Who do we think we are?

The Body of Christ!!

St Paul was speaking to early Christian communities who were very much like ourselves when we consider the problems and difficulties that were present among them.  But Paul referred to these communities of very real human beings as the body of Christ!  Quite a title!

This is an extraordinary image for him to use but an image which he not only repeats but develops.  In the Letters to the Romans and the Corinthians, Paul uses the image in one way and in the Letters to the Colossians and Ephesians in another.

His first use of the image, he portrays Christ’s relationship to his disciples as being like the person who inhabits a body and in the later use, Christ is spoken of as the head and the Church as the body of which he is the head.

In both cases, the image supposes a living relationship between Christ and the members of his body, the Church.  And he links this to the Eucharist.  In I Corinthians, he says “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a fellowship in the blood of Christ?  The bread which we break is it not a fellowship in the body of Christ?  As there is one bread, so we, though many, are one body, for we all share the one bread” (10:16-18).  There is a sharing of life between Christ and his Church, his gathered people.

Paul also uses the image as a way of speaking about the Church as a community of people with different talents and spiritual gifts to give to the whole body.  He explains this at length in chapters 12, 13 and 14 of the First Letter to the Corinthians.

There is yet another aspect to this image and that is that Christ himself embodies himself in the community of his disciples.  During his life on earth, people had contact with him in a bodily manner, that is they could hear him, see him, speak to him and touch him, but that is not possible with the risen Lord, he is beyond hearing, seeing and touching.  People can come to know him only through his ‘new body’, the Church. 

It is within the community of faith that he can be recognised and responded to: through his word in the scriptures, through the faith of those who believe, through the witness of Christian faith which has found expression in many ways through the ages.

God is at work through Christ in all of our created world to which he is always giving life.  However, that presence is given more concrete and intense expression in the community of believers who have had the presence of the Lord clarified for them and to which they ‘give a body’ in our real world.  The coming of God among us in the person of Jesus is the translation of God into a language we can understand – human flesh and blood.  In his coming the God of all the world is clarified and concretised for us.  He is indeed Emmanuel!  God with us!

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin

Published: 20 September 2024