The skin of Christ
The church is a body: scarred and punctured but feeling its way through the world.
Iam more than a little obsessed with bodies and their limits and possibilities. Maybe it’s because my own body gives me so much trouble. (I have complex Crohn’s disease and live with the aftereffects of extensive bowel surgery.) Maybe it’s because I think Ludwig Wittgenstein was onto something when he said, “The human body is the best picture of the human soul.”
Or perhaps it’s because I believe that the picture of the church as a body remains the most striking, beautiful, and challenging vision we possess. It captures the cost and the promise of staying within an institution that sometimes feels less than lively, less than hopeful: as with a human body, in the body of Christ there are many parts or members; as with any body, the body of Christ can be experienced as a theater for great joy but also pain and loss. Bodies keep us honest: they tie us to fragility but also remind us of the glory of being alive.
Paul famously introduces the body of Christ metaphor in 1 Corinthians 12. He suggests that in one individual body there are many members or parts. What is true for the individual body is true also for the body of Christ. “Which part or parts am I?” any of us might ask. I suspect many of us would be drawn to be the rather more glamorous or noteworthy parts—brain, heart, lungs, limbs, fingers. Some might even want to be the guts. I’m a vain sort of person. There is something appealing for a person like me to want to be heart or brains.
