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1C. The Senses in the Body of Christ 
The Mystical Body Relies on Christ her Head. Christ gives sustenance and energy and the knowledge of the world around. The human head contains four out of five of the senses. Without sight, hearing, taste and smell we are spiritual vegetables completely out of touch with our surroundings. The Mystical Body tastes with its mouth, hears through its ears, sees using its eyes and smells via its nose. Only the sense of touch is shared with the rest of the Body through its largest organ, the skin. The human mouth in the head consumes food and drink and inhales air on behalf of the whole frame. The Head's mouth brings in all the nutritional needs of every part. In the same way He "fills everything in every way"(7).
Leading Voice of Jesus
Christians need to be constantly aware of the leading voice of Jesus. We are spiritually dumb until Jesus communicates for us. Every Christian depends upon a connectedness to the Jesus Head to live the Christian life. A young woman in a wheelchair commented, "My spinal chord is severed and my brain has no connection with my body. Sometimes my arms and legs flail around without warning and out of control! I'm a perfect example of a body separated from its head."
The present church structures need to rediscover the Christ Head and be obedient to Him. A new model is needed which acknowledges Christ as the head and links together the limbs and bodily parts. That new vehicle is the Body of Christ. It will be successful even in today's indifferent and sometimes hostile secular culture. In the Early Church, when all seemed against the Jesus people, they succeeded spectacularly. We shall also not just get by but conquer gloriously when we rediscover the Mystical Body.
The Body in Society
The Christian church of the second Millennium, containing the Body of Christ, lives and breathes in an entirely different environment than ever before! Society has gone through many changes in the last several hundred years from an agricultural to an industrial to an informational base. Today's culture is often indifferent and sometimes hostile. While technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, human beings have become less human and more animal like. John Nesbitt's book "Megatrends" speaks of this epic transformation with the insightfully precise phrase, "the ground has shifted."
Today's church is being forced to move in order to avoid slipping through the cracks. Some parts of our Western Christianity are already disappearing. Loren B Mead writes, "We are facing a fundamental change in how we understand the mission of the church. Beneath the confusion we are being stretched between a great vision of the past and a new vision that is not yet fully formed."
"Local congregations are now being challenged to move from a passive, responding role in support of mission to a front-line, active role. The familiar roles of laity, clergy, executive, bishop, church council, and denominational bureaucracy are in profound transition all around us"(8). The institutional church of the Second Millennium is in a tail spin. Weekly church attendance in the traditional denominations has halved between 1950 and 1990. Still, eighty five percent of the population still affirm their belief in God! Many people think of themselves as Christians without seeing the necessity to be connected to any church.
Belief Without Belonging
Belief without belonging just does not work. Secular society asserts that "one doesn't have to go to church to be a Christian." But individual Christians cannot exist outside the Body of Christ for any extended time without losing their identity as Christians. Away from the Body, the Christian initially experiences a heightened sense of false spirituality, the high of "the unimpeded Jesus in me!" As the weeks of absence from the faith community pass, this lapses into mere formality, until Christianity has no real impact on life anymore. We all need the weekly glow of fellow believers for our faith to burn brightly. Like the ember that falls from a burning fire, faith quickly grow cold on its own, but revives its warm redness when sat amongst the other coals.
Cafeteria Catholicism
Belief in God without belonging to the body of the church can be described as "Cash and Carry Christianity." It is akin to the Roman Catholic Church's so-called "Cafeteria Catholicism, "where the faithful themselves decide to choose which regulations (like birth control) to obey or not to obey. Cash and Carry Christianity, involving belief but not belonging, is hindering both the Roman Catholic and Protestant institutional churches today. The individualism of our "Me" society has also damaged the personal role of the Christian.
The Protestant Church has played the salvation card to the point where it has lost sight of the sovereignty and grace of God. Church institutions have consequently suffered a decline in influence in the past several decades in favour of individual rights. Societal rights have taken a back seat to children's rights, prisoners' rights, and many others. Within the church, we have lost touch with corporate Christianity as the Body of Christ. The individual not the group has sadly become the foundational unit of society. Individual freedoms have to join hands with corporate rights in a just society.
Question for Discussion
1. How does Jesus use our senses?
Notes
(7) Ephesians 1.23. (8) "The Once and Future Church" Lorne Mead page 5.
"We are living members of his mystical body"
