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The
Lightstand Magazine
1984
• October • Editorial
by Bro. Alistair Henderson
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When
we are in good health, occupied and well-fed, we are hardly
conscious of our bodies. But if we are injured or ill, they
can become all-absorbing. Pain in a broken bone calls forth
a sympathetic reaction from the rest of the body. If the injury
is sufficiently severe, the state of shock the body goes into
is itself part of the protective process. The body marshalls
all its resources to deal with the threat to its unity all
is directed toward the affected part, it is not simply abandoned
to get on as well as it can by itself. So close is this relationship
that should a part become morbidly atrophied, gangrenous for
instance, the poison will spread to the rest and cause death
unless some external force intervenes to excise the affected
limb. The body does not easily give up one of its members
to death.
The same principle applies to good things happening to our
bodies, when the sense of well-being is equally shared: for
instance a good meal relaxes the whole organism or being "fit"
as we call it, gives the sensation of being in control of
life.
It is not without reason that the Apostle Paul uses the metaphor
of the unity of the physical body to express the need for
unity in the body of Christ. In the first letter to the Corinthians
(Chapter 12) he writes,
"For the body is not one member, but many (v14) ...there
should be no schism in the body, but all members should have
the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer,
all the members suffer with it, or one member be honoured,
all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ,
and members in particular"(v25-27)
In the passage between these verses, he discusses the interdependence
of the various parts of the body making what might at first
glance seem obvious points: the ear cannot do without the
eye or the foot if it is to function fully, it must be part
of a complete human being.
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And
yet. when it comes to life in the ecclesia, and this is Paul's real
point, we act according to another principle altogether. We perhaps
do not mind so much sharing the good things, but are we quite so
keen really to share the suffering of others? Are we in a position
often even to know when our brethren and sisters are suffering?
We can be so absorbed in our own situation, especially our "pain"
physical or spiritual - that we forget we are just a part of the
whole. One might almost say that our awareness of our brethren is
the measure of our belonging to the body of Christ. Do we feel all
the time that we are inseparable from them? Are we simply a "dead"
piece of flesh when we are not with them? A life of our own and
for ourselves only is by definition one outside the body of Christ.
We may not want to share the sufferings of others, but what if we
are in need ourselves and are not part of the body, - how is it
to know that we are in trouble? We can shrivel away without it rushing
those healing 'corpuscles' to our rescue. More disturbingly, should
we become morbid and refuse to respond to treatment by the great
physician, he just may have to cut us out of the body to save it
from our contamination, and then throw us out to destruction.
We need to enhance that awareness of belonging to the body, feeling
it as it were as much as we would any part of our own bodies. Then
if a someone-else-part is injured we will also feel it and be able
to play our part in the healing process. And if the us-part is broken,
we will be felt to be in danger by the rest. But it takes effort
and time. Our toe cannot help being part of our body it does it
effortlessly and all the time. The ecclesia, the body of Christ
can only be one when all the members consciously make that effort
all the time. It should go without saying that they ought to (and
ought to want to) spend as much time together as possible.
Perhaps that is a practical definition of what the love is that
the Lord Jesus Christ meant when he said, "By this shall all
men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another
" (John 13.35)
A.H.
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