The Pain in the Ass Body of Christ

2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a
Psalm 51:1-13

Ephesians 4:1-16

John 6:24-35

In church yesterday, the focus of the sermon was on David's escapades with Bathsheba and the terrible crimes he committed against Uriah. Bishop Thornton gave a compelling sermon.

But, it was the reading from Ephesians that stuck with me. In this passage, Paul writes beautifully and poetically about the Body of Christ and how it is made up of people with many callings and many gifts and how its unity depends on, among other things, patience and love.

Paul writes that in order to lead a life worthy of our calling, we must bear one another in love.

After all, in the Body of Christ, we are all bound to one another, connected, and we cannot escape the reality that this means we are bound and connected to others with whom we have many differences, not only differences regarding gifts, but differences of personality, social class, income, behavior, stages of growth, points of view, theology, politics, social views, and on and on.

In my view, this makes the idea of the Body of Christ a most rigorous and demanding truth.

It's also a pain in the ass.

I find many with whom I share residence in the Body of Christ a pain in the ass and I'm sure many in the Body of Christ find me a pain in the ass, too.

There's nothing simple to do about this fact. I don't want to leave the Body of Christ and, in my best moments, I don't want these others to leave it either.

But, the fact of the matter is that residing with so many others in the Body of Christ means that I (and we) are deeply connected with people that we would have nothing to do with if it weren't for the Body of Christ. It means that we are called to love those whom we see as patently wrong, wrong-minded, hypocritical, lukewarm, shallow, arrogant, wrong in how they do things, wrong in their speech, wrong in their beliefs, even wrong in the way they worship. And they have to put up with me…and us.

On the face of it, residing in the Body of Christ seems like a reality that should make us feel really good. After all, it is a reality built on unity and love and in following the calling of Jesus Christ.

The difficulty is, and what makes this reality so rigorous, is that unity doesn't and can't mean agreement in thought, word, deed, or creed.

The rigorous calling that Paul articulates in this passage in Ephesians is to bear one another humbly, gently, lovingly, and patiently. It's a rigorous demand to bear with love those we can barely stand to be around.

The idea of the connectedness of the members of the Body of Christ has parallels to the Buddhist idea of the connectedness of all things. The reality of connectedness from the Buddhist perspective is much broader than the connectedness of those who share a faith. From the Buddhist perspective, each of us is connected to everything: all other people, animals, trees, stones, the material things in our lives, everything. To the Buddhist, since I am one with everything, what I do affects the whole web of connection. The idea of doing something to an animal or to another person or to oneself and being able to say, "Well, it only affected me" is impossible.

In Buddhism, the impact of good deeds as well as harmful ones resonates throughout all things and what others do affects each of us. To me, it's logical. The rigor of this point of view is that it makes each moment of each day and each action we perform consequential. The more we do what's good, what's right, the more the interconnected web of existence will be affected in constructive ways. Likewise, when we are destructive, all is affected.

Similarly, what each of us does within the Body of Christ affects the whole Body. Living the Christian life is a corporate experience. I think it is more corporate than individual. We are all a part of one another's salvation and when we sin, we do not only sin against God and harm ourselves and our conscience and our ability to think straight, we harm the Body of Christ. To switch metaphors, if we see the Body of Christ as cloth, when we sin we tear at the fabric of our shared existence in the Body of Christ. Likewise, when we are loving and do unto others what we would have them do unto us, the fabric is strengthened.

This is what makes being joined together in the Body of Christ so rigorous. It's not only that we are connected with and joined together with people we enjoy and others we don't like or have differences with – and that's hard enough – it's also the fact that how we live our lives in this Body of Christ affects all the other members. It makes each moment, each decision, each thing we do consequential, not only for ourselves, but for the whole Body.

It's a pain in the ass. It's typical. Being a Christian is often a pain in the ass.

If we had it our way, we would carry out our Christian lives in a bubble, having a personal, individual relationship with God. It would end there. I'd work out things with God on my own, keep it between God and me, and no one else would be affected.

But, no. That's not the way it is. We're with each other, stuck with some, joyous to be with others, and how any of us works out our salvation affects the whole Body of Christ and each of us is being affected by how others work out theirs.

In my life, the most immediate microcosm of this reality is the family. Everything every family member does affects every other family member and we are inextricably bound to each other. It's what makes family life wonderful, demanding, and, sometimes, a pain in the ass.

The other microcosm of the Body of Christ is the church I belong to. Our parish is not unified if you look at the variety of perspectives, political views (both secular and ecclesiastical), social views, and so on that we have. We find powerful union, however, in the bread and wine of the Communion – well, usually. Within our parish have been (still are? not sure) those who won't accept a Communion blessed by a woman priest. So, see, even in the Communion, where we partake of the Body of Christ, the Body of Christ is a challenge.

I wouldn't have it any other way. The biblical figures I most admire were pains in the ass: Moses, Nathan, Jeremiah, Elijah, Amos (to name a few), and, of course, that constant pain, Jesus. Jesus just doesn't let us off the hook. He challenged everything: Sabbath laws, treatment of the lepers, money exchange in the Temple, treatment of prostitutes, prisoners, and the hungry, attitudes toward Samaritans, even assumptions about the nature of the Kingdom of God.

My experience as a Christian is often joyous, comforting, warm, enlightening, compelling, stimulating, uniting, and liberating.

It can also be a pain in the ass.