Infinite Worth

After a recent Holy Week, Paul, one of our pastoral interns, reflected in a small group on an experience he had the previous week. Paul had made a run to the grocery store after our Good Friday worship. While standing in the checkout line he noticed the cover of one of the magazines in the display rack, which featured a very attractive teenage girl. She was well endowed, thin, physically fit, and scantily clad. One the cover were these words: "You can have a body just like this one!"

Paul said that after being immersed in the church's story in the intensive way that Holy Week immerses us and experiencing how it is that Jesus Christ's death was God's affirmation of the infinite worth of all human beings, this encounter with the magazine's cover message angered him. The cover was from a world that exists in opposition to the church. As the cover begged to invite him into the false promise it offered, he said he was carrying in his soul an image proffered in our worship center that night: the accusers pointing their fingers at Jesus.

Paul worked among our high school youth, which included a particular young lady whose genetic make-up meant that she would always be heavy. She regularly had to endure some dehumanizing bullying at school, and Paul experienced the magazine as a cultural statement of the world pointing its finger at this girl. Outside the church, the world saw a fat teenager who probably had little going for her. Inside the church she had infinite worth and was a leader among our youth.

—The Rev. Rick Barger in A New and Right Spirit