The body consists of innumerable cells.\u00a0 Each of these has its own distinct life\u2013its own systems of nutrition, reproduction, and protection\u2013and yet these cells group together to form highly specialized organs that, in turn, make up a single body.\u00a0 The whole scheme, with its incredibly complex relationship of the parts to the whole and the whole to the parts, is astonishing to contemplate.\u00a0 And the makeup of the body is the Bible\u2019s explanation for the Church and for the relationship each Christian has with the others. This is the \u201cCommunion of the Saints\u201d that we celebrated yesterday on All Saints Day.We refer to \u201cmembers\u201d of our churches, just as we speak of \u201cmembers\u201d of clubs, organizations, and political parties.\u00a0 But \u201cmember\u201d originally<\/a> referred to a part of the body.\u00a0 To say that of someone in the church is to allude to 1 Corinthians 12, which develops the revelation that each Christian is an organ in the body of no less than Christ.<\/p>\n We know much more about physiology than they did in the first century\u2013the interrelationship of highly individualized cells and organs is more true of the body than most of the early readers would have known\u2013but we are so individualistic today in our modern American culture that we probably have even more difficulty in grasping it.\u00a0 But in the Church, we have an individual identity that is part of a larger corporate identity.<\/p>\n We might come to understand that we have a corporate identity in our family, nation, or culture.\u00a0 But this corporate identity, to our further surprise, is that of Christ!\u00a0 We are baptized into Him (12:13), and so we are part of Him, which is how His merit and His work saves us.\u00a0 This also means that we Christians are interconnected with each other.\u00a0 We are part of each other.\u00a0 When one part of the body is hurting, the whole body hurts, and when one part of the body experiences good things, we are all satisfied.<\/p>\n How odd that Christians are often so vicious to each other and so oblivious to each other\u2019s well-being.\u00a0 I guess it\u2019s like our physical bodies struggling with disease\u2013in some of which, as in cancer, AIDS, and lupus, the body turns against itself; in others, outside infections harm or even kill the body\u2019s cells\u2013so that we\u2019ll only know the fullness of both our own bodies and that of the Church, after our Resurrection.<\/p>\n But this is worth contemplating, and the paradigm is worth remembering in our relationships with each other.\u00a0 And that we constitute the body of CHRIST, that speaks to how He works through us and how we manifest Him in the world.<\/p>\n Here is the text from 1 Corinthians 12:<\/p>\n 12\u00a0<\/sup>For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.<\/span> 13\u00a0<\/sup>For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body\u2014Jews or Greeks, slaves[d<\/a>]<\/sup> or free\u2014and all were made to drink of one Spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n