The Body

To my impatient fans, I apologize for the delay. I'm friends with a guy who's a college minister, and he decided to go gallivanting around India with some friends, meaning I had to cover for him teaching class yesterday.

Anyway, lately I'm still slowly trudging through On Being a Christian. The author is discussing historical, Biblical criticism right now, and though it's interesting, I am much too tired to get involved in a discussion of that nature this week. I'm about two thirds of the way through Brueggemann's Texts Under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination, and I must say it is turning out to be one of the best and most concise books I've ever read concerning how the Bible relates to our current social context.

Lately, through my reading and just life and general it seems that God has been hammering the concept of community into me. I find this to be a little strange since at this particular point in my life I feel less a part of any community than any time over the past several years. I'm burnt out on "big church", so I don't really go. I don't feel super connected to the college group I've long been a part of now. My closest circle of friends, though I still see them all regularly, it seems has drifted apart, and the amazing intimacy we had for a long time has dissipated with our increasing stress and busyness. Yet it seems from all angles God has been stressing to me the incredible importance of community.

On the one hand, Brueggemann's book is reminding me of the terrible isolation that our postmodern situation forces on so many people. Our society uses materialism and a modern equivalent to 'bread and circus' to palliate the haunting uneasiness resulting from not knowing anyone and not truly being known. When this feeling grows too strong to be ignored by such means, our culture's answer is marriage. Obviously a good thing, but a pair of people severed from true community are only slightly better off than the lonely individual. Family is good, but a family is not a church.

I am increasingly aware that God's will is to heal humanity as a whole from its fractured state. I am leaning more and more toward the idea that this is the whole purpose of religion in any form. Certainly not to cut short the function of restoring a proper relationship to God himself, but if we as a part of humanity remain cut off and hostile toward another human, have we really understood God? Have we understood what it is to love him if we still reject another race, or ethnicity, or social class?

I am increasingly impressed with the language referring to the Church as the body of Christ. Maybe nursing school has given me a greater respect for the complex nature of the body. I am impressed that we are not required to all do the same things. Our functions are varied. We are not required to ever serve the same purposes. The stomach may have no understanding of the lungs, but the lungs supply the stomach with oxygen and the stomach gives nutrients to the lungs. The eyes may think negatively of the ears, knowing how much more could be seen in the ears only functioned like eyes. But, in this the eyes just have not come to understand what the ears are purposed to do. Different cells work in different organs as part of different systems, and all may fail to understand the purpose of the others over there. We may not even understand the system they are in; let alone their particular function in an individual organ. Too often we only understand our own function, and judge others because they fail to do what our particular group does. But, were they ever intended for that? Ultimately, we are all united around the mind of Christ. Our purposes are determined by what his grand purpose is.

I was reading On Being a Christian today. It was discussing all the versions of the 'historical Jesus', who if you read scholars is gererally doubted was like the Jesus we see in the Gospels. Yet the author pointed out that though the Gospels may not give a polaroid of Jesus, each paints a representation of him, and "despite all the discontinuity, there is continuity." There are differences between the different Gospels, but the representations of Christ, his character, his values, his message, and his commitment, all line up in surprising clarity.

What I mean to say is this: we have a dang good idea of what Jesus' grand purpose was. The Gospels make at least that much crystal clear.

His purpose was revealed in his teaching, and in the way he lived his daily life. His purpose was revealed in gathering disciples and friends close around him to live as a community. His purpose was revealed in his life as he walked in the truth that the Presence of God covered him in order that the poor would hear good news, that prisoners might hear of their freedom, that the blind might see, and the oppressed would find release. His purpose was the Jubilee: where humanity realized equality, and communion/fellowship is restored between us all!

This is the mind of Christ. Could his body serve any other purpose? We believe what we believe, and practice what we practice, but we can never lose sight of the fact that the reason for it all is healing, liberation, and equality. Doctrine, tradition, piety, and theology are all accessories to purpose. The purpose of Christ is humanity restored.