Abstract
Biblical Names for the Church 3: ‘The Body of Christ’
We’re thinking for some Sundays about names that have been given to the Church, descriptive titles found in the New Testament itself, and so demanding our attention and consideration. Today’s final name may well be the most famous of them all, St Paul’s word picture of the Church addressed to the Corinthians—and others—‘You are the body of Christ’. What qualities belonging to the ideal Church can we deduce from this description?
For a start, do we know anything at all about Christ’s body? We certainly know absolutely nothing of His physical appearance. There is no evidence within the scriptures about height or build or comeliness. Outside the scriptures there is one supposed description giving lots of detail and concluding with the claim that Christ is the fairest of the children of men. But scholars universally regard this portrait as a forgery, a work of later sanctified imagination, and with absolutely no historical worth. We simply have no way of knowing what He looked like; but we can make some persuasive deductions about His physique; for Jesus was a carpenter, and carpenters in those days did not buy their timber from the wholesaler, all neatly sawn and trimmed. The carpenter himself went to a convenient forest, chose his tree, swung his axe and carried home his prize. There was a lot of heavy labouring involved. So we can say about our Lord at least that He was physically fit.
So, one characteristic of the body of Christ was fitness; and we are the body of Christ. I cannot claim to be an expert in the realm of fitness. An occasional round of golf, a grudging minimum of gardening and a brisk daily walk between the house and the garage pretty well sum up my keep-fit programme. My theoretical knowledge is at the same level as my practical application; but I did, the other day chance upon an improving article about acquiring or reclaiming a degree of fitness; and I read with interest that there are three basic qualities involved in fitness—strength and flexibility and endurance.
How, on that basis, do we measure up? How strong in Jesus’ Church today? Many voices will be raised to intimate the Church’s weakness, weakness unto death, so some would claim. There always are statistics readily available to prove that we are in an international decline, with fewer members, fewer converts, fewer baptisms, fewer vocations. There are some areas of health and growth, but on the whole, statistically speaking, we are failing badly, in poor health. Now all these sad statistics may be true—but they may not be sad! To worry over a decline in numbers is to confuse strength with size. Ask any slimmer whether size means strength, and you will discover that the very opposite may well be true. Ask any athlete what excessive weight does for his level of performance, and you will probably be told that strength and vigour grow as bulk diminishes. Perhaps the shrinking twentieth-century Church is losing fat, not muscle; is growing stronger in the things that matter, concern, fellowship, humility, prayer.
How flexible is Jesus Church today? How able to adopt new attitudes and fresh ideas? How capable of moving with the times? Well, some would say ‘Not capable at all !’ There are good souls in every congregation who become annoyed by this or that inflexibility, the local church’s hidebound clinging to traditions that they feel have had their day. There are those in every denomination who feel burdened and frustrated at the reluctance of the folk around them to embrace the changes that they advocate. I remember a brief letter from a fellow-minister published in The Herald. The crucial passage read ‘When one does try to bring about necessary change in the Church, it is in fact like wrestling against a giant ball of cotton wool.’
That tone reflects exactly what was written in the course of a review of a book about Dick Sheppard, once of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields. ‘What we so-called radicals were saying in the 1960s about the need for the renewal, revitalisation and reorganisation of the Church, if it were to be God’s instrument in changing man and society, was being said by Dick Shephard in the 1920s. It didn’t heed him, any more than it has heeded us.’ The frustration felt by folk like these is understandable enough. The Church is not particularly flexible in terms of change within a given time; but I regard the Church as quite astonishingly flexible in terms of variety. There are denominations to suit every taste, progressive and conservative, informal and liturgical, episcopal and democratic; and within denominations—or at least within our own denomination, to stick to what I know for certain, there are widely varied congregational procedures and traditions—the aggressively evangelical, the self-consciously avant-garde, brisk, busy congregations and couthy, homely congregations and devout, prayerful congregations—a spiritual home for every kind of person.
The third essential element in fitness, so I read, is endurance. How enduring is the Church? There have been times when it has seemed about to fade away, reduced by vicious persecution or corruption deep within. But always there has been a rescue or revival. Persecution has driven the Church underground; but never six feet under! For always when the persecution ended there appeared a remnant, hanging on tenaciously to life and faith. Long centuries ago, the Churchman Theodore of Beza, coined a phrase that has been widely borrowed and adapted, ‘The Church is an anvil that has worn out many hammers.’
Always when corruption seemed about to spread beyond control, a saint fit for the hour emerged and wielded a reforming scalpel. ‘The reading of Church history’, said Lightfoot, the great scholar, ‘is a cordial for drooping spirits, pointing as it does to new life, ever springing our of seeming death.’
Christ’s body was—and on the whole, still is—strong, flexible, and enduring. Christ’s body, also, we may say with confidence, was disciplined, entirely receptive to His will and purpose. Of course, he knew the pangs of hunger and the need for sleep and so on, but His body never gained control. His tongue never ran away with Him. He never put His tiredness before a human need. Whatever appetites He had were subject always to His will, and to the holy Spirit that suffused His mind. His body, trudging across Galilean hills, embracing terribly disfigured lepers, patting children on the head, or mounted on a donkey, His body was the instrument of His high, loving purpose—and we, with all the Church, are now that body, with the duty and the privilege of serving Him as faithfully as His own limbs. And though the Church’s faithfulness and service are less than perfect, there is nonetheless enough of it to show that we are striving to obey the mind of Christ who is our Head.
I remember a TV series some time ago called ‘Men seeking God’. Christopher Mayhew interviewed the representatives of various religions—a Muslim in his mosque, a Jew inside the synagogue, while in the background someone read the aloud the scriptures of the Jewish Bible; and then an Indian Christian, who took Mayhew to a home for lepers. As the camera ranged over the deformed patients, who had once been discarded by society, but were now gathered into a caring community, the Christian said that it was in these faces that he saw the beauty of the Lord, transfiguring them, both as they received healing, and as they realized themselves loved and accepted for His sake.
There surely is the Church fulfilling its appointment as Christ’s body, working out His purpose. And we who are the little muscle in His body called the Church of Scotland, have not been altogether idle or inactive. Perhaps we do not frequently enough recall the ongoing Christian work across the land and well beyond, healing, caring, rehabilitating work done in our name and with our money, and supported by our prayers and now and then our active involvement.
The forms that this work takes are many and grow more each year. As of old Christ’s body puts its arms around the frail and aged, the little children, the social outcasts, down-and-outs and addicts and the like. And there are problems and deficiencies and failures day and daily, for the folk who do the work are frail and human too, only marginally less so than their clients; but for all the clumsiness and awkwardness and stiffness, the body does the bidding of the Head, and tries to have no other purpose nor ambition than the doing of that bidding—tries to become, in the words of L. P. Jacks, ‘the union of those who love for the sake of those who suffer’.
Christ’s body was fit, Christ’s body was disciplined, and finally, in just a word, Christ’s body was broken. That sturdy, serviceable body met with crucifixion; which says to you and me that we who are the body now may have to suffer something in our time. Parts of the body, even now, are being tortured, in those areas where Christians and their faith are feared and hunted down; and we in turn may face some form of cruelty, the crucifixion of derision or hostility, ingratitude or unfair criticism. It may be hard to bear—but we shall bear it better and more bravely if we can remember that such suffering belongs to Christ’s own body, that the wounds are token of our continuity with Him.