The new logo for Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool of La Grange, TX features two elements of our ecclesiastical architecture. Both our pulpit and lectern walls within the chancel feature the same brick form. These two features flank the large chancel cross.
In church architecture, we should always see the numbers before our eyes as deliberate and pedagogical. The repeated features in church sanctuaries are generally done on purpose. They also serve to teach about the Christian faith, reminding us about something significant.
These numbers include fours for the Gospel writers, sixes for creation and the fall into sin, sevens for holiness, tens for the completeness of all peoples, and twelves for holy completeness. Our sanctuary also makes use of numbers to teach us about the Christian faith.
The brickwork flanking the cross has a central column consisting of two independent bricks and a continuous column. In the church threes are a Trinitarian symbol. The Trinity is, then, core upon which eight horizontal bars hang. Eights in the church are symbols of resurrection, recreation, new life in Christ, and baptism.
In six days, The Lord created the Heavens and the Earth. On the Seventh day, He rested. After the fall, the eight day becomes a symbol of the promised redeemer. In Genesis 3:15 we hear, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
In the flood, eight souls are preserved in the ark. They are preserved by water, which also washes way the wickedness of the earth. St. Peter teaches us in 1 Peter 3 “20because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. 21Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
All Jewish males are circumcised as a mark of God’s covenant with His people. This circumcision is proscribed for the eight day of life. That Genesis 3 promise is tied to the eight day.
Jesus’ resurrection is an eighth day event. He is crucified and dies on Friday. He is entombed in death from Friday through the entirety of the Sabbath (the seventh day), and is raised again from the dead on the eighth day.
In Colossians, chapter two, St. Paul teaches us to understand baptism from circumcision. “11In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 12having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.”
These two Trinitarian Baptismal symbols on both sides of our altar point our eyes to the source of our salvation. In baptism, we receive the forgiveness of sins AND the faith, which clings to that promise. The forgiveness purchased and won by Jesus’ crucifixion and death on a cross. A symbol of death promising us eternal life.
Let us ever glory in that baptismal promise.
Rev. Jason M. Kaspar
Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool
La Grange, TX
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