Extending Beyond Ourselves in the Body of Christ

There is a beyondness to life I have held in the hands of my soul. A place where the parallel lines come together (though I have not seen this place). Throughout human searching, we have posited this place in a far away realm, though there was one who taught that it encroaches upon us everywhere.

I have not seen this place, but the notion that we swim in it tastes of the kind of irony that calls to me (and that refuses to let me go). To say "beyondness" gives me a way to put my fingers on this relentless, undeniable itch of my consciousness - a maddening truth that eludes me just when I look for it, but that teases me like a cricket in the corner of my bedroom. I live in this place.

The Body of Christ and the Kingdom of God. The Way. These keys, these talismans create a framework for exploration, for exploring the beyondness. Yet for many they seem to stand for the end of the journey - they circumvent the journey altogether. We - all of us - can only attest to what we know. And some of us must guard the walls while others are driven to move out ahead in the darkness.

The Body of Christ holds together the grace of the incarnation, Immanuel; the sacrificial healing work of the crucifixion; and the miraculous hope of the resurrection, both in the person of Jesus (who becomes the Messiah) and in the lives of all who follow The Way. The last two cannot be teased apart - the resurrected body and the body of his followers and disciples - who have unfortunately come to be called (and who identify themselves as) merely believers.

Life in the Body of Christ goes far beyond belief. We who are members of this body do not accede to some principle or doctrinal concept. We give our lives entirely over to the will of Christ. I write in the general sense of this yielding, because not one of us can live each moment in the path of the Master. Yet his hold on us is fierce and unrelenting, perhaps especially when we attempt to thwart it and go our own way.

I offer this caveat when writing about anything (will, desire, identity) that could be construed as "mine": the Way of following Jesus the Messiah involves coming to know myself from God's perspective, reconstruing the way I understand who I am. This process leads to what Christians call "dying to self" and the miracle of "new life in Christ".

Jesus leads me to a larger comprehension of who I am - a relational understanding of myself as a member of the Body of Christ a body which encompasses all of creation, and not merely the church, or any subset of that creation). The themes of dying and rising again are typically thought of primarily in an ethical sense, but if the definition of "sin" includes this larger sense of life in God, then dying and rising "in Christ" contextualizes all ethical considerations (good and bad behavior) as manifestations of my understanding of "self".

Here is what I mean: if I understand my identity solely from my personal perspective, I also define "the good" from that perspective as well. Self-preservation and gratification become the highest aims and drive all my ethical considerations. In the epistles, this ethical behavior is called the way of "the flesh" and "captivity" to (false or distorted) desire. But if I understand myself as a member of the Body of Christ, the perspective of my desires enlarges beyond the narrow horizon of my "self" and I identify with the "other" (and by this I mean any "other") as part of my self.

Anyone who has experienced love for another person (or perhaps also for another animal, or even a special place) can attest to this enlargement of perspective and desire. As love grows, what begins as a largely selfish desire can expand imperceptibly but powerfully into life with and for another. The Prayer of St. Francis celebrates this love in the phrase "for it is in giving that we receive". When the desire of my partner (or friend, or child, or parent, or lover) conflicts with my own, we seek a mutual reconciliation, or offer each other the gift of subordinating our self-limited desire in order that the one we love might be fulfilled. Sacrifice is certainly one manifestation of this giving attitude, but so also is mutual fulfillment.

The Pauline correspondence includes a statement about a spouse whose desire is for her (or presumably his) partner. When my "self" becomes inextricably related to all "others" in the Body of Christ, my desire expands to consider the needs and concerns of others, in the spirit of a marriage partnership (a union where two are joined as one). As Paul writes, when one experiences joy or sadness, all experience joy or sadness in the Body of Christ.

This unity of identity, perspective and desire in the human community (and perhaps also in all creation - the community of the cosmos) relates us all to what humans have for ages called God. Jesus the Messiah lived in a constant state of awareness of his relatedness to God (a state he consistently called "The Kingdom of God") and invited his followers to experience the "drawing near" of this Way of being in community with others and, through them, with God.

The fourth Gospel includes Jesus' bold claim that he was constantly motivated and moved by the will of God: "The Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise (John 5:19 NRSV). This understanding of God's will involves not necessarily (or merely) knowledge we can know; those who inhabit the Kingdom of God experience life animated by God's desire - God's love for all creation and all humanity. Life in Christ cannot be reduced to a system of belief - it reorients my identity entirely in union with God and the whole of creation. And this radical reorientation makes possible a new life in Christ, inspired and empowered by God's love for all.

Dallas Willard, a contemporary Christian theologian, has defined the Kingdom of God as "that place where God's will is perfectly done". The opening petition of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples in Matthew 6:9-13 bears witness to the fact that "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" and connects the concepts of God's Kingdom and God's will. Later in the same prayer, Jesus reverses the formula, where God's forgiveness of "us" reflects our own forgiveness of "others".

Like the Body of Christ metaphor, the Kingdom of God encompasses all creation in a cosmic perspective that redefines our identity. New actions and behaviors that reflect a deep respect and regard for others flow from this identity "in Christ". Jesus radically defined this new identity for his disciples by inviting each one of us to become a "servant of all". Thomas Merton, in his introduction to The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings of the Desert Fathers of the fourth Century writes: "Love takes one's neighbor as one's other self...It is hard to really love others if love is to be taken in the full sense of the word. Love demands a complete inner transformation - for without this we cannot possibly come to identify ourselves with our brother [or sister]. We have to become, in some sense, the person we love. And this involves a kind of death of our own being, our own self."

Choosing to serve others involves a mastery over the delusion of our selfish desires that frees us to love others. Laying down (aside) our lives for the sake of God's love for the Other leads us to share in the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah in our lives. We become the Body of Christ dwelling in the Kingdom of God. Doing for others as we would have done to ourselves results from this expanded notion of Self - this behavior signifies that Jesus has accomplished the transformation of our individual, solitary life into the life of God. We are One, even as Jesus and the Father are One.