Our Life with Jesus 20-21

  Here are artistic images of Jesus from places around the world. In the gospels, Jesus lives among the people, he meets them where they  dwell and work and share life together. He receives their hospitality and becomes the living Word of God among them.   The next-to-last image, which hangs in our church's upper lobby, is by American artist Warner Sallman (1940).  We are used to "seeing" Jesus this way. The stained-glass image after it is also American, but clearly very different.  The window is in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, where in 1963 white supremacists  bombed the Sunday School of this African American congregation, killing four girls.  Imagine the meaning of a crucified Christ of color to this congregation. PScott has seen this one up close.   Rembrandt's Head of Christ,  which hangs in The Louvre, is included here.  There is a Byzantine image of Christ painted on a wall at St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai.  Moving upward.

  "Follow me."  That is Jesus' invitation to us, as it was to his original disciples.  A disciple is a "learner."   From the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus has called disciples to play special roles in his work.  They will accompany him, proclaiming the good news of God's love and the nearness of God's kingdom.  They will join in the hands-on ministry of healing; they will embody forgiveness (the giving and receiving!); and they will show people what it looks like to have God's love change you.   In the gospels, there is particular focus on the stories of "the Twelve," the group of original disciples who left fishing boats, tax booths, and life as they had known it in order to follow him.  Their learning took place "on the Way;"  their classroom was in the world.  Over time, there were many more than twelve, female as well as male.  It is thrilling to discern their stories in the Bible! These "learners" eventual