grace Jeremiah 31.7-14; John
Kathleen Norris tells (and these are my words) of a moment
in time when she glimpsed something of the light. This is what she wrote: One morning this past spring I noticed a
young couple with an infant at an airport departure gate. the baby was staring
intently at other people, and as soon as he recognized a human face, no matter
whose it was, no matter if it was young or old, pretty or ugly, bored or happy
or worried-looking, he would respond with absolute delight. It was beautiful to
see. Our drab departure gate had become the gate of heaven. And as I watched
that baby play with any adult who would allow it, I realized that this is how
God looks at us, staring into our faces in order to be delighted, to see the
creature he made and called good, along with the rest of creation. As Psalm 139
puts it, darkness is as nothing to God who can look right through whatever evil
we've done in our lives to the creature made in the divine image.
Grace is the precious gift that encourages us to not give up hope for a world where evil deeds seem only to increase because grace overcomes deeds and can even change what we do by helping us see who we really are. Grace is more than just something that can fix something that is broken, it is the revelation that the broken thing is valuable itself as something that was made and can be broken but not lost. It is a reminder of our true self, our created self, the self made by God for love. Grace is not just an after thought to heal the wounds, it is the place where we are from and where we are going. It is the place where we were once whole and beautiful, where we are in fact broken yet still beautiful in the eyes of God, and where we are healed and restored, recreated, made whole again, made new. In other words, grace is not just one category of experience; it is the context of all experience, of all creation, of life itself. Grace is the reason I can say to you and you can say to me if you were so inclined. Namastay, I see the divine in you.
And when we see the divine in each other it changes how we treat each other. It is easy to destroy the enemy who hates us but it is not so easy to destroy the beautiful child that God has made. When we experience grace, it is very personal. It can be described in a general way as a sense of well-being, of being loved without conditions, to be intrinsically lovable by definition, though the details of how we experience these things may differ. One thing every experience of grace has in common however is the overwhelming desire to be gracious. It is as if one could no more stop the movement of grace than the movement of time itself. Once touched by God's grace we are compelled to touch others with God's grace. To hold back would be like trying to hold our breath.
There may even be a relationship between time and grace.
Rabbi Heschel wrote of this: a world
without time would be a world without God, a world existing in and by itself,
without renewal, without a Creator. A world without time would be a world
detached from God, a thing in itself, reality without realization. A world in
time is a world going on through God; realization of an infinite design; not a
thing in itself but a thing for God.
It is within the gift of time that we experience the gift of grace. No one can possess time, neither can grace be possessed. Time is the present where the presence of grace exists. Time is the hope of renewal. Grace is that which renews.
This holy meal we call communion is a good example. In time we make a place for the presence to be present in tangible form so that we will recognize it and be conscious of it. The meaning of grace is expressed beyond mere words in the act of sharing the meal. Something beyond words to tell has been done for us, given to us. God has suffered our suffering. Body broken, blood poured out. Grace is love poured out on the suffering of humankind, love that forgives, restores, heals, makes new. This is all you need to know about grace: What is broken can be healed, made whole again. This is the good news: What is broken can be whole again. By faith we are given the very life of God which is in essence gracious love, generous and compassionate. Jesus showed us what love is. Love lays itself down for the other. God has done for us what God wants us to do for each other. When we see the love that is present here in this rite we see it for what it is, the redemptive love that is recreating and reconciling the life of the world to God, and not just what it appears to be, a ritual of form and memory. It is important that our rituals have meaning if we are to draw life from them for this is what they are, profound meaning not empty rote. If we forget what we are doing, we may forget who we are. Here, in the sacrament, is the visible sign of an invisible grace that surrounds us and holds us within the very heart of God.
Somewhere in the Bible, I forget where now, God is referred to as a place. God is grace and thus grace is also a place, a place that can only be described as home. To return to our truest self, our created beauty and loveliness, is to come home. Quoting Buechner in Longing for Home, " . . .the home we long for and belong to is finally where Christ is. I believe that home is Christ's kingdom, which exists both within us and among us as we wend our prodigal ways through the world in search of it." The magi of our story recognized it before they could name it but it was to a place that they journeyed, a place that they carried with them into the far world.
When we tell the beautiful story of Christ's birth; when we
tell the story of Christ's passion in the reenactment of the Lord's Supper; we
are telling the story of grace. Grace is the presence of God with us calling us
home. It is no accident that we identify with the exiles to whom Jeremiah
speaks so eloquently, because we are more often than not exiles from our truest
selves, strangers to our own longing to return to where we come from even
though we have never really left. When we tell the story we do more than
remember we join the story ourselves and it becomes our story too, more,
perhaps than we know. As usual Frederick
Buechner says everything I have been trying to say in
just a few words and with clarity: It is our
business, as we journey, to keep our hearts open to the bright-winged presence
of the Holy Ghost within us and the Kingdom of God among us until little by
little compassionate love begins to change from a moral exercise, from a matter
of gritting our teeth and doing our good deed for the day, into a joyous,
spontaneous, self-forgetting response to the most real aspect of all reality,
which is that the world is holy because God made it and so is every one of us
as well. To live as though that reality does not exist is to be a stranger in a
world of strangers. To live out of and toward that reality is little by little
to become whole.
"Is that the end of the story?" asked Christopher Robin.
"That's the end
of that one. There are others."
"About
Pooh and me?"
"And
Piglet and Rabbit and all of you.
Don't you remember?"
"I do remember,
and then when I try to remember, I forget."
"That day when
Pooh and Piglet tried to catch the Heffalump -"
"They didn't
catch it did they?"
"No."
Pooh couldn't, because
he hasn't any brain. Did I catch it?"
"Well, that comes
into the story."
Christopher Robin
nodded.
"I do
remember," he said, "only Pooh doesn't very well, so that's why he
likes having it told to him again. Because then, it's a real story and not just
a remembering."
"That's just how
I feel," I said. (Milne)
From his fullness we
have all received grace upon grace. May
this precious gift we call grace truly help us find our way home - to arrive
where we started and know the place for the first time. (Eliot)
And in so doing, bring delight to our Creator.
