The unseen and unassuming parts of Christ’s body

During my most recent visit to the surgeon who repaired my knee in April, I was given the green light to move toward the full resumption of normal physical activities. The surgeon declared the patellar tendon to be completed healed and ready for the next round of physical therapy. This will involve hard work at strengthening the thigh and calf muscles, strengthening the patellar tendon and flexing the knee to 140 degrees. I am currently at 110 degrees and my thigh and calf muscles are appropriately sore from all the exercising. 

Recently I have been thinking about my patellar tendon. It’s a piece of tissue about 1 inch wide and about 4 inches long that attaches to the patella (knee cap) at the north end and to the tibia (shin bone) at the south end. Along with its counterpart on the north side of the knee, the quadriceps tendon, the patellar tendon is the unseen tissue that allows the knee to lock and thus gives one the ability to walk, kick, climb stairs and do just about anything we consider part of normal mobility.

When my patellar tendon was ruptured in a fall back in mid-April, I quickly discovered that I could not stand up. My left knee immediately buckled and I fell down with excruciating pain. Only with the aid of a brace was I able to put even the slightest pressure on my left leg. After the surgeon sewed the ruptured tendon back together, I waited over nine weeks for him to declare it healed and ready for action.

Until I went through all of this I had never thought even once about my patellar tendon — what it did, how necessary it was to normal life and how its rupture would be a major disability. I often thought about other parts of my body, especially the parts I could see or that needed regular attention or that I consciously used in the normal routines of life and work. But I never thought about my patellar tendon until its rupture changed my life.

I think the body of Christ is a lot like this. There are parts of the body that stand before churches every week doing very visible things and receiving a great deal of attention for them. There are other parts of the body that rarely if ever receive any notice or mention because their work is not on such prominent display. Like the patellar tendon, they work effectively to accomplish vital functions for which they receive no recognition.

In 1 Corinthians 12 Paul said, “…the parts of the  body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.”  A couple of verses later he added, “But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.”

The parts of Christ’s body that stand in the lights on platforms, holding microphones, receive notice and attention that is way out of  proportion to their numbers within the body and, most likely, to the work they do. This is part of a long cultural trend within the church and it is not likely to change anytime soon. We must constantly remind ourselves, again in Paul’s words, that the body of Christ is more than a single member.

Paul himself reminded us of this in Romans 16, where he extends greetings and commendations to a long list of brothers and sisters whose functioning within the body he considered vital to its well-being. Somewhere in that list was a patellar tendon.