Meditation: Psalm 16 and the Body of Christ (Abram Van Engen)
In some ways, the pieces by Elizabeth, Asher, and Brent collected here all belong together. They concern community, the gathering of the church and the inclusion of those who have long been isolated.
I wanted to reflect on that trio of pieces by relating something that happened to me during the pandemic. On Thanksgiving weekend of 2020, I tripped while jogging. Not a big deal, one might think. Yet somehow in that small act I dislocated my elbow, broke it in two places, shattered my radial head, and tore two ligaments. The surgeon later said my arm was basically unattached.
The accident upended my life. The arm I ruined is my dominant one, my right hand. And it appeared that I truly ruined it. I will never have the full use of my elbow again. My palm will never fully rotate, and I will never stretch my arm straight. A lot at the time remained unknown, including how much mobility would ever return. It seemed that I would lose many things I loved, like throwing a football with my son or playing tennis with my friends or golfing with my brothers. Certainly, the accident rendered me useless around the house. I couldn’t wash dishes or change diapers or even shower myself. My work centers on writing, and for the first few months, I could no longer type. Life changed.
Why do I bring this up in relation to those pieces? Because I think my experience relates to both the Providence of God in hard times and the community of Christ’s Body in the world.
There are hard and legitimate questions to ask about the Providence of God in the face of any trauma. I simply did not know if I would ever have a right hand again. I had some serious questions for God. An inch on either side of that sidewalk crack, and I would have been fine. I would have still been in control of my life.
Or so I would have thought. I have lived something of a charmed life, which I have always known and tried not to take for granted. Things have generally turned out well for me. And even the pandemic—a worldwide shutdown—had not entirely shaken me loose from my own sense of control. I try to live in gratitude. I do. But I often live as though I am the maker of my destiny, that my happiness depends on me and that I can make it happen.
Then there is a crack in the sidewalk, and it feels suddenly like the earth had opened up and swallowed me whole. The great tragedy of Covid, spread across the world, did not touch my heart or shake my confidence so much as that single misstep.
Whatever the trauma or tragedy, however personal or collective, we are always left wondering: where is the Providence of God in this?
For me, the Providence of God is most obvious, most often, in the people of God. God shows up in the Body of Christ. At the moment of the accident, a friend happened to be coming by and saw the commotion, and because she was there, she was able to take our baby for the afternoon so that my wife and I could get care without worrying about him. After the accident, we did not need to make our own dinner for a month. The church simply left meals on our porch. We had extra support to watch our kids, to buy groceries, to do laundry, and just to talk.
I say all this because I think it reflects a common thread across these pieces by Elizabeth, Asher, and Brent: the central importance of the Body of Christ as the presence of Christ in this world. It means gathering when we can gather. But it also means leaving the church to attend to those who have no way to gather.
During the pandemic, I kept reading devastating statistics about loneliness—about the number of people reporting they had no close friends, no one they felt close to. Loneliness statistics rose throughout Covid, to the point where the Surgeon General declared it an epidemic, a national disease.
We notice it now. Those surveys and stats took off in and through the pandemic. As Elizabeth writes, some have been isolated a long time with no one caring or taking note. The pandemic made us newly aware of them—and newly conscious of our need for community.
But it has also revealed how marvelous and extraordinary any community is in this broken world. That is what makes the Body of Christ—the church at its communal best—a true miracle. For so many people, it is, in itself, good news. In and through the Body of Christ, Christ acts. In the people of God, the Providence of God appears.
There is a deep hunger for connection and belonging, now more than ever, and each Christian must be the minister of that connection, the bringer of belonging. Wherever that community comes to us with life and healing, with a phone call or a meal, we find the pumping blood of the Body of Christ, the breathing in and out of a God very much alive in this world. The future events of our lives can be unpredictable, to say the least, but whatever happens to upend a false sense of security, we know that God is with us. And the way I know that best—the way I’ve seen it—is when the people of God show up.
What does that mean for the physical, in-flesh gathering of the church, and the isolation of those who can never attend? It means, we must both gather and send. It means coming together and going out to others. It means making communion in voice and touch and meal and help and every way of care and friendship. I, too, feel the joy of being together in person each Sunday once again. But we cannot forget those who cannot leave their home or gather in the building. The church has always been more than what happens in the building.
For me, the image of that broader community and the place of God’s providence comes from Psalm 16, which I read shortly after my accident. I fell on a Sunday afternoon. I had surgery on Wednesday. For the entire week, I shook with pain and worried what this would mean for me. On Friday morning, I finally had the mental space to read scripture. And the lectionary that day started with Psalm 16.
Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
I have no good apart from you.”
3 As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,
in whom is all my delight.
4 The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply;
their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out
or take their names on my lips.
5 The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
6 The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
7 I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
8 I have set the Lord always before me;
because He is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
my flesh also dwells secure.
10 For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
or let your holy one see corruption.
11 You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
For this psalmist, I noticed, joy comes in company. The writer turns to the saints, the excellent ones, and draws delight from them, with them. You cannot belong to God without joining God’s family. That’s part of the benefits of belonging. You cannot follow Christ without becoming a member of the Body of Christ. Individual Christianity, solo spirituality, has almost no place in the Bible. What we always see is a surrounding community, a people of God, that makes real the faith we profess.
I think it can be especially hard for those who have been hurt by their church to be told that a love of Christ means a love of Christ’s people, or a sense of belonging with them. And we see people claiming Christ as their Lord all the time who seem not to be Christ’s disciples at all. I am not saying that any person needs to be drawn into belonging with any specific church. What I am saying is this: those who actually love as Christ loved, the true saints of the land, form communion with us in our fellowship with Christ. They are still around, everywhere, and can still be our delight. And reentering the churches is one way to seek them out.
But this I noticed too. The movement of the psalm seems to go from danger through remembrance to rest. We start with a present-day threat: preserve me, keep me safe, O God. Something draws near. Then the psalmist moves to recollection: the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. And the poem ends in future tense: you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
It was the image of the right hand that gripped me most. What does verse 8 say: “With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” And yet look where the poem ends: not with God at our right hand, but with us at His right hand. This is what matters most. The movement from plea and pledge, through remembrance, to recognition and rest: from God at my right hand, to my rest at God’s right hand. For it is not my doing, but his presence which grants joy.
I read Psalm 16 that Friday morning, and I felt that hand holding me. I rose from the table then and joined my children in the living room. We had gathered for their school chapel on TV. All things remote. Everything a screen. But I was so grateful for that chapel service all the same. I joined others from our school community, spread out across all of St. Louis, and we sang the hymns together from our separate homes. In that moment, I experienced the delight of communion. I felt then—for the first time since the accident—a sense of peace, a kind of comfort, a calm. I will never forget that feeling.
It is a great gift to gather again on Sundays. It is a miracle to come together. Community must never be taken for granted. And being in person again, week after week, reinforces bonds that might have loosened when we were apart.
But a community is more than what gathers on Sunday. The people of God show up, and the hands of God reach out. For we know now, even better than before, the great dangers of isolation. A body breathes in and out, and no less the Body of Christ. It gathers and sends and gathers in again, using hands and screens and meals and visits and every means available so that no one is left alone.
Abram Van Engen is the Stanley Elkin Professor in the Humanities and Chair of English at Washington University in St. Louis and Executive Director of The Carver Project.
Read Elizabeth Coor’s previous article from 2020: “An Isolation-Aware Church”
Read Asher’s previous article from 2020: “Empty Churches”
Read Brent’s previous article from 2020: “Same Mission, New Methods”