Megazord

I've half written lots of long posts. I'm tired of half-writing things, so this'll be more within my attention span.

Big Question: What does it mean to be a member of the body of Christ? No seriously, what does it mean?

Romans 12:5

"so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another." (ESV)"so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others."

We've all heard that to be a Christian is to be a member of the Body of Christ. (If you haven't heard this, check out Romans 12, it'll elucidate wonderfully.)

I've heard us called hands and feet.

I've heard cells.

Nerves.

Livers.

Romans tells us that we all have different gifts (prophecy, teaching, giving, hospitality...) which Christ intends for us to use to His glory. But we don't all have everything, so we have to work together to get anything worthwhile done. 

Until today, I've took this to mean that I was the Blue Ranger's triceratops, and that when Christ (obviously the Red Ranger) wanted to kick some hypertrophic putty villainry, he would hit the button on his divine Morpher and I would twist my body around and plug into his t-rex at the hip and become the feet of Christ.

Which made me feel pretty cool. Until I realized that if this was true, the body of Christ would be a centipede, because there's lots of people who can be legs, and we can't just keep assigning everybody who got here late the job of being platelets just so they'll have something to do. We tried this in the American church, and all we got was a giant clot. 

In reality, (a reality which I realized this morning during time spent reflecting on Romans 12 and togetherness), the body of Christ is much, much different from this.

We're all supposed to be Christlike, yes? This is a statement well-founded in scripture and common sense. (Christ was a good guy, and good guys are good to be like.)

We're supposed to be a bunch of little Christs running around doing Christ things.

Except not all of us can walk.

This is where the verse at the top of the page comes into play. Romans 5 says (at least in the ESV), we are members of the body of Christ, and "individually members one of another." This, upon closer inspection, is a mind-bending statement. It seems to say that we are modular people.

I am not the foot of a Megazord (MegaLord?). I am your foot. But you are my hand. And he is my eye.

I am not just the foot of the body of Christ. I am your foot, and your body belongs to Christ.

Seen this way, the body of Christ is not one huge, ecclesiastic lump of stagnant flesh and unnecessary organs. It is a million mini-Christs, buzzing about God's work on borrowed wings like Dr. Frankensteins own hive. And a million hands (or antennae, or mandibles, I don't really make lots of bee analogies) make light work.

So don't spend time worrying about how you, a puny half-crippled foot, are going to move the entirety of the abstract, ineffable, lazy single body of Christ. Find one of the little bodies of Christ that needs to take a step (or receive a well-placed kick), then find another one, then another one, and THEN we'll have started doing something.

I'm tired. I'm out.

I love you, Seth