Being the Body
St. Paul told us in his letter to the Corinthians that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Our physical body cannot be separated from the breath of our creator, God. We embody God – the Holy Spirit. In fact, our bodily senses can help us encounter the risen Christ. Perhaps the best example of this is when the disciples were conversing with the risen Jesus while on the road to Emmaus. They could not recognize him until Jesus broke the Bread – his body. The embodied Holy Spirit within us recognizes the Jesus in the bread and the wine.
My heart and soul are not separate from my body, nor is my mind. My spiritual nature is embodied in flesh. The sacredness of the human body, or what makes the human body holy, is that it is a temple holding the Holy Spirit. Have you found that the closer you are to Jesus the more you see Jesus in others? The Holy Spirit embodied in my temple greets the same Holy Spirit in your temple. And what I find more profound, when I consume the bread and wine with my physical body, Jesus consumes my soul. We are one.
How could I, who is embodied by the Holy Spirit, and who has consumed Jesus, not look first for Christ in my family, neighbor, and stranger? When my body was baptized, I was plunged into Christ. My body, my temple, is clothed in Christ. St. Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.“
In Christ there are no labels or categories of people. Unity cannot exist in a system of dividing people by category. So to Paul’s list we could add; no black or white, gay or straight, rich or poor, even no democrat or republican. In a country so divided, and sadly our churches as well, how can we be unified if we cannot see Jesus in others, and even in ourselves? How could racism, or any “ism” exist, if the first face I see is that of Christ, and the human body, a true temple of God.
How painful it is, once I’ve seen Christ in the other, to remember that every act of violence against a human body is an act of violence against the very temple of the Holy Spirit. The Body of Christ is the way of peace and reconciliation. And to receive the peace of Christ that passes all understanding we have to confess our sins, both as individuals and as a community.