Nadia Bolz-Weber Quote

Looked at you, gave you bread, and said, Child of  God, the body of  Christ, broken for you. Child of  God. Child of  God. We’re all children of  God. And we’ve been given the authority, even the duty, to declare that to each other. And so I find myself on US 36, where another asshole is embodying so much that I despise, and in my mind, I bless them. I look in their eyes, hold up the bread, and say, Child of God… Jeff, like so many of us, is changed by the word of grace that he hears in church. He is formed by the Word of  God.*2 He is given a place where he is told by others that he is a child of  God. He is given a place where he can look other people in the eye, other annoying, inconsistent, arrogant people in the eye, hand them bread, and say, Child of  God, the body of  Christ, given for you, and then he, in his own arrogant inconsistencies, has a frame of grace through which to see even the people he can’t stand. I argue that this wouldn’t just happen alone. This is why we have Christian community. So that we can stand together under the cross and point to the gospel. A gospel that Bonhoeffer said is frankly hard for the pious to understand. Because this grace confronts us with the truth saying: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner, now come as the sinner you are to a God who loves you. God wants you, you in your imperfect, broken, shimmering glory.