The body
My husband recently dislocated his elbow. For the next ten days, I watched a bruise grow the entire length of his arm along where the trauma happened in his muscles. Likewise, the book of Ephesians is addressing trauma in the 1st century churches. Here Paul describes the church as “the body of Christ.” It is one of his main metaphors in the book. He introduces it in Ephesians 1:23, and returns to it in 4:15, 15 and 5:23, 29, 30. This is such a different picture than the Temple worship of the goddess Artemis, which dominated Ephesus. To worship her, men were castrated, women were sex-slave priestesses, and everyone had to pay money to do it (see Ephesus Now post). Yet the Christian message brought a new word to this culture. It captivated people all over Asia and the Middle East, and churches formed. The letter to Ephesians says: there is a God who gave up his body to save ours: Jesus Christ “gave himself up for her [the church] that he might her sanctify [make her holy]” (Ephesians 5:23). He does not require castration, slavery, or money to approach him. He came to us. By his death he abolished the hostility between one another, within ourselves, and between him and us. “He himself is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14). He knows the pain we carry all the way to the grave. And out again. He has the power to bring peace. HIS body heals.
The groups of Christians all along Asia carried trauma. They lived and breathed a patriarchal, hierarchical society. The believers brought that into their churches. And they were sinners themselves anyway! (You know, the only prerequisite to become a Christian is that you are a sinner who needs grace…so we all qualify! Yay!;). As the Apostle Paul travelled through Asia, starting these churches and then writing letters to them, he called the church “the body of Christ” a lot. Each time he uses the term, it brings peace to hostility.
Christ’s body reconciles. In 1 Corinthians 12 Paul is addressing comparison between believers. Each person had different spiritual gifts. Some felt less than (1 Corinthians 12:14,15). Some felt better than (1 Corinthians 12:21). He argues that we respect one another and value the differences—not the sameness—because we are all interdependent parts of Christ’s body: “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” (1 Corinthians 12:12). Christ delights in the differences. He does not play favorites.
imagine ears instead of clocks in this Salvador Dali painting for a visual of “the body of Christ” in 1 Corinthians 12:16 (Sorry Dali ;)
I saw the humor in this passage when I retold it with parents and children in our church in Charleston, SC. When I got to this part: “If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?” the children all laughed! We all did as we imagined everyone being an ear lying on the ground, helpless, hearing but with no brain or body to listen. It was a Salvidor Dali painting with ears instead of clocks! Many reenacted it (as the service got out of control;). I never saw the humor in this passage until then. It made me realize how laughing together disarms comparison. Laughing at yourself disarms insecurities. I don’t know if Paul intended this humor, but he does push the metaphor: there are conversations between eye, ear, hand, foot. He is enjoying it. I’m so glad the kids got it. They helped the parents to as well.
Colossians, a parallel letter to Ephesians, also uses the body of Christ metaphor.[1] “And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent” (Colossians 1:17,18). “Head” in English means “authority,” but in Greek it has an established meaning as “source.”[2] In this case, Christ is the source (firstborn of the dead) and the leader of the church—that in everything he might be preeminent. Colossians is showing that Jesus is sufficient to save—you don’t need anyone or anything else but him. The house is on fire; you are trapped; Jesus is the fireman who is equipped and able to get you to safety. Once he does, you are never alone. You are in him. And you are in his body of other rescued sinners such as yourself.
What is unique about references to “Christ’s body” in Ephesians? In this book, Paul says that Jesus actively fills his body, the church: “And he [God] put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:23). Jesus fills all in all. The emptiness. The farthest reaches. The farthest gone. The softest moment. The triumph. The trauma. Jesus fills all.
Some have argued that this means that the church “completes” Jesus.[3] While it is true that Jesus makes his church into his messengers of grace, into his family of welcome, he does that often in spite of our strong resistance! I say that with great compassion. It’s just that we all have blind spots and areas where we don’t reflect Christ. Just ask the women, children, and slaves mentioned at the end of Ephesians. They lived in a Rome-adapted-Aristotelian world where men ruled the oikos (home) and the polis (collection of oikos) and thus the women, children, and slaves under them.[4] The church will always need the Gospel to change her. We will until heaven. The Gospel was at work, changing hearts to see the other as equal, not under. Jesus was—and is—still actively filling the church, as he is filling “all in all” the universe. He holds all things together (Colossians 1:17).
When Christians hurt one another, as sometimes (often) happens in churches, in families, in our own selves, this is a word of hope. We are first and foremost a part of Jesus Christ’s body. He heals. He brings peace. He has the scars to prove it. He knows the bruise growing along the trauma lines of his church, his body. He is not ashamed to identify so closely with us. He knows what his word does. We are at once bruised and also at once spotless. One day we will see this promise realized when we eat and drink with him in heaven (Mark 14:25). Christians gather, bruised and broken, to be fed, forgiven, nourished, and healed by our God who is able to do so.
“The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (I Corinthians 11:23,24).
[1] John, Stott, The Message of Ephesians, The Bible Speaks Today, Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1979, pg. 217.
[2] Philip Payne, Man and Woman, One in Christ, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009, p. 123-128.
[3] See John Stott’s summary of this view in The Message of Ephesians, The Bible Speaks Today, Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1979, pg. 62, 63.
[4] Kurt C. Schaefer, Husband, Wife, Father, Child, Master, Slave: Peter through Roman Eyes. Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2018, p.56-61.
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