If we are the Body

Mark Hall builds this song out of two specific scenes of people failing to be welcomed at church — a woman trying to slip in unnoticed while girls' laughter follows her, a traveler who reads judgmental glances correctly enough to know he's not really wanted in the back row. Neither is a hypothetical; the song names the exact moment hospitality quietly fails.

The chorus turns 1 Corinthians 12:27's image of the church as the body of Christ into a pointed question rather than a comfort: 'why aren't his arms reaching, why aren't his hands healing?' If the metaphor is true, the song argues, its absence in a specific pew on a specific Sunday is a real failure, not just poor phrasing. 'Jesus paid much too high a price for us to pick and choose who should come' cuts past politeness — the cost of the cross is treated as the actual reason gatekeeping in a Sunday service, however casual it looks, doesn't hold up. It's less an anthem than an accusation aimed inward at the very room singing it.