Incarnational Love

This story from 61st Avenue United Methodist Church is a poignant message of Christ's love exemplified through a humble servant. It was written by the pastor, Rev. Paul Slentz. I hope that it touches you as it did me. The church is located at 6018 New York Avenue, Nashville, TN 37209.

“...As part of this thanks, let me share with you something that happened here just a couple of Saturdays ago that reminded me of why the ministry here is important. This is a story that features Brenda Hix, our lay leader, who many of you know.

It started with my driving the church van down to the park across from the Downtown Library to pick up homeless folks to come have a meal and worship with us. I saw that a young woman and her boyfriend who had worshiped with us for the first time the week before wanted to come again. They are both very young, appearing to be in their early twenties, and the young woman has a severe disability that keeps her in a wheel chair. She also has a love of music. The first week I picked her up, she sang along with the Christian songs playing on the radio to and from church.

Well, this second week, with some difficulty we lifted her up into the front seat of the van and got her wheel chair situated as well. I could see that she looked very depressed. But what really hit me and made me feel so badly for her was that she was just terribly filthy. She was wearing the exact same clothing she had had on the week before, it had been very hot in the intervening days, and the pad she sat on was urine soaked. Frankly, the smell was so overwhelming that it was hard to sit next to her on the van. She did not sing along with the radio this time.

When we got to the church, I immediately went to Brenda and explained the situation. Without blinking an eye, Brenda took that sad young woman into the woman’s room, bathed her, clothed her, cleaned her wheel chair, and, most important of all, spoke comforting words to her. At one point Brenda had to come out of the restroom just to get some air, and she was even gagging a bit. But she stuck with it, and after about half an hour that young woman emerged clean as a whistle and with a smile on her face. She then ate supper and joined us for worship, where once again she sang her heart out and clearly was enjoying herself.

After the service was over, I thanked Brenda profusely and told her that she had loved that woman with Christ-like love. And indeed Jesus did love people in that same up-close way. Jesus’ love was incarnated love, in-the-flesh love. My guess is that some of the folk he placed his healing hands on didn’t smell so good either. I am so grateful that his love continues to be expressed in an incarnated way through the hands of somebody like Brenda.”