Christ has no body but yours

This coming Sunday is “God’s Work, Our Hands” Sunday at Ascension. Our hands will be put to work after worship to assemble packages for people served by local food pantries. Each kit delivered will be part of God’s work in the world.

I’m not sure how leaders at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America came to choose the phrase “God’s Work, Our Hands” for this annual day of community service. I’ve always suspected it was inspired by a poem by Teresa of Avila, a 16th-century Catholic nun who spent much of her life in prayer and contemplation. Her poem goes like this:

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

Compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

This poem certainly captures the spirit of “God’s Work, Our Hands” as it invites us to serve as Christ’s hands, feet, and eyes.

If we stop to think about it, however, it might seem a bit strange that a woman who spent her life inside a convent seeking a mystical union with God should write such an activist poem, exhorting us to put our faith into practice by doing Christ’s work.

Part of the explanation is that the convent was not a haven from the world for Teresa. The convent offered plenty of opportunities to be of practical service.

But as a person of prayer and contemplation, Teresa would have focused not so much on what we can do for Christ, but rather on what Christ is doing in us.

Teresa would remind us that Christ is still working. Christ’s pleasure and desire is to work through flesh and blood; it is Christ’s nature to take flesh in the world, to be present with us here and now. Christ invites us to join him in the ways that he is already present in the world to heal,

bless, and serve.

See you in church,

Pastor David