being the body of christ

It was neat that one of the Scripture passages in August came from Romans 12, including these verses:

4 As in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, 5 so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. 6 We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; 7 ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; 8 the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

Antony liked to point out that it was Jesus who was the pastor of the church, not him; the board outside the church building says so.   In a similar way, Paul never says he is the head of the Christian body.  It is Jesus who is the head.  Losing our rector is a sad event for us, but God could use it to make us more of a church, not less of a church.  In the church at Rome to which Paul wrote, there was no one on the payroll to do the church’s work; the members of the church were the church.  For the foreseeable future at St Barnabas, that is how it will be for us. 

Paul then notes that within the church there were lots of different “gifts.”  Some of these look quite ordinary human capacities, such as showing compassion.  Others look more extraordinary, such as prophecy.  Yet others come somewhere in between.  Paul implies that we all have some gift.  The list he gives is not designed to be a comprehensive one – he gives other lists elsewhere in the New Testament.  So your gift may well be something not mentioned here.  The important thing is for each of us neither to overvalue nor to undervalue the gift that we have, and to be committed to letting it make its contribution to the life of the body.  Over the next few months, we at St Barnabas could do that, and live our life as the body of Christ.