The Body of Christ

January 26,2025; 1 Corinthians 12:12-30; 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

The apostle Paul often uses images in his letters to explain the Gospel. We can find what is perhaps his most celebrated image in today’s second reading: the image of the Body of Christ. Paul uses this image to explain how we, as believers, are connected to one another. Although we may think that we exist as isolated individuals, Paul tells us that we are in fact part of a larger reality. We are a part of Christ’s body. We cannot leave this body and still be ourselves. If you separate a foot from the body, it is no longer a foot. It is a mass of muscle and bone. So we too, if we separate ourselves from others, cannot be who we are. The image of the body of Christ insists that we are joined to others at the very level of our identity.

This is why Paul goes on to say, that the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you.” The head cannot say to the foot, “I have no need of you.” We have need of every person that God has made because every person is a part of the same body that we are: the Body of Christ. Now the image of the body does not ask us to consider all people as equally important to us. Certainly some people in our lives are more valuable than others. We cannot love, admire or celebrate all people in the same way. We can even correctly decide that certain people are problematic, untrustworthy, or dangerous. But Paul says that even with these negative evaluations of others, we cannot write anyone off. We cannot say to anyone, “I have no need of you.” Because that person, in Christ, is a part of us. This is why Paul ultimately concludes that all parts of the body are necessary. Since every person is a part of Christ’s body, we need every person if Christ’s body is to be whole.

Understanding the Body of Christ has immediate ramifications to the way we live. When we are running late at the supermarket and we find ourselves in the check-out line with a cashier in training who is taking forever find the barcode and scan it in, what a difference it would make if we saw that trainee as a necessary part of the Body of Christ. Wouldn’t I be more patient with his inexperience, if I recognized him as a part of myself? If someone at school or work manipulates a situation to our disadvantage, we have every right to be resentful and to take steps to clarify what the true situation is. But even as we do that, what a difference it would make if we saw the one who offended us not as some foreign aggressor but a flawed part of my own body. Our country is dealing with the desire of so many people in the world who wish to immigrate to our country because of safety or the welfare of their family. As we address these issues we have every right to insist that our borders be secure and that those who come to live among us follow our laws. But what a difference it would make if we saw those who wish to enter our country not as strangers from a distant land, but as part of the same body that gives us life.

The truth behind Paul’s image of the Body of Christ is not a truth that everyone can accept. It takes faith to believe in Christ’s vision of who we are to one another. But as people of faith, Paul challenges us to believe that every person that God has made is necessary. Every person is a part of us.

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