On Monday, I shared what  my husband taught me about God. But there’s more to the story of the incarnation (and more to body theology) than our individual connection with God.

The experience is also corporate.  We teach each other about God every day, whether we intend to or not.

We all know the negative impact Christians can have on each other and on the world with careless statements of judgment and intolerance, falls from pedestals into sexual sin or greed, the authoritarian parent who teaches young children to fear punishment, not to mention the dark elements of our Church’s history (Crusades, Inquisition) we’d rather forget.

We understand and interact with God and with each other through the lens of our own experience.  Sometimes our experience has influenced us negatively, but we can also redeem our experience of who God is and who we are because of God through one another.

This is what body theology is all about.  This is why Paul’s metaphor of the community of God as a human body is so apt.  Our corporate (all together, working in unity within our great, beautiful, and necessary diversity) function in the world is to be the body of CHRIST — the community of God encouraging and sharpening one another — and the BODY of Christ — the community of God in action in the world according to the example, teaching, and calling of Jesus.

We have a responsibility to represent the truth about who God is and who we are in Christ to everyone we meet, not just with our mouths but with our actions. 

For all the people in the world  (like me!) who have deep-seated trust issues, we have the opportunity to show people God is trustworthy by being trustworthy ourselves.  For all the people in the world who are at heart struggling with a seemingly unshakable sense of shame and un-loveliness, we have the opportunity to show people God loves them by loving them ourselves.

This is not to glorify ourselves but to work by our small and unique activity in the world to point to the truth that is fuller and greater and more complete than anything we can experience on our own.

For this reason, social justice is necessary.  For this reason, gathering together as the community of God is necessary.  We cannot see the truth fully on our own.  Our individual lenses are small and dirty and fractured.  In the words of C. S. Lewis, we are bent.

We — and by we here I mean every human being — need each other to know the truth of God fully, to experience God fully, through relationship as we have been designed to receive and understand ourselves and the world around us.  We do not exist in a vacuum. We experience our lives among others and in the world.

Whether we like it or not, whether we intend to or not, we are affecting the lives of those around us, and we are representing the truth about God to those around us.

Let’s take advantage of the opportunity to speak (and act) into the lives of others with purpose and intention as we learn more about the truth of God together.