Christ has no body but yours

 

Sunday 15^th November – 2 before Advent

Zephaniah 1: 7, 12-18. The God of blood-curdling vengeance is given full rein here. What starts with carnage against Israel ends with carnage against the whole world. There is a certain logic here though. If the Jews are supposed to be “a light to the gentiles” but in fact produce only darkness, then their fate will be shared. At any rate the passage warns against indifference or neutrality towards God who will “not do good, nor will he do harm” (v.12)

1 Thessalonians 5: 1-11. There is no timetable for Christ’s return and so Paul urges constant readiness using martial metaphors of a breastplate and a helmet. In other words, for a Christian, the answer to the question “When will the day of the Lord come?” is always “Now!”. This is a message that Christians living 2000 years after these words were written still need to take on board. God stands at both the beginning and end of all life “the alpha and the omega” and the question is not so much of timing but remaining faithful to the promise that Christ means salvation.

Matthew 25: 14-30. So, “God supports the capitalist system” is probably not supposed to be the take-home message of this piece. A “talent” was a weight of about 100 pounds so about 6000 Denarii, so to have even one was an extraordinary amount of money to play with. To have five meant extreme wealth. The church has always allegorized the talent to mean something more like our modern understanding of “Talent” or more like “spiritual riches” or “spiritual gifts”. If you have been given these gifts we should use them, whatever they are, for the good of the whole church to build up the body. Squandering a spiritual gift is almost a direct rebuke to God. The message is of course that whatever we have, we should use it for the good of the body of Christ so that it functions well, firing on all cylinders!

It is a naturally difficult thing for a Christian to come to terms with but what we believe as Christians today doesn’t have to be exactly what Paul or the apostles believed then.

The Parousia or the return of Christ in glory – the so-named second coming- is a prime case in point. Most of the early church, Paul included, (at least when he wrote this first letter) believed in the imminent return of Christ in their lifetimes. The end of the world was nigh.

Christ would appear to everyone all at once all over the world and take his followers up in the sky to be with him forever and the world would be at an end

This belief, known as Millennialism, was no doubt a powerful galvanising force, gave them a sense of urgency and every religion has millennial movements within it, including from time to time Christianity.

What unites Millenialists from all religions through the ages, including the early Christian church, is one rather obvious fact – they were all wrong.

Christ did not come again in his lifetime as Paul expected to take those believers still alive into the clouds to be with Christ

They were wrong in the literal sense of course. But the symbolism of the coming of Christ in glory still has a central place in Christian faith but it has to be interpreted sensitively. And Anglicans, like mainstream Christians everywhere are not Biblical literalists. Even so, few Christians are willing to just disregard what is written in scripture, so we need to re-interpret the text in a careful and spiritual way.  

The underlying reality underpinning the belief in return of Christ is the final defeat of evil and the triumph of God’s purposes.

Jesus never appeared in the sky but what definitely did happen in those early years though is that the church came into being – the church being a community of people  who have been freed from the power of sin in their lives, and God rules as king in an inward and spiritual way. Christ is present when the body of Christ is present

This is a foreshadowing of the final coming of God’s kingdom – the day of the Lord – the coming again of Jesus on the clouds of heaven.

In the Bible the phrase “second coming” just doesn’t appear. It is an interpretation of the word “Parousia” literally the “being present” of Jesus.

The “being present” of Christ – the Parousia – the second coming – is imminent in every moment of time.  

For such a community of believers Christ has already come in glory because he lives in them and is the binding spirit that constitutes us as Christ’s body. And obviously this did happen in Paul’s lifetime.

We are the first-fruits of the great triumph of God at the end of time.

In this way, the theological and spiritual integrity of the texts is maintained not in the literal sense but re-imagined in the light of historical facts.

Christ is present when I act in a Christ-like way, when someone loves, when the spirit of Christ is evoked in the Eucharist.

And this body of Christ – this community that embodies the love of God - needs all hands on deck when it comes to expressing God’s love in our lives which means “not burying our talents in the ground” in the words of the gospel parable.

We all have different gifts and abilities, which is the meaning the slaves being given different amounts – 5, 2, and 1 talent but whatever we have been given we should use them to the full in the service of God.    

Christ present and active wherever you as a believer are is the presence of Christ in any and every situation and this way of perceiving the parousia of Christ – his being present – is what lies behind that famous piece of writing by Teresa of Avia.

 

 

 

 

Teresa of Avila (1515–1582)

Christ Has No Body

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.