Reflection given at a Presbytery Sermon Writing Workshop
I subscribe to Richard Rohr's online daily meditations. Friends were sending me his short daily meditations often enough that I thought, "this is a clue; maybe I should just subscribe to them myself." And that's what I did. I subscribed. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan monk who is the director of the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico; he writes and speaks around the world about spirituality and justice. His daily meditations are short inspirational thoughts that help set the day on its right courseÑthe path of love, the path of grace, and the path of hope.
As I get older, I find it harder to recover from meetings and things. We had a presbytery meeting this past weekend and although it wasn't particularly taxing in terms of business, there were 2 solid days of "being on." You have to be attentive to what is going on. And then there are all of the conversations and networking that happens around the coffee pot or in short walks during breaks or longer conversations over a glass of wine at day's end. As a good introvert, I find it all a little too extroverted and I need to recoup some energy. Unfortunately, with Christine off this week, a Lenten study group to prepare, our annual meeting on Sunday, and this preaching workshop, there wasn't much time for rest, let alone some renewal.
As I get older, I find it harder to recover from meetings and things. We had a presbytery meeting this past weekend and although it wasn't particularly taxing in terms of business, there were 2 solid days of "being on." You have to be attentive to what is going on. And then there are all of the conversations and networking that happens around the coffee pot or in short walks during breaks or longer conversations over a glass of wine at day's end. As a good introvert, I find it all a little too extroverted and I need to recoup some energy. Unfortunately, with Christine off this week, a Lenten study group to prepare, our annual meeting on Sunday, and this preaching workshop, there wasn't much time for rest, let alone some renewal.
Into the busyness of this week, along came Richard Rohr's faithful daily meditation. Rohr's meditation on Tuesday was entitled, "Grace is everywhere."1 That's been the theme this week; Rohr's thoughts brought me to a full stop. Grace is everywhere. Grace is even in my tired heart. Grace is even in my need for a little alone time to recharge my batteries. Grace is even in Japan in its tragedy. Grace is everywhere. It was a word of comfort that I needed just then.
For some reason grace is a word that we don't use as much as we used to in the United Church. I'm not sure why that is; it may be because we've made a conscious effort in recent years to get away from churchy language. We don't use the word sin so much, or the word evil. We like words such as inclusive, community, loveÑall good words. But grace is a good word and should come back into daily vocabulary. We are, after all good Protestants. We inherited Calvin and Luther's injunction about living by the grace of God. Ironic that it's taken a good Catholic to remind me of grace. The Apostle Paul liked to talk about grace; that's the way he began his letters, wishing people God's grace of the grace of Christ.
Think of all the ways we talk about grace, aside from a religious meaning; we can get a full sense of what grace means without even setting foot in the churchÑand that's a good thing. We talk about the grace of dancers who can do extraordinary things with their bodies. We speak about the grace of certain people and we usually mean people who are poised, self-confident without being pushy, accepting and welcoming, approachable and polite, wise and giving of themselves. Grace-notes in music are the extra notes that give the melody or accompaniment a little extra excitement, a little extra beauty, a little extra flair; you could play the melody without grace-notes, but it doesn't quite have the same exquisite beauty. You sometimes get a grace period to pay a debt. We say grace at meals as a way of saying thank you. Grace is closely linked to beauty, to joy, to generosity, and ultimately to love.
For the Reformers of the 16th century, to give grace a churchier context, grace was a gift of God freely given. And this is the sense in which Rohr referred to grace in his daily meditation last Tuesday. Grace is the love of God that is given to us and to the whole world. Grace is the work of God to create beauty in our lives. Grace is the mystery of life that frees us from our own self-doubts, our self-condemnation, our worry about mistakes and errors in judgment. Grace takes us beyond ourselves to fly with the eagles, to rise with the sun on a new day, to twinkle on a clear night sky. Grace is the gift of God becoming love in our midst in the mystery of Jesus. Grace is the gift of life that came and comes through Jesus even though he died on the cross.
Grace is the assurance that even in the difficult times of our lives, love is still present. We are hearing horror stories coming out of Japan as a result of the earthquake, the tsunami and the radiation contamination. Daily we are inundated with the bad news of that disaster. And surely, it is a disaster; economists are saying that it will be the most expensive disaster in human history. And it is still going on.
The struggle with making sense of disasters is that we wonder where God is in the midst of the difficulties. I always think of a story that Elie Wiesel told about a young man in a concentration camp; Wiesel was a survivor and is a wise Jewish writer. In this little story that he wrote, a young man is hung by the Nazis and another Jewish prisoner, feeling great despair and abandonment by God, asks the narrator of the story, "Where is your God, now?" The narrator responds, "Standing there on the gallows about to be hung."
Wiesel speaks of God's presence in the hard moments of life, the moments when all seems lost, the moments when there seems little hope, like the disaster in Japan. But make no mistake; because we believe in grace, God was there in the horror of the disaster, dying with those who lost their life, crying with those who lost their homes, grieving with a nation, with a world.
I subscribe to Ode magazine; their motto is that it's a magazine "for intelligent optimists." The magazine and the website are full of good news stories, of hopeful stories that don't often get told in the usual news outlets. A letter was written and sent from Japan to the Ode online website; in this letter, by one Anne Thomas of Sendai, Japan, we hear these words, "Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend's home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful." At the end of her letter, she says, "Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don't. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that is much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard and yet magnificent." 2
I subscribe to Ode magazine; their motto is that it's a magazine "for intelligent optimists." The magazine and the website are full of good news stories, of hopeful stories that don't often get told in the usual news outlets. A letter was written and sent from Japan to the Ode online website; in this letter, by one Anne Thomas of Sendai, Japan, we hear these words, "Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend's home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful." At the end of her letter, she says, "Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don't. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that is much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard and yet magnificent." 2
That's grace. That's sheer gift. That's God's presence at work in life, embodied in the love that can arise in human community even in the midst of great tragedy! That's the grace that the Samaritan woman experienced, the one Jesus met at the well as told by John. That's the grace that cracks people open to experience the wonder and mystery of life in a new way... in a way that makes people appreciate the preciousness of life, and of not taking things for granted. The grace the Samaritan woman experienced was articulated in Anne Thomas' letter, "I can feel my heart opening very wide."
We need more grace in our world. What would grace say in the midst of the partisan politics that came with the federal budget this week? What does grace call forth in us when we are in conflict with a friend, a family member, a neighbor, a nation?
Grace opens our hearts wide to experience love in a new way, to experience life in a new way, to know that we are valued for who we are, to know that life is beautiful even when it is scarred by tragedy. Grace is flowing to the Japanese people, and the Haitians and the Kiwis, whom the world seems to have forgotten. Grace is flowing to you and me because... as Richard Rohr says and as Jesus affirmed to the Samaritan woman, to Nicodemus, to the Syro-Phonoecian woman, and to the whole world... grace is everywhere!
Amen.
––––––––––––––––––1 Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation, Daily Meditation, Tuesday, March 22, 2011. (Go to www.cacradicalgrace.org for more information and to subscribe.) return
2 http://www.odemagazine.com/p2/Anne%20Thomas/blogs return
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