{"id":5294,"date":"2018-04-27T20:53:22","date_gmt":"2018-04-28T00:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=5294"},"modified":"2018-04-27T20:53:22","modified_gmt":"2018-04-28T00:53:22","slug":"grace-in-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=5294","title":{"rendered":"Grace in Community"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Shimmering-Glory.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Shimmering-Glory.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5959\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Shimmering-Glory.jpg 800w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Shimmering-Glory-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Shimmering-Glory-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>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.  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, &#8220;Child of God, the body of Christ, given for you,&#8221; and then he, in his own arrogant inconsistencies, has a frame of grace through which to see even the people he can&#8217;t stand.  I argue that this wouldn&#8217;t just happen alone.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>God wants you, you in your imperfect, broken, shimmering glory.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Nadia Bolz-Weber, <em>Accidental Saints<\/em>, p. 168-169<\/p>\n<p>[Photo:  Shenandoah National Park, September 27, 2014]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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. 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,11,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-forgiveness","category-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}