Thoughts on Community and the Body of Christ

You stand behind your concrete wall

communing with yourself and God,

and as you gaze on the world through tiny holes,

you wonder why it is so hard to love.

I came to visit it you, to try to know you,

but there was no door to knock on,

no windows to look through,

and all I could see was your eyes

looking at me through the tiny holes.

You, hidden in your concrete cask

with no entrance and no exit,

and I standing there out in the open—

it wasn’t very comfortable,

so I gave up and turned away

to build a concrete wall of my own. 

I wrote this poem many years ago about a friend whom I'd tried to get to know on a deeper level but met me with cool resistance and an independence that left no room for companionship. Their seclusion incited seclusion in me. Last night as a group of us gathered in the Simons' living room to grapple with the spiritual and practical applications of being the body of Christ, I was faced with the realization that while I'd judged this friend in the past for a standoffish nature, I too had likely exuded this to others over the course of my relatively short adult life, and although I'd made leaps and bounds in living a more open life, I still held up many walls. 

While I may come across as exceedingly open and transparent, there is an inner wall that holds people at bay, that prevents me from accepting love and trusting that love. I think this is common in a lot of us and is a device we use as protection in the case we have to run. We don't fully give over our hearts for the sake that they just might get broken.

Anyone who's been to summer camps or youth group has likely hear the somewhat cliche analogy of taking a stick from the fire and seeing how it burns out quickly apart from the whole. However, if the body of Christ truly operates as a body, then to be apart from it implies that you are not part of the body of Christ. There is no remote hand or eye of the body. There is no option to run.

I read recently that one of the signs of being a follower of Jesus is that you love his people. If I'm honest, I'll tell you that I don't trust the body. There are parts of the body that offend me. There are parts that have hurt me. There are part that I have offended and hurt. There has even been a time where I've sought to separate myself from the body and remain emotionally detached to be my own island. 

My friend Natalie said it best last night that the followers of Jesus aren't just a family or a team. They are far closer, and the nature of the relationship demands unity. We are all equal because we all comprise the physical representation of Jesus to this world as one. It is no wonder that as I have allowed resentment to pull me apart from the body I've felt physical pain in my gut, a restless mind, and unquenchable loneliness, and my actions have influenced others. 

I don't claim to know how to happily live as the body of Christ without all the tension and conflicts that arise so often, but I do know that at the core of it is being with people - not just being in the same room, but being present, being vulnerable, being honest, being willing to allow God's blessings to be poured through your life and to accept His blessings as they pour through their lives. At the core of it is celebrating God's creativity in his creation and calling on each of each other's lives and walking along side each other as we live that out. At the core of it is speaking truth, the words of Jesus into each others' lives and to be able to trust that they love you above themselves. At the core of it is acting as the body of Christ to the world. Jesus loved, taught, fed, healed, offered mercy, comforted, held, touched, listened, and reconciled the world around him.

It seems that with every year Joe and I learn about living in community by being in it, we see a bigger picture of the person of Jesus and his vision for the world. Sure, the deeper we get in life with people the more often we feel the sting of hurt feelings and haphazard words, but the quicker we find heeling and reconciliation. The more we see that we were created to be a part of this, we find our identities not only as individuals whom God loves but as a people whom God loves.