“As I was on my way and drew near to Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone around me. And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ And I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And he said to me, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.’ (Acts 22: 6-8)

Paul famously called the church the Body of Christ. I suspect he got that idea from his encounter with the risen Jesus who equated persecution of the church with persecution of Himself. But what does it mean to be the Body of Christ? I would suggest that it means we must walk where he walked, talk like He talked, and love as He loved. We must be His physical presence, His spiritual comfort, and His suffering service to the world.

Jesus certainly did a great deal of walking during His ministry, so it would appear that the church can’t wait for the world to beat a path to its door. We can’t just have a Garden party with our Christian friends when there are so many people lost in the wilderness. Placing, “Everyone is welcome,” on our church marquees won’t resonate with a world that needs to be handed a personal invitation. This means, however, that our travels will take us to brothels, bars, and businesses. We will need to rub elbows with the broken, bruised, and blasphemous.

Jesus was physically present to those He encountered, therefore, we can’t be talking heads for Christ but must be His hands and feet. We can’t just preach to the predisposed but must be willing to touch the untouchables. Those who don’t know Jesus need love and not a lecture. While we want people to take our Word for it, we must remember that the world is a tough crowd. People who are spiritually empty won’t be satisfied with a ghost story but want an encounter with the living Jesus. They will want to put their fingers in our scars so that they can truly believe that Jesus heals. The world needs a warm touch and not more hot air.

The early Christians spread the Gospel by being a living example of the Body of Christ graciously moving through the world. They became suffering servants by revealing their scars while simultaneously going out of their way to attend to the wounds of others.

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God.” (John 3: 19-21)

The Body of Christ has power both individually and corporately. Since it is composed of many individual members with unique gifts it is able to reach into the nooks and crannies of human suffering by squeezing in a finger and touching a life. A life that will then have Jesus’ fingerprints all over it. The Body of Christ is also a community that can flex its muscle by corporately taking on the weight of the world and replacing it with the light yoke of Jesus. All too often the church has an out-of-body experience and offers ethereal platitudes rather than the scarred hands of suffering service. If we want to be the Body of Christ we need to make every effort to be physically present to the world.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1 Corinthians 12: 12-27)

Photo by KEEM IBARRA on Unsplash