The apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, 1 Corinthians 12: 24-27 “But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it,that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
Paul was not referring to an actual physical body, but rather to the body of all believers. We who follow Him in some mysterious way become part of a whole, which he refers to as the “body of Christ”. We are not all in the same location nor do we have the same function, but we are in the body. Lately it seems there have been repeated blows to the body.
Romans 14 says it even more directly “7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.”
Lately, our hearts are broken for those who have died for the Lord. Either directly because they carried the name of Christians or indirectly because the calling on their lives has sent them to places where they will be hated or despised simply because they cared enough to want to meet the needs of those in distress.
For years, it seemed we needed to drag out Foxes Book of Martyrs to discuss those who were willing to die rather than renounce their faith. Not so anymore, we only have to turn on the news. It is not that these instances did not occur in the meantime. It is rather that we did not know or maybe even did not care to know the degree to which the other members of our body were suffering.
I confess to feeling a tremendous amount of empathy for the family of the young aid worker killed recently. Because she came from my country, she was of my race; she was the age of my children or because I have a family member who travels to that region for nearly the same reason; I can identify. However, that ancient family of believers, the Coptic Church, now has widows and fatherless children who will have to live with trauma and loss as well as continued threats to their own lives. The young girls kidnapped in Africa who are now slaves or forced to ‘marry’ their terrorist captors. Are they as often in my prayers?
Even, if I may step into dangerous territory here, if I had been as concerned for those innocents killed who are not of my faith, my country. Whose simple, humble lives have been destroyed by bombs and drones and terrorists for reasons that, lacking internet and access to the outside world, they cannot possibly understand. Death came through no fault of their own. John Donne wrote many years ago.
No man is an island, Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
Do I truly feel that any man’s death diminishes me? Could it ever be that the death of innocent school children in Pakistan is as traumatic for me as a school shooting in my home town? When Jesus cried over Jerusalem, he wasn’t just concerned for his own followers. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
It is Lent and on this Ash Wednesday I feel the need to repent for the callousness of my petty concerns. Even for the amount of my prayer time that is consumed by myself and my small world.
Lord, what part of your body is hurting, even facing death? Please be close to that one! What innocent child is away from Your body that You long to gather to Yourself? Please have mercy on that one!