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On the weekend of April 22, 2012 the St. Anne's Church website received thousands of visitors. That Sunday, in the New York Times Magazine, an article appeared about the Rev. Dr. Amy E. Richter competing in a physique competition. The strong reactions to the article got Richter and her husband and fellow clergyperson, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Pagano, thinking about the scandal of the Incarnation. The claim that God entered fully into our flesh-and-blood human existence makes some of us squeamish. And yet, this shocking claim is at the heart of the good news that in Christ God is with us no matter what. There is nothing that can happen to us--no pain, no humiliation, no anguish--that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. In sermons for the seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, Richter and Pagano proclaim the good news of the scandalous love of God in flesh and bone.
About the author
Amy E. Richter is Rector of St. Anne's Episcopal Church and Visiting Instructor at the Ecumenical Institute at St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore, Maryland. She is author of Enoch and the Gospel of Matthew.
Joseph S. Pagano is Associate Rector of St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Annapolis, Maryland, and Affiliate Professor of Theology at Loyola University in Baltimore, Maryland. He is author of The Origins and Development of the Triadic Structure of Faith in H. Richard Niebuhr, and co-author of A Man, A Woman, a Word of Love, with his wife and colleague Amy Richter.
