July 28, 2005
Grace
Grace OoN 28vii05
“After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody’s much interested any more. Not so with grace, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left.
“Grace is something you can never get but only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.
“A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?
“A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do.
“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you.”
The stories in this morning’s lections are about grace. Ezra’s report on the ingrates Moses led out of Egypt, how they worshipped a piece of golden hardware from the crafts fair and groused about the living and eating conditions and God took care of them anyway. That’s grace (Neh 9.16-20).
Paul’s lament to the Romans in his paean to the love of Christ always being around and accessible and our never being separated from it, not even by that pointless war over in the Middle East, that’s grace (Rms 8.35-39). Jesus’ grief over the brutal death of his friend John who baptized him and his desire to be alone about it. That’s grace. The people following him anyway without taking along any lunch. That’s grace. The little kid who’s mom had fixed him a snack and who anyway gave it up to the disciples, whether willingly or not, is not clear. That’s grace. Jesus’ patient compassion for others, poor planners that they were and even in his sorrow, that’s grace.
Jesus’ taking the loaves and fishes, blessing them, breaking them up, and sharing them is not only grace, it’s what we do every time we gather around this Table — take, bless, break, share — the very pattern of our lives whereby we become instruments of grace with an abundance left over and always more for the next time, that’s grace.
“There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it.
“Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift, too.” (all copy set off in quotes is from Frederick Buechner, “Wishful Thinking,” pp 33f, Harper & Row, 1973, without whom I am often helpless. Or hadn’t you noticed?)