“For just as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many, are one body – so also is Christ.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I love cartoons. Near as I can remember, I always have. Animation brings a world of storytelling possibilities to life that live action films and series simply can’t touch. CGI and Ai are a modern marvel in terms of what they allow us to put on the screen that looks so real you almost can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not, but what are those two except tools of animation? The kind of cartoons I’ve always been most drawn to are the ones with good stories. I’m a sucker for well-developed characters and a gripping plot. And, of course, cartoons about superheroes have always been my favorite. Growing up, one of the absolute best on television was X-Men. When news came out a few months ago that Marvel was going to pick back up the classic series that ended its run almost 30 years ago (I can’t tell you how much it pains me to write that), I was thrilled. They did not disappoint. X-Men 97′ wrapped up its first season this week and it was even better than I had hoped it would be. And, as is so often the case, the Gospel made an appearance in the story. Let’s talk about another Marvel classic and why we just can’t escape the Gospel.

Let’s start with a quick primer just in case you aren’t a superhero nerd like me. The X-Men is a comic series about a group of superpowered mutants who use their abilities to fight villains who want to destroy humanity. More than that, though, they serve and save people wherever and however they can because they want for humans and mutants to be able to live in harmony with one another. The comic line was always about diversity and including people in society who don’t fit the mold of the rest of the world. One of the perpetual conflicts in the mutant storyline is humanity’s fear and loathing of mutants leading us to find ways to persecute them and suppress or otherwise control their unique abilities. The founder of the X-Men, Charles Xavier (Professor X), though, is driven by a vision of creating a world where human- and mutant-kind can live in harmony with one another. He works toward this goal with endless energy and passion, regularly leading his team to battle both mutant and human enemies who believe coexistence is impossible and that the other side must be opposed. There’s obviously a lot more to know, but that’s enough to get you started.

Marvel’s revival series was a gift to fans of the original series from start to finish. It brought back nearly the entire original voice cast. The animation style was as consistent as a new set of animators could make it. And the story picked up right where the original series left off. In the final episode of the first series, Professor X barely survived an assassination attempt and was taken by his alien love interest to her homeworld where she had the technology to save his life. X-Men 97 starts with the team trying to figure out how to move forward in light of his absence.

The first drama comes when they discover that Professor X has left the X-Mansion (everything gets an X in this universe) and the leadership of the entire team to Magneto, their arch nemesis. Magneto and Charles had once been great friends and still respected each other deeply in spite of their radically different visions of the place mutants should have in the world. Charles wanted harmony; Magneto considered mutants a superior species to humans and thus believed they should rule over us. Out of respect for his friend, though, Magneto gives up his vision and embraces Charles’.

I’m not going to try to recap the rest of the series’ plot. It’ll take too long and unless you are well-versed in the X-Men storylines, it’s probably not going to make a lot of sense to you anyway. If you really want to understand it, google is your friend. You can search for Madelyne Pryor and the Goblin Queen, Mr. Sinister, Genosha, Sentinels, and Bastion. I thought they were setting up to introduce Onslaught, but they didn’t.

As I mentioned before, the main storyline was always at least a bit of an apologetic for diversity and inclusion, and sometimes more than a bit. Although one of the characters, Nightcrawler, a blue, furry mutant with a prehensile tail and the ability to teleport, is a Catholic Christian and a devout one at that, religious themes don’t very often feature in the X-Men universe. Indeed, it’s hard to write an orthodox Christian character in a world where a kind of polytheism is the understood norm. The attitude is that while his beliefs should absolutely be tolerated and accepted just like those of everyone else, he’s not really correct about the things he believes. The truthfulness of his beliefs aren’t as important as their utilitarian worth. The series essentially gave Christians a pat on the head as if to say, “Oh, that’s nice, but you’re really just like everyone else.”

