It Does a Body Good
Sermon Title “It Does a Body Good” by Pastor Rosanna McFadden
Good morning! It is good to be back with you at Creekside. If you haven’t figured it out yet from reading the past few months of the Connection newsletter, this is a season when we have been, and will continue to be talking about the body of Christ. We gather each Sunday, and function in other ways during the week as the body of Christ. The Church — not just this church, but every church which claims the name of Christ — is the body of Christ. Bodies are made up of many people with many gifts, and we need all of those members to function in order for the body to work properly. This is what our reading from 1 Corinthians 12 was about. Paul sums this up in chapter 12, verse 27 by writing: Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. Fair enough, right? Even if you disagree with Paul or others who use this metaphor, I hope you can follow the logic of his metaphor.
But there is another meaning of the boy of Christ — one which is particularly relevant for us this morning, and one which Paul also explores in 1 Corinthians. The body of Christ is the bread of communion, which we share, along with the cup of Christ’s blood when we come together at the Lord’s table. Paul was writing because of a particular concern he’d heard about some folks in the church at Corinth who were abusing the invitation to the Lord’s table by bringing their own food, eating without sharing, and even getting drunk at the communion meal. This misunderstanding, or even contempt, for the body and blood of Christ in the elements of communion, was leading to hurt and division within the members of the body of Christ, the Church.
Just a note of warning: I am going to refer to trauma and abuse in a general way, if that is something you need to prepare yourself to hear. I hope it goes without saying that the Church, the body of Christ, should be a safe place. A place where those who are wounded can be welcomed and healed and made whole. Bessel van der Kolk is a psychiatrist who specializes in trauma, a professor and practitioner who has written a book called The Body Keeps the Score. It chronicles how our physical bodies know and carry trauma or abuse. Even when that trauma is not at the front of our consciousness., it is something our bodies know and are responses are conditioned by that trauma, even if we’re not aware of it. This impacts us personally, but it also changes how we relate to other people. He writes,
Trauma is a deeply communal problem: we are fundamentally social animals, and trauma profoundly affects people’s capacity to get along with others and be a cooperative and enjoyable member of the tribe.
Tragically, the Church — the body of Christ — has sometimes been a place where abuse has happened. I’m not talking about disagreements among peers, or hurt feelings or wounded pride, I mean abuse of power, and even sexual abuse. This is not just some other denomination somewhere far, far away; it has happened in the Church of the Brethren. This is a reality which must be reckoned with, because it is a reality which cannot be erased by good preaching and lovely rhetoric and well-crafted statements about healing. The body keeps the score, and when the body has been broken it needs relationships which hold and heal and tell the truth.
Here is the good news, and it is very good news. Although the body of the Church has been broken, and we each one of us have been wounded — either by significant trauma, or by a thousand tiny cuts, or maybe by both — we find our healing in the body and blood of Christ Jesus. Our service of communion begins with examination of ourselves and our behavior and motives. Have we harmed others by what we have done or what we have left undone? If so, this an opportunity to make it right. To go to that person, if possible, and confess and make it right, or at least have a reckoning of our own behavior and whether we can stop those destructive patterns and find a way to move past the guilt and shame we carry. And if we have been wounded by someone else, this is a time to be honest and to ask for what we need to move beyond the trauma toward healing.
The bread and the cup we will share this morning are symbols of Christ’s betrayal and brokenness and death — some of the worst emotional and physical trauma anyone can experience. And these are the emblems of our comfort, the means by which we can find wholeness and peace. Because the bread and the cup are symbols of Christ’s deep, profound, and unwavering love for us. Not because we’re entitled to them, not because we’ve worked so hard to earn them, but because we are part of Christ’s body. As human beings, we have been broken in the ways that Christ’s body and spirit were broken, and in his resurrection is our hope for healing and new life.Some of you may remember a 1980’s advertising campaign by the American Dairy Association. The tagline was Milk: It Does a Body Good. Do any of you remember that campaign? This has spawned a lot of memes which I will not repeat today, but as we prepare to enter into the service of communion, I want to invite you to consider what you need for the good of the body: your own body, and the body which you have chosen to be a part of today. We all can think of things which does a body harm; but what does a body good? This may be different than what makes a body comfortable. Telling the truth about ourselves or the trauma we have put on others is probably not going to be comfortable. But I believe that it does a body good. Knowing that Christ loves us no matter who we have been or what we have done — now that does a body good. Extending that love and grace to others around us, even as we hold them accountable for what they have done, that does a body good. Coming to the Lord’s table, knowing that we are welcomed and that we are accepted; that does a body good.