[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], July 2020]
Bodies are something we’re pretty familiar with, after all we all have one! So the apostle Paul uses the body as a way to describe the church. What can we learn from this analogy today?
Last week we looked at defining what the church is and what it isn’t. Actually we have to be careful what words we use because the words we do use say a lot about who we are and what we do. There’s a particular analogy that the Apostle Paul famously uses to talk about the church and it’s found in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, it’s a letter that he wrote to the church in Corinth. They refer to the gathered believers in Jesus Christ as a body. In other parts of the Bible it tells us that actually those who believe in Jesus are the body of Jesus Christ; they are his representatives on earth, his physical presence filled with his spirit.
[01:01] Paul takes that analogy even further and compares the body of Christ to an actual body. He talks about unity but he also talks about diversity and the importance of the differences that we find in our churches. You might be tempted to think “well, I can’t do what that person can do or I don’t look like them or sound like them so I can’t be part of the body, I can’t be part of the church” or you might be looking at someone else and say “You know what, they don’t really fit in here, they’re two different, they’re too unlike us.” Paul said “That just doesn’t work. It’s like the head saying to the feet or the eye saying to the hand I don’t need you“. Now in respect to a body then that’s just ridiculous and it should be ridiculous as well for the church because in our diversity and in our unity we make up a complete whole. We are all necessary, we are all important and we are all indispensable, so much so that if one part of the body hurts the whole body hurts.
[02:27] I used to suffer from ulcers a lot as a child and even now I know that if I get an ulcer in my mouth that’s going to hurt pretty much for the whole week. Something so small can have such a negative effect on the whole of my body and likewise Paul says that if one part of the body hurts then the whole body hurts, if one part of the church hurts then the whole church hurts and if any part is lacking honour there well, God wants to fix that. He wants to raise them up, he wants to elevate them, he wants to give them a special honour and we as the church should rejoice in that. That is so relevant at this time when we are reflecting on racism and the way that we have been culpable in that.
[03:14] Rather than questioning whether we should elevate one particular group of people, we need to realize that the black community has been rejected by our churches and sidelined so much that they have to form their own churches. God is actually using this time to lift them up and, rather than be annoyed at that, rather than becoming defensive we should rejoice in the fact that God is lifting them up to a place of honour. We celebrate our differences, we need to recognise that everyone is important and necessary and has a part to play. We need to recognise that we are united because we are the body of Christ and we are full of his spirit to do his work in this place in our communities and to build his kingdom.
[1] YouTube link: What is the Church? Part 2
Bible references: 1 Corinthians 12 v12-27
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Contributed by Martin Shorey; © the Author
