suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
Paul uses the metaphor of “the body” for Jesus’ church several times, I think it comes from the seed of this encounter with the risen Lord. A light blinded him and he fell to the ground (what you do when you see the glorified Jesus). God calls to him and accuses this figure Apostle of persecuting Him! Paul had no idea who this was (though he was able to quickly guess) and how he had possibly been persecuting the Lord! He didn’t understand, as we too sometimes forget, the church IS Jesus (His body). How was Paul persecuting Jesus? He was ravaging the church, what you do to the church, you do to Jesus. Now, we don’t persecute the church, but we are often guilty of ignoring the church… setting Jesus to one side while we do our own thing. It doesn’t work like that. You want to be close to Jesus? Be close to His church. That’s not a mystical metaphysical idea, go to church…
