronted with the incomprehensible suffering of millions around the Indian Ocean. Two 'bodily' have particularly impressed themselves on me:
1) Staggering images of corpses strewn about wreckage. 'This report contains distressing scenes', says the announcer. The enforced and humbling confrontation with the reality that our fragile bodily humanity is not as in-control of this world as it would like to think - that the powers of nature devastatingly require our respect as much as they ever did - that we are small creatures on the face of the earth
2) The way that the world community has responded, just for once, taking corporate responsibility for meeting the awful needs facing so many so suddenly. A response that has reached across international, political, cultural and religious boundaries. Trying to meet immense material and bodily need - and acting as though the world really is a community who care about what has happened to one group - as though we are a body, and cannot but attend to the part that has been injured.
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He walked down into the river and received the bodily waters of baptism.
My own religious heritage - that of a late 20th cent, reformed, Scots presbyterian - a spirituality formed in the slow burning 'refining fires' of expository preaching, principally from a conservative, kerygmatic tradition - the primacy of the Word. Pulpits, sermons, bible teaching. Communion Services, of the grievously funerial variety, happened four times a year. Other than the Session Clerk's delivery of intimations, only the voice of the minister was heard, and the singing of hymns and psalms were the only participation of the laity. Both in the formal worship and in the conscientious bible teaching of the youth fellowship, there was an undisputed understanding that 'knowing God' and/or the process of developing a 'personal relationship with Christ' were entirely dependent upon exposure to Word and (in practice to a much lesser degree) Sacrament - an overall process that was to be understood as a battle for the mind and soul, to be fought diligently using the armoury of study and prayer. Bodies, I soon learned, were to be distrusted... base, wordly and fleshly - and the Christian's task was to strive for a kind of life where the weaknesses of the bodily were to be triumphed over - a triumph of the spirit over the flesh. Spirit good - flesh bad.
This is what's known as religious dualism. And there has always been a lot of it about, but it's a mistake to think of it as Christian orthodoxy.
In the Roman Empire - Xty found itself in the context of a philosophical background of dualism. Hellenism - not hatred of the body, but seeing it as radically diff from the soul and prone to decay - the antithesis of divinity and perfection. Soul needs to be freed from the burden. There was enough body anxiety in the Judaeo-Xian trad for such phil to 'speak to' early Xty - but it was not uniform in its attitudes.
Christian history - is strewn with versions of dualism - gnosticism - asceticism - monasticism (inc many rules and practices reflecting a terrible fear and loathing of the body often manifested in abuse of the body in order to achieve spiritual perfection - flagellation, lack of sleep and very restricted food intake are hardly ways of celebrating the body and regarding it is a place of divine revelation). Indeed, these are bizarre practices for those who declare an incarnational faith. Paradox - probably the most important article of Christian Faith is that God became man - yet the body has been so despised, rather than love and celebrated by generations of Christians. Jesus - an eating, drinking, touching, expansive figure of hospitality..... Read our passage with the incarnation in mind:
23 For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ 25 In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. 27Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. 30 For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
Very 'embodied' theology. We're going to consider the 'Body Theology' of St Paul in 1 Corinthians over the next few weeks. It is a mistake to think that Paul is 'dualist' - his approach to the body is more complex. In pauline theology, "the body of the eucharist connects the body of the believers with the corporate body of the church which is the body of Christ". The Christian body is the centre of transformation, in the transfer from one form of slavery to another. The body is an essential part of being human and is intimately involved in the process of redemption - with the final transformation being a participation in the resurrection of Christ, during which the body will undergo a change similar to a seed when it germinates (1 Cor 15:35-55).
"It is from the body of sin and death that we are delivered; it is through the body of Christ on the cross that we are saved; it is into the body of the church that we are incorporated; it is by his body in the eucharist that the community is sustained; it is in our body that its new life has to be manifest; it is to a resurrection of this body to the likeness of his glorious body that we are destined." JAT Robinson 1952 The Body: A study in Pauline Theology London SCM
A partial sweep through the Christian tradition reveals that thoroughgoing dualism is an extremely recent phenomenon. It was never universally adhered to and now is generally rejected under the influence of various theologies of liberation.
We are approaching our AGM, when we will be assessing again our commitments to God as a eucharistic community - a good time to be thinking about being embodied believers - contributing in an interdependent way to being Christ's body in the world. From our Collect for today:
Today, as we recall how
went to the river Jordan to be baptised,
we thank God, that Jesus demonstrated his solidarity with ordinary people.
We thank God:
- for the invitation to share in the life of the church
- for the help we give and receive that enables us to live as members of the Christian family
- for the security and benefits that come from our community life
- for those to whom we belong
- that baptism is a sign that each of us is known by God
- that we too are called 'beloved'.
Amen.