Nearly always, when puzzling over the profound mystery of the Body of Christ, I find my thoughts returning to his famous provocation in Saint Matthew's gospel in which he tells his followers, "Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me."
This passage is read annually during Orthodox liturgy on the Sunday just prior to our initial preparations for the Lenten fast, what we in the business call "Meat Fare Sunday." The lectionary indicates that this gospel passage be read at this time, and our continued tradition encourages parishioners to keep their eyes on the spirit of the fast rather than focusing overmuch -- pharisaically, even -- on its strictures.
Fasting should ideally help us become a community of men and women who witness and perform, by their lives in Christ, a mystical union with Him, and with all others as well.
This stunning observation regarding Christ's being identified with us -- with all humankind -- occurs in the final parable among a good many that Christ shares with his disciples on the Mount of Olives, laboring to introduce those perplexed followers to what will become new life -- as we have come to speak of that life -- in Him. The radical, revisionary passage is worth another look in its entirety :
Then the king will say to those on His right hand, Come,
you blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty
and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger
and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me;
I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison
and you came to Me.
Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, Lord,
when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty
and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger
and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when
did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?
And the King will answer and say to them, Assuredly,
I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least
of these My brethren, you did to Me.
As vertiginous mysteries go, this one ranks among the most puzzling and most radical, being every bit as terrible as it is beautiful. Its corollary is no less so:
Then he will also say to those on the left hand,
Depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire
prepared for the devil and his angels:
for I was hungry and you gave Me no food;
I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink;
I was a stranger and you did not take me in,
naked and you did not clothe Me, sick
and in prison and you did not visit Me.
Then they also will answer Him also, saying, Lord,
when did we see You hungry or thirsty,
or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison,
and did not minister to You?
Then He will answer them, saying, Assuredly,
I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one
of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.
Our familiar English word, atonement (which, believe it or not, comes of combining at-one-ment*) was coined in the 16th century for the express purpose of re-infusing our theologies with a more vivid awareness of how Christ changes us from isolated, disconnected, dying flesh into communal, interconnected, vivified bodies -- by incarnation, participation, suffering, and death, He joins Himself to us. By way of resurrection, he recovers for all humankind a essential immortality.
As much as we may like to speak of this mystical union, and as much as many of us continue, week after week, to affirm it -- whether we choose to offer that affirmation in our creeds or in the midst of other yammering, doctrinal propositions -- this mystery of our partaking of Christ's person is not a mystery that we (and here I am speaking mostly for myself) manage consistently either to embody or even to appreciate.
And there remains one additional aspect of our being the Body of Christ that garners even less of our attention. I'm referring to our being the One Body, or as my friend the poet Li Young Lee has spoken of it, "There is just the one body -- nothing is unrelated to the whole."
That we are all mystically participant in the Holy Trinity through our partaking of Christ is but one face of the revolutionary shift occasioned by the God's becoming flesh; we are also thereby mystically united to each other, like it or not.
I'm not sure that I mean this in precisely the same way that my Taoist friend means it, but my hope is that we will all come to mean it more than we currently appear to do, and to act on it as well.
*"Atonement" was coined in the 16th century by William Tyndale, who sought to offer a more complete English gesture for the Hebrew concept of kaphar, meaning "to cover over." The word is an attempt to indicate the dual aspect of Christ's incarnation and sacrifice: the concurrent erasure of error and the re-connection of humankind to God.