“With this in mind I make my prayer.” That is how our reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians begins. Our passage starts with chapter 3, verse 1, but clearly something is already in mind. But what?
To find out, I go back to the beginning of the letter—to that little salutation that Paul always includes. He begins: “From Paul, Apostle of Christ Jesus, commissioned by the will of God, to God’s people at Ephesus, believers incorporate in Christ Jesus.
“Incorporate”. . . interesting word. Important too, for he repeats it a few lines later. Incorporate means to be embodied. The center part of that word derives from corporeal—as in corporeal punishment: that method of discipline that the schools are no longer allowed to do.
It refers to the body, but Paul is not referring to the body of the historical Jesus. He is not talking about a baby in a manger. He is not really even using language referring to the person of the historical Jesus. He is using body in a cosmological sense. The body, as in the stuff of the universe.
He also writes in this first chapter that the whole “universe, all in heaven and on earth, might be brought into a unity in Christ” (Ep 1:10). In-corporate: to be brought into one body—a unity. “The many become one.”
And not just the universe as a whole—something entirely abstact—Paul also refers to Christ as the foundation stone of the Church. In Christ, he writes, the “whole building is bonded together and grows into a holy temple” (Ep 2:21). Paul tells us that God the father has appointed Christ Jesus to be the head of the Church. Again, we don’t see this commission given in the historical accounts of the life of Jesus. Paul is writing here in cosmological terms—the same kind of language that the author of the Gospel of John so often wrote in. We often hear our own pastor, Jonothan Edwards, use similar language when asking us, just who is the head of this congregational church. His answer, as well as Paul’s is that Christ is the head of the Church. The Church is the body of Christ. Think about this when you hear the words of institution later in our service when we celebrate communion. When J holds up the bread and says, “This is the body of Christ,” think of it referring to the Church. This is no mere metaphor—not for Paul. The Church, he writes, “holds within it the fullness of him [meaning Christ] who himself receives the entire fullness of God” (Ep 1:23). (That is the transitive property at work.) This is quite a statement. First wrap your head around the claim that Christ received the fullness of God and now, that the Church (as the body of Christ) “holds within it the fullness of” Christ. And you, when you partake of communion, you are joining yourself to the fullness of the Chruch, of Christ, of God, of everything.
Incorporate indeed. Unity. One body. The many become one. “With this in mind, I make my prayer,” Paul wrote. . . .
