ASTAR, sea star, star wars

Ugh.  Before I even start writing, I know what's going to happen.  You see, when I talk about Astar, a robot, one of two things is going to happen.  Either:

a) You grew up in the 80s and will get a shot of insta-nostalgia when I talk about him, or
b) You're a young tech savvy punk who has never heard of this in any way whatsoever.

Well, consequences be darned, here's a video of Astar from the 1980s doing what he does best, i.e. death defying stunts and limb removal.

This was classic Canadian content right there, and gets to the heart of what our great nation is all about: It's stylish, weird, and has a message.  And that message is very simple: a fun loving robot can put his arm back on, but human beings can't.  You lop off an arm, and I'm pretty sure that you'll be doing an impression of a slot machine in pretty short order.  The human body is a marvel of design and engineering, but it doesn't do what we honestly wish it would do most of the time: If you cut part off, it doesn't grow back.  

Now, this seems like a bit of a cruel joke, given that there are many species in nature that are unencumbered by such an issue.  Check out the starfish, or more accurately, the sea star.  Now, you know that they have a whole bunch of arms (between five and five thousand), and you'd perhaps expect them to be able to grow arms back if they get removed.  No problem there.  But the sea star can do something wholly remarkable:  From a removed arm, the sea star can grow a whole new sea star.  Bet you never saw THAT coming!  

It's funny that you never saw that coming, because it's something that you sort of expect to happen as a Christian in a church, isn't it?  You see, this last week was the reading from Corinthians all about how we as Christians are part of the body of Christ.  It's a long, elaborate metaphor, which remains one of the best metaphors for membership in a Christian church.  It is so precisely because the human body is one of the few things that we have a really intimate relationship with.  That is to say, we know it in and out, because it's ours, and we have to live with it and in it and it is us and we are its.  Or, as Norm MacDonald would say: "You don't have a soul, you are a soul.  You have a body."

The body of Christ image is painted for us by Paul in first Corinthians, where it says this much:

¹² Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body,so it is with Christ. ¹³ For we were all baptized by^[a] one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. ¹⁴ Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
¹⁵ Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. ¹⁶ And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. ¹⁷ If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? ¹⁸ But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. ¹⁹ If they were all one part, where would the body be? ²⁰ As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
²¹ The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” ²² On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, ²³ and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, ²⁴ while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, ²⁵ so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. ²⁶ If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
²⁷ Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. ²⁸ And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. ²⁹ Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles?³⁰ Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues^[b]? Do all interpret? ³¹ Now eagerly desire the greater gifts.

Paul writes a big old block of text, but his underlying point is sound:  We are members of one body.  Now what on earth does it mean for us to be members of one body?  That means first of all that we're all part of one bigger system, which is part of the appeal of our faith.  You are plugged into something much bigger than yourself, something that goes back older than time itself.  The head of the body of Christ, we learn from Colossians, is Christ.  And all of us are his various body parts, and systems.  All good so far, right? We get that.  And we've all got a specific job to do, as in the endocrine system handles the insulin business, the digestive system handles the snack times, and the lymphatic system does whatever it does.  And after a while, we see how we fit into the church that we exist in.  No problem there.  But then there comes the natural human inclination, in that we desperately want to find people like ourselves, and latch onto them.  And your church  may not have people like you there.  It may not have suburban twentysomethings, or young families, or youth, or heck, even seniors.  And it's what we do, we look for folks who are just like us, and latch onto them like crazy.  But the body of Christ was not supposed to be like that.  Although eyes want to be with other eyes, if it was nothing but eyes, things wouldn't go too terribly well for anyone.  The eyes may be glamorous, they may be the windows to the soul, but unfortunately, if they're detached from everything else, then even they themselves stop seeing.  You get a whole bunch of feet together and they stop walking.  They just sit there.

These are feet with other feet.