This particular series gave Nightcrawler quite a lot of screen time including several respectful references to his faith as well as some pretty incredible fight scenes. Beyond that, there really wasn’t much to write about on here until near the end of the final episode. Professor X, a powerful telepath, is inside of Magneto’s mind, trying to help him restore it after breaking it for reasons I’m not even going to try to explain. He main goal is to help Magneto remember who he is.

Magneto’s backstory is a tragic one. He was a Polish Jew whose parents were killed in the Nazi concentration camps. The trauma of that experience is what first unlocked his exceedingly powerful mutant abilities of controlling metal. That experience is what led him to hate humanity so much. But in Charles he found a friend who was willing to love him unconditionally. That friendship brought him out of his dark past and for a time gave him a great vision and hope for the future. It was this vision that Professor X was trying to restore.

As Magneto is getting more and more lost in his past, feeling more isolated and alone, Charles tries desperately to remind him that just the opposite is true. There are those who are like him in ways that go beyond merely what we can see, and who will embrace him for who he is if he will let them. The pivotal bit of dialogue unfolds like this starting with Charles.

“There’s a power in seeing yourself in another, in resemblance.”

“There is no one like me.”

“The X-Men and I may not resemble each other, but we are still family.”

“We had a dream.”

“Yes. A dream that made us a family. And like that dream, any family worth having…”

“…is worth fighting for. “

In this moment of the episode my mind started ringing with the Gospel tones that were clearly reverberating from the scene. Our world is awash in loneliness today. That I can think of off the top of my head, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the World Health Organization have all declared loneliness to be a public health epidemic. Our increasingly unfulfilled need for relationships is leading to all sorts of tragic outcomes for both individuals and whole societies. We need community rather desperately.

What Charles was offering Magneto and assuring him that he had in this moment was a community. It may not have been a community that looked just like him, but the thing that held them together and made them strong was not some sort of a physical resemblance. It was a vision, a dream. The X-Men were a family created and held together by Charles’ vision for a better future and their willingness to share in that vision.

This kind of a family is what Jesus gave us in the church. From a purely worldly standpoint, the church doesn’t make sense. The idea that people from totally different tribes can come together and be united by something greater than any of their tribes is a pretty hard one to swallow. I mean, yes, we give some lip service to the idea, but when the rubber of idealism meets the road of reality, we tend to retreat back into our natural tribalism. We even do that within the church. But the church was designed to be a community, a family. It is a family held together by Jesus vision of a better future than the state of the present.

As the apostle Paul put it, “for just as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many, are one body – so also is Christ.” In the church we all come together in spite of our differences to pursue something larger and greater than any of us is on our own. We join as a unified body to be able to accomplish far more than we could manage apart. The things that make us different and which might normally divide us from one another become the very things that make us strong as God redeems them and gives each of us a place in His body that matters. The whole body is stronger by the working of all of its different parts and pieces. No one member is greater or higher or somehow more essential than any other. Instead, our diversity is intentional on God’s part. Paul makes this clear a few verses later when he says that “as it is, God has arranged each one of the parts in the body just as he wanted.”

If you are a part of the body of Christ, God put you there on purpose. He put you there with a role in mind for you to play. The body won’t be as strong as it could or should be unless and until you are playing that role. I can’t do what you can do, and you can’t do what I can do. But when we work together, all the parts are covered just as God intended for them to be.

When we get this right two incredibly significant things happen. The first is that God is glorified and His kingdom is expanded. A community like this functioning properly is an incredibly attractive thing. Everyone wants to be a part of it. It takes a lot of effort to get right, but the risk is worth the rewards. The second thing is that we find the hope and help we need to get through this life with grace and strength regardless of what it throws at us.

If you are not part of a church community, you need to fix that. If you are following Jesus and not a part of a church community, you are living in open disobedience to the teachings of the New Testament. If you are a part of a church community, you need to consider how well you are living up to the role God designed you to play in it. An organ in your body that worked on some of the time would not result in a healthy body. Do the work God has created you to do all of the time to His glory, your joy, and the building up of the body in love. Everyone will be glad you did.