outWORD by Matte Downey

Image from makingsociologymatter.com I recently taught a course on Building Christian Community. We began with our own stories of community done well and community that hurt instead of helped. I heard tales of people showing sacrificial love and generously embracing differences. I also heard stories of pain from fractured relationships, and disappointment with ill-conceived directives from the powers that be. My own experience has shown me that quite often the church does not have a clear idea of what genuine community looks like. Many church communities in the West model the values found in consumer-driven, capitalist contexts, exhibiting an odd mixture of corporate sensibilities and spiritual propaganda. When it comes to Christian community, our model is the Trinity. Speaking about three persons who are one grates a bit on the logical mind, but the idea of a communal God needs to be understood relationally, not logically. Part of the problem in understanding the idea of Trinity...

Image from bestcoloringpagesforkids.com Words which we use a lot can sometimes become divested of their depth of meaning. In the Christian tradition, we talk about the cross a lot. We see visual representations of the cross in prominent places in our gathering spaces, we wear crosses around our necks, some get crosses tattooed on their bodies. The cross is a ubiquitous symbol in Christianity, so lately I have been asking myself, what exactly does the cross mean? For the most part, the cross as portrayed in contemporary Christianity is a beautiful thing, festooned with flowers and sunsets and radiant beams of light (just google  cross  or  cross coloring page ). But in the first century, the cross was a symbol of disgrace. To the Roman empire, this ignoble instrument of death was for those who were traitors and enemies of the state. We are many centuries removed from this view of the cross as the locus of torture and death and shame. The fact that Christianity h...