The cross in the Bishop’s Chapel at Carpenter
House was given by the diocesan ECW in memory of Bishop Stough.
I call it the “Saving Embrace” cross. Crafted by the late Cordray
Parker, it reflects the words of the Prayer Book Collect, “Lord Jesus
Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the
cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace…”
In Cordray’s unique rendering of Jesus on the cross, our Lord’s arms are
stretched out and toward the viewer in a vivid saving embrace for all.
All our mission and outreach as a diocese
flows from this reality. We reach out to others in love because
Christ reached out to us and to all. We are called to serve others
as Christ served us and gave himself for us.
This, however, is easier said than done.
We human beings are deeply self-oriented people. Martin Luther said that
sin makes us incurvatus in se, turned in on ourselves. Walker
Percy spoke of the “great suck of the self.” William Blake’s Adam after
the fall says, “I want. I want.” The gravitational force of
fallen human nature pulls us toward ourselves and our needs.
The love of Christ has the power to
transform our hearts and move us toward others. Once we realize
the power of the Gospel, that we are saved by grace as a gift, we are
propelled to want to share this gift with others. Good works do
not earn our salvation, they flow from the gift of salvation.
I will always remember a lovely British
woman in Brazil who was working in a free health clinic in Rio among the
poorest of the poor. I asked how long she had been doing this
work. “Twenty nine years,” she answered, and went on, “when I
realized twenty-nine years ago how much God loves me, the least I could
do to say thank you is to spend my life loving others.”
As we say, “she got it.” She knew
Jesus’ saving embrace and was becoming a saving embrace for others.
As the Archbishop of Canterbury has said, “what is given to us is given
to be given in return.” A
maxim to live by.
That
is what our outreach in the diocese is all about. I think of
Sawyerville where over 100 of our youth reach out to hundreds of
children and youth in the Black Belt each summer. I think of the
schools and health clinics we sponsor in Haiti where we serve our
neighbors and bring hope in an impoverished land. I think of the
free health clinics, the Habitat homes we help build, the soup kitchens
where the hungry are fed daily, the tutoring programs and public school
partnerships, and the shelters for the homeless offered in our churches
and cities . . . to name only a few.
All these are sacramental and sacrificial ways that we
share the love of Christ by reaching beyond ourselves to give life,
hope, and care to our neighbors. And we receive life in return,
the true life which is known only in loving.
As Elizabeth O’Connor has brilliantly written, “In
giving of ourselves we keep our own life watered. . . in providing a
home for others we take care of our own homesickness. The
spiritual law at the core of our being requires that we reach out . . .
so wondrously are we made that we are the happiest when we are loving
and miserable when we are not loving. The nature of our own beings
witnesses to the nature of God’s being. The task of the church’s
liberation movement is to free love in others and to free love in
ourselves.” Yes!
The Collect with which we began concludes, “so clothe us
in your Spirit that, we reaching forth our hands in love, may bring
those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you.”
That is the ultimate purpose of our outreach that
through our caring and giving others may know the love of Christ.
As always, actions speak louder than words.
So, stop reading this. Go, do, reach forth your
hands in love that all may know the saving embrace of Christ.
Your servant in Christ,
