Grace Notes
Part I, The Last Best Word Ephesians 1:3-14 LR
John 1:14-18
Phillip Yancy shares an account that comes close to an experience I once had with a woman dying of AIDS. Yancy recalls a prostitute who came to him looking for a hand out. She told the sordid tale of renting out her young daughter to men interested in kinky sex. She made more to support her drug habit by renting out the youngster than she could make in a night on her own. Besides being an awful situation, both Yancy and I found ourselves in legal waters because we are required to report child abuse. What do you say?
In Yancy's case, he asked the woman if she had thought about going to church. "Church!" she cried. "Why would I go there?” "I already feel awful about myself; they would just make me feel worse.” Grace, it's a strange word, perplexing. It can make us feel uncomfortable, especially in the face of the many horrific things fellow human beings enact upon one another. It can confuse us; compromise us, when we have to come face to face with life and what we claim to believe. So we have to ask, what's in a word, the word grace?
The dictionary says that a "grace note" is one that isn't necessary to the melody of a piece of music. It's a composer's "gratuitous" flourish without which the tune becomes dull and mundane. "Grace notes" are for ornamentation, which is not the point of these Lenten sermons. Yet, too often the word "grace" seems to be added as an ornamental trinket on the branch of hard-nosed religion. "By grace we are saved," said Luther, echoing St. Paul. "The law was given by Moses," wrote John, "but grace comes through Jesus Christ.” He begins his "Good News" account with "the word became a human being full of grace and truth, living in our midst, and we witnessed his glory.” So, what is grace all about?
It isn't an easy subject to talk about. There is what Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace,” like an insanity plea by a criminal looking to get out of deserving punishment. The poet Heinrich Hine, friend of Karl Marx, was always at odds with his Jewish childhood and his convenient conversion to Christianity. Hine said on his deathbed, "God will forgive me; that's God's business."
Society's enthusiasm for permissiveness is simply human nature's desire to short-circuit cause and effect. Who doesn't want the cake and be able to eat it too? Yet grace, that is nothing but open-ended tolerance, leaves children with the feeling that their parents don't really care. So, if grace were true, then how do we know God cares?
On the other hand, grace can be so often lacking in our world that all we witness from religion of almost any brand is hardhearted prejudice painted as orthodox behavior. And as one writer has put it, the real trouble is "grace can be dissected like a frog, but the thing dies in the process.” It's far easier to convey grace than it is to explain it, which is perhaps why we live in a world that too often doesn't understand it. This is precisely why I want us to take the next six weeks as a "grace time."
I like words. I like to play with them. But words, like meat, can spoil over the years. Take the word "charity." The King James Version of the Bible, looking at the highest form of love, translates it as charity. Yet, today you hear, "I don't want your charity.” "I don't want your love?” Words digress, but grace seems to be different; it is perhaps "the last best word," seemingly having retained some of its glory. Like a vast aquifer, it floats beneath the best that our civilization has to offer. (1) It reminds us that good things come and usually not because, but in spite of our efforts.
Our world seems to many to be awash with secularization, yet the taproots of grace stretch out whispering, "It's a gift!” We say "grace" before our meals. It's a habit, but more, it's an acknowledgment by even the most hardened capitalist that our daily bread comes from many hands and that behind it all there is the mystery of the one who makes the rain fall and the sun shine. We are "grate-full" for another's kindness. We are "grat-ified" by good news, "con -gratu-lated" when success comes our way. We are "gracious" in hosting and when we are pleased with the service at a restaurant, we leave a "gratuity.” All from the same root of that "last best word," grace.
The word is the very essence of the gospel message, like a drop of water holding the image of the sun. Our world thirsts for it in ways we don't even recognize. "Amazing grace how sweet the sound" gets sung not only at funerals but at football games, graduations, and now it's the name of a movie about Wilberforce in this year that marks the 200th anniversary of the end of the slave trade in England. The hymn is clearly more popular now than it was when slave ship captain turned abolitionist, John Newton, was inspired to pen the words. As terror beckons to rip our world asunder, what better place to drop anchor than in the harbor of grace.
There have been great moments of grace throughout history. In an older issue of Life Magazine that I came across several weeks ago, there were pictures of the fall of the Berlin wall. I remember that day as well as I recall Oklahoma City and the Twin Towers. Why then is it society so often forgets those grace filled moments and chooses to remember tragedy? I suspect because, like an exploding firework, grace flashes its beauty and then dissipates into the night. That which is precious can never last forever.