Together, these feet are nothing.  They're just feet on their own.  They have no agency, they're done walking.  They have nothing on their own.  Vacant, deprived of life, they're all done.  But this is what we want, or so we think.  We think we want things that are just like us, and only things that are just like us.  And we are wrong.  The body only works as long as the body works.  It only functions as long as all the parts are working together.  But we Christians have a really funny idea about how we fit in, because we feel as though we are starfish.

We honestly get to thinking that we, if we break off from the head, will carry on. And not just carry on by ourselves as a floating limb, but that we will spontaneously grow the rest of the body, just like a starfish.  We feel as though we can drop off from the body of Christ, and then grow a whole new body of our own, based off of us.  But it just isn't all that likely.

Unless you're a starfish, and you're not, the odds of you successfully navigating this maze are about zero.  You lose a limb, and it's gone.  You drop an arm, and not only are you not like Astar, but the arm you drop isn't going to grow into a whole new body.  It stops there.  The body goes on, and the arm withers and dies, once removed from the body.  That's all.

That's the bad news.  Or maybe it isn't.  The thing is, that if the body could just re-grow a lost limb, then the limbs would be replaceable.  But they aren't.  You cut off an arm, and that arm was one of only two.  And you don't necessarily get another shot at it.  The reason that Jesus came to earth, lived and died, was precisely because as members of the body of Christ, you and I are irreplaceable.  He doesn't just get to grow limbs back, though we may think he might.  He's not a starfish either.  You and I, as branches sliced off, had to be grafted back on.  As limbs removed, we had to be sewn back, because nothing like us was ever going to come back.  It's not like bacteria, where they're identical and reproduce by just separating off into identical versions of themselves, no no no.  It's a matter of the individual bits being massively important.  You cut them off, and you have to reattach them back, because nothing close to that is ever going to grow back.

Christ's love for you has that kind of impetus.  The separation that we felt from him was so staggering that it caused him to take on human flesh, dwell among us, live and die to graft us back onto him.  Knowing that each and every single one of us is a unique part, a vital component, and a precious snowflake, he did what he had to do to get the body back together.  And this is why it pains him so terribly when we reject him - because it's the same as when an organ or system rejects the host.  Something that was meant to be there is no longer, there is an absence, a void, a gap that desperately demands to be filled.  And it is not being filled.

And so what do you do?  If you are missing a body part, odds are you can live without it, without a foot, or without a gall bladder, or tonsils, or a thyroid, or whatever.  But even as you're missing this thing, it becomes abundantly clear that your body is incomplete, and is crying out for this lost item to be replaced.

I cannot believe that I'm about to nerd myself out like this, but for goodness' sake, it's happening for real.  The idea is that we aren't like B'omarr monks, from Star Wars.  They were a sect of monks who thought that the best thing to do would be to remove their bodies completely, and just be brains in jars attached to droids, so they could better ponder the universe without the sensory distractions that go along with, you know, having a body.  And there's a great subsect of Christianity that feels this way too, that feels as though everything regarding matter is bad, that the human form is dreadful, and as soon as we're done suffering through this body, then we can finally be free of it.  But it really isn't the case.  Why oh why would God make bodies, or anything for that matter, if it was all universally bad and wrong?  It went wrong, that we know.  It went wrong and bad a long time ago, and we're still suffering through that.  But that doesn't mean that it always was.

At the end of all things, according to the Christian faith, you have a body.  You're not without one forever.  Your body, fully and complete, without spot or blemish, without the taxing weight of the second law of thermodynamics.  Without frailty or disease.  For any who think that the idea is to be spirit people floating around without a body somewhere in heaven, you've missed a pretty important part of creation: that before the fall, people had bodies, and they were good.  After his resurrection, Christ had a body, and it was good.  And both Christ and Elijah ascended into heaven in their bodies, and that was good.  In a sense, then, Norm MacDonald was a little bit off.  It's not as though you are either a body or a soul.  You're both.  Because you're human.  And being without any part would just be wrong.

PJ.