{"id":5662,"date":"2026-08-20T08:37:04","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T12:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5662"},"modified":"2026-08-20T08:37:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T12:37:04","slug":"the-body-of-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/20\/the-body-of-christ\/","title":{"rendered":"The Body of Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a>
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Each day this month of August we\u2019ll be looking at one of the extraordinary metaphors that the Bible uses to illustrate the nature of our relationship with God.<\/em>


One of my happy memories as a pre-teen was spending Saturday afternoons at the Uptown Theater in Indianapolis.

My ritual included purchasing a Bit O\u2019 Honey or a Slow Poke sucker at the concession stand, taking in the three or four cartoons before the main feature, then sitting back to enjoy the Monster Movie of the Week.

These were usually low-budget productions graced by less-than-stellar actors and cheesy special effects. Flying saucers, giant spiders, and mummies who simply would not stay dead and buried captivated us for the next 90 minutes.

In 1963 we were treated to The Crawling Hand<\/em> \u2013 the strange tale of an astronaut who comes under the influence of an extraterrestrial malevolent force. When he crash-lands back on earth, the only thing that survives is one of his hands. It promptly takes on a life of its own and begins to stalk the citizens of a small town.

Spoiler alert<\/em>: The town is saved from this menace by a hungry cat, which runs off with the hand at the end. It\u2019s a deeply satisfying cinematic moment for cat lovers.\u00a0\u00a0

There\u2019s something incurably creepy about human body parts that shuffle off on their own \u2013 disembodied arms, eyes, heads, and so forth. Those make great props for a horror movie, but \u201cdoing your own thing\u201d is definitely not the biblical vision for serving God.

Instead, the New Testament presents \u2013 more than 30 times \u2013 the metaphor of the Body of Christ.

The Christian faith rises or falls on a single historical claim: that Jesus of Nazareth was not in his tomb on the first Easter morning because God had raised him from the dead. Where is Jesus right now? He is \u201cseated at the right hand of God the Father,\u201d as the Apostles\u2019 Creed asserts. Jesus rules the cosmos. He rules it invisibly. But that doesn\u2019t mean he is no longer actively present in this world.

Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, lives within his followers. He acts, speaks, and reaches out to a broken world through us<\/u><\/em>.

One of the intriguing evidences that the resurrection really took place is that Jesus\u2019 tomb never became, like so many other burial plots of famous religious figures, a place where pilgrims came to lay flowers and offer prayers.\u00a0The earliest disciples quite literally lost track of the location of Jesus\u2019 tomb \u2013 for the simple reason that they knew Jesus wasn\u2019t there.\u00a0Because of the resurrection, the \u201caction,\u201d so to speak, has forever shifted to any place where someone chooses to call on Jesus\u2019 name.

Have you ever wondered how neat it might have been to be one of Jesus\u2019 contemporaries?

But you are<\/em> in fact a contemporary of Jesus.\u00a0He is alive amongst his followers right now. \u00a0

As Paul puts it in Ephesians 1:22-23, \u201cAnd God placed all things under his feet\u00a0and appointed him to be head\u00a0over everything for the church,\u00a0which is his body,\u00a0the fullness of him\u00a0who fills everything in every way.\u201d The Body of Christ and the church (here we\u2019re talking about those who are genuinely committed to Jesus) are one and the same.

This is unsettling news for the myriad self-described American Christians who consider local churches something akin to kryptonite.\u00a0Instead of joining what will surely turn out to be a dysfunctional spiritual family, why not pursue instead a pathway of do-it-yourself discipleship?\u00a0

Paul\u2019s answer is that sharing life with other Christ-followers is not an elective in the Christian curriculum, nor a side dish we can pass up at God\u2019s buffet table.\u00a0The church is an organization<\/em> only secondarily.\u00a0Primarily the Body is an organism<\/em> \u2013 a living association of women and men who are becoming more and more like Jesus, with Christ himself as the head.\u00a0We are his arms, legs, hands, feet, sinews, and muscles.

If Jesus is going to accomplish anything in this world, he\u2019s made it clear he wants to make it happen through his church.\u00a0Therefore, we must walk, serve, and love together<\/em> \u2013 not as disembodied organs or limbs crawling off to do our own thing. Whenever Christians do that, all the world sees is a spiritual horror movie.

What\u2019s it like to be in the Body of Christ?

There\u2019s something about all of us that is the same. But there\u2019s also something about each of us that is different. \u00a0

Paul makes this signature statement in I Corinthians 12:4-6: \u201cThere are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit\u00a0distributes them.\u00a0There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord.\u00a0There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone\u00a0it is the same God\u00a0at work.\u201d

Notice where the sameness is found. It relates to the source<\/em> of human giftedness.\u00a0We receive what we need in life from the same God (the Father), the same Lord (the Son), and the same Spirit.\u00a0

Our personal experience, meanwhile, is differentness<\/em> \u2013 different gifts, different kinds of service, different kinds of working. People are not interchangeable.\u00a0We didn\u2019t all roll off the same assembly line.

Every Christian carries the DNA of discipleship.\u00a0But just as different cells in different parts of the human body express different aspects of the same genetic code, members of Christ\u2019s Body will tend to excel in significantly different areas.

Let\u2019s imagine, for example, that as part of trusting Christ we\u2019re all called to live out the letters \u201cSE.\u201d\u00a0How might that be expressed in ministry?\u00a0

For those in the choir, SE might mean \u201csing exuberantly.\u201d\u00a0People on a mission venture will \u201cserve enthusiastically.\u201d\u00a0Members of the pastoral staff are called to \u201cstudy eagerly.\u201d\u00a0Volunteers with Habitat for Humanity \u201csheetrock energetically.\u201d\u00a0Those on the Finance Team excel at \u201cshrinking expenses.\u201d\u00a0And out of love for God, members of the Sunday morning Hospitality Team will \u201cserve eclairs\u201d \u2013 something that helps the rest of us grow in our love for God, too.\u00a0

If all this sounds like a vast over-simplification, it is.\u00a0No one knows how or why the Holy Spirit leads different members of God\u2019s team to function in such different ways.

Nevertheless, we know it\u2019s true.\u00a0To paraphrase Paul, \u201cIf all of us exceled at exactly the same thing, you\u2019d never look at a group of Christians and say, \u2018Now, that\u2019s a body.\u2019\u201d

So where does that leave each of us?\u00a0

If you\u2019ve given yourself to Christ, then you represent him here on earth. And what you contribute matters. As the old saying goes, when you get to heaven God isn\u2019t going to ask you why you weren\u2019t more like Martin Luther or Francis of Assisi or Billy Graham or Mother Teresa.\u00a0He\u2019ll ask you why you weren\u2019t more like you<\/em>.

So, don\u2019t be a Slow Poke.

As an indispensable member of the Body of Christ, resolve to discern the uniqueness of your calling and pursue it with all your heart.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Each day this month of August we\u2019ll be looking at one of the extraordinary metaphors that the Bible uses to illustrate the nature of our relationship with God. One of my happy memories as a pre-teen was spending Saturday afternoons at the Uptown Theater in Indianapolis. My ritual included purchasing a… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5663,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1159,508],"class_list":["post-5662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-metaphors","tag-spiritual-gifts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5664,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5662\/revisions\/5664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}