H. Richard Niebuhr wrote, "Great Christian revolutions come not by the discovery of something that has never been known before. They happen when someone believes radically in something that has always been there.” Grace is the mainstay of our faith. It has been so from faith's beginnings, but too often, there is a shortage of it within the Christian church where it should abound. Veterinarians can learn a lot about the owner of a pet by observing the pet's behavior. What does the world learn about God when they watch Christians in action? Perhaps we better start taking grace with a bit of radical seriousness.
Trace the Greek roots of grace and you discover it means rejoice, be glad. How then can churches be so filled with judgment, rules, and long faces? Why is the church, for so many, a place you go after you've cleaned up your act? Grace may be the last best word, but far too many Christians seem so anxious about avoiding hell they forget to celebrate God's gifts.
"The world can do almost anything better than the church," says Gordon MacDonald. You don't need be a Christian to build houses, feed hungry people, or heal the sick. There is only one thing the world cannot do. It cannot offer grace!
A friend has a placard on his bulletin board, "grace happens!” The words capture all of God's intent from Genesis to Revelation. Grace happens, and when it happens it is un-predictable, un-expected, and mysterious. It is often beyond our capacity to comprehend. There is a tension in scripture every time grace is portrayed.
The word doesn't occur in Mark at all. Jesus teaches it through the parables. There are the great stories of grace in the Torah, Joseph giving shelter, food, and a home to his brothers. There are the accounts of Noah, Ruth, and Hosea. Grace is a gift; yet, one that goes hand-in-hand with response. Grace, offered by God or humans, always plays in the field of need, the reward being a relationship restored. It's never an "owe me”; rather, it should be a window through which we see how much we are truly loved.
It is a hard thing to grasp in our self-made, built for success world. In one of his sermons, Martin Luther, obsessed with living under a burden of guilt, said, "If you have any gift, any skill, (any talent) discard it (get rid of it) so that you may rely on the sweetness of grace alone.” When asked how to interpret that statement a distinguished Luther theologian grinned and said, "Oh, when Luther talked about grace he sometimes got carried away.” Maybe it's time for the rest of us to get a little carried away.
Grace surprises! It surrounds us. To define it is to curtail its wonder. Jesus knew best; it is most clearly revealed through stories. All we have to do is look. As one fellow tells it, "My father was a person of great affection for the people he loved, but he also had an enormous temper. It rarely showed; but one day when I was grown, having moved to the suburbs with my wife and four kids, working a high-pressure job, I had a meeting in the city. I stopped briefly at Dad's house but couldn't stay. His face turned red, his jaw clinched, and then the expletives flowed. I stopped listening. Pungent responses jumped into my head, but somehow I kept my mouth shut. I said a prayer and a peace came over me. Then, I leaned forward and gave my Dad a kiss on the cheek adding, 'I'll stop for a visit tomorrow.' About two months later Dad died. There was grief, but no guilt. The by-product of grace was the reward of knowing that I was loved and had loved. I am so thankful I had not given what might have been my normal response that day.” That is grace!
A woman tells of being raised by humanist parents. "They were almost militant atheists," she said. "I grew up scorning God and religion. There was no sense of mystery; religion was a crutch for the weak minded. But when I was grown and pregnant and the time came for me to deliver, as my contractions grew, I felt caught in an overwhelming mystery. All I could do was surrender to the life force. I sensed a great wave pulling me and I saw myself as a tiny particle in some vast movement. Later, as I held my little, redheaded daughter, nursing her, it struck me. I, who had never been the recipient of the warmth of being mothered, was being overwhelmed with a sense of love for my child. Where did those feelings come from? Clearly not from my own experience bank. As the years passed and my capacity to love grew even deeper, I came to understand how my love for my child was not only redemptive but a gift from God.” That is how grace surprises; the grace that surrounds us in our every day stories waiting for us to see it and then receive it.
It is an amazing word. A sound as sweet as the first spring songs of the birds, as fragile as tiny Crocuses peeking their blossoms through the hard, cracked, frozen ground, making what is ordinary something extraordinary. It is in the un-expected, found within the "coincidences" of life. It's a fleeting insight, a flash of beauty, the question always being, how will we respond? Because only the "fruit of grace" can free us from our prisons of self-concern. "Grace notes," God's last best word waiting for you and me this day and this season. Seen most clearly at the table to which we are all invited.