Luke 17. 11-19
The charity of Christ creates community!
by Fred Behnken, parish lay minister
As usual I took Ginny to Beauty Castle last Friday morning to have her hair done. It takes about 30-40 minutes and she leaves ready for the coming week. I usually wait in the beauty shop watching the stylists at work. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve sat in the same chair and glanced at a large white cross on the opposite wall. I’d never noticed the detail on that large cross until last Friday. I finally saw the detail for the very first time.
It’s a large wooden cross about 3 ft tall with a large red heart superimposed on irregular fields of white with irregular black streaks and tan areas with brown and black splotches. It clicked. These weren’t just random patterns. I saw zebra stripes and leopard spots. Zebras next to leopards! Zebras are prey. Leopards are hunters of prey like Zebra. Zebras and leopards live in the same geographic area but live in a constant state of tension. Avoidance versus pursuing. Hunted and hunter.
A large heart is superimposed on the cross with the zebra stripes and leopard markings. Hunter and the hunted placed together in an entirely new relationship. Notice that the boundaries between the stripes and spots are transitional and fuzzy.
How miraculous!
In a very abstract but meaningful, artistic way the essence of God’s love is proclaimed. God’s love in Christ on the cross creates, remakes, restores relationships. The love of God (the heart) is superimposed over the cross and results in the creation of new patterns, new realities. The love of God engulfs, stiches and weaves different patterns into a new creation. As those loved by God. We call this a community.
God’s love – the cross — and a community created and held together by love…. Maybe these thoughts immediately came to mind because of the labors of the design team, discussions in both adult classes and council meetings.
The cross in the Beauty Castle artfully reminded me of core values identified as foundational to our community. They are the pillars as we listen, evaluate the call and shape our community and its direction.
Look at the front of the bulletin in the lower right corner or the projection screen. What do you see? Charity + Christ + Community as core values, core values are located at the foot of the cross which is embraced within God’s love, a heart. As Gretchen Shults noted in the adult class this morning, the heart as the love of God is anchored at the foot of the cross, but open on another side, indicating everyone and all creation are and will be included and wrapped within the love of God.
This logo represents our foundational affirmations.as a community. The foundational values guide, define and constrain our discussions, confessions, decisions and interactions within our community and as part of the larger Midland community. They are not meant as recruiting slogans or talking points but serve to focus us on what we truly value, They are our foundational beliefs, foundational to our faith, foundational to who we trust.
The phrase “God’s grace” carries divergent and different coded meanings for Christians. If we use the word “charity, we put the emphasis on our own powerlessness and utter dependence on life-sustaining help from outside ourselves. It is God who provides. It is God whose unlimited, unmerited, unending love nourishes, restores and sustains us.
We experience the all-encompassing love of Jesus, the Christ, on the cross. Notice the present tense, not past tense, as Jesus lives among us revealing God’s love through the proclamation of the word and administration of the sacraments. Jesus reveals the very nature of God. Jesus commented, If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.
Simultaneously, Jesus shows us what it’s like to live as fully human in our relationships as God intended. Jesus, the Christ, reveals God’s encompassing love for all creation, which includes every creature, plant, rock…everything. God’s love shown in Christ restores and empowers us to love those around us. When we can’t, don’t or won’t God is present with unconditional forgiveness.
Living in a Christ-centered relationship with one another is Community. This Community we call Midland Lutheran is the body of Christ on earth. This community is the Church. Let me repeat. The people of God living in community are the body of Christ that is the church. The church, the embodiment of Christ, is called, strengthened to proclaim the love of God, the grace of God to the world. Said another way, the created church, centered on Christ, is the living witness to the love of God within the world.
So, like the Beauty Castle cross, the logo on the lower corner of the bulletin calls forth God’s grace, the charity that brings, encircles and binds us together. That grace, the charity of God, is revealed as unearned, unlimited and unmerited love is made known in Christ on the cross. Charity is found at the foot of the cross, which is the foundation for the community of Christ called the church.
Charity + Christ + Community. These are the foundational pillars that we, a community of believers, known as Midland Lutheran Church, are built on, moving forward day by day to destinations as yet unknown.
Charity – Christ – Community … are not lofty ideals but the framing structure for all that we are and will be as a people of God … a community of believers in West Texas.
A community proclaiming God’s all-encompassing love for all people through Jesus, the Christ.