Grace is an abstract word. We cannot point to an object and say, “That’s grace.”
We can point to people, or at least those named Grace, and say, “There’s Grace.” When you think of women named Grace, you may remember the most famous—Princess Grace Kelly—or you may think of someone provocative—Nancy Grace—or, you may know of the computer genius, Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, who paved the way for women in computers.
There is also, grace before a meal.
However, the grace I am talking about today is an act, or event that is fueled by love—unconditional love. It is the grace that is undeserved and unearned.
Our reading this morning from Howard Thurman helps us understand this kind of grace. I substitute the word grace for the word love,
Behold the miracle! Grace has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale by which its portion may be weighed or measured. It does not seek to balance giving and receiving. Grace loves; this is its nature. …Here is no traffic in sentimentality, no catering either to weakness or to strength…
When grace happens to anyone it is not because they are “worthy,” or because she or he has “earned” grace. It is always undeserved and unearned.
There is a story which shows how grace happens. It is from the day of 9/11. United Airlines Flight 93 was hijacked by terrorists and flying toward Washington, DC. We have no way of knowing its target, but it was headed to the Capitol city. There are events concerning Flight 93 of which we may never know, but we do know one thing—there were passengers on that jet who were determined to prevent it from ever reaching the Capitol. Todd Beamer told a telephone operator that some of the passengers were planning to “jump on” the hijackers. According to Lisa Jefferson, that operator, Beamer’s last audible words were, “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll!” [From Wikipedia]
Where is grace in this story?
Grace happened for those people who were spared that day. There may be hundreds of people who work or reside in the building which was the target of the terrorists on Flight 93. We may never know the target; what we do know is that grace happened for those people.
Grace that was fueled by love
Love of what
We can only guess.
Perhaps they loved this country so much; they would not sit still and wait for the terrorists to fly into a landmark in their Capitol. Perhaps they loved life so much that they could not just wait for fate, but had to live and act as long as they had breath. Perhaps they loved what this country stands for and they thought action, fighting back, was better than not doing anything. In the face of certain death, they did not passively live, but fueled by love, said, “I will not go quietly into the night.” (Dylan Thomas poem “Do Not Go Gently Into the Night)
Grace happened for those people who were spared that day, grace that was neither earned nor deserved. And I believe everyone on that flight knew grace in the moment before they died.
In our Old Testament story this morning we heard about Naaman, a great commander of an army that defeated Israel. The man, although mighty, had a terrible skin disease and he went at his king’s insistence into his enemy’s land to Elisha for healing. Elisha does not even go outside to look at Naaman, he sends his servants out and they tell Naaman to wash in the river Jordan.
Naaman, a proud man, was offended and left in insulted. But his servants begged him to turn around and wash in the Jordan. They said if there had been a great ceremony, recognizing his greatness, then he would have gone along with anything the prophet said, but there was none, so he leaves.
Reluctantly he goes down to the Jordan and washes in the river and is healed.
He was an enemy, he was not “worthy,” nor did he “deserve” to be healed. But he was. And afterwards, the story implies, he was a convert, willing to bow down and worship Yahweh.
Somewhere, in all of this, there was God’s grace, God’s unconditional love.
I’ll make a distinction when I’m talking about this kind of grace that is “fueled by love.”
There is God’s grace which ensures of a final harmony of all souls with God, and living a grace-filled life.
The very foundation of our universal faith is a belief in God’s grace. We say it every Sunday in our Declaration of Faith. We believe in the “final harmony of all souls with God.”
Writings from the first century tell us that the early followers of Christ believed this, too. No place in the New Testament more clearly says this than John chapter 3.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love…
We have a representation of this verse carved across the back of the chancel wall in our sanctuary. God is love and he that loves dwelleth in God and God in him –
We are assured no matter what of God’s grace.
Ah, but living a grace-filled life.
A woman told me she knew her mother loved her because she made her lunch every school day, every year, until she graduated from high school. Her mother did this despite being in a wheelchair and struggling with arthritic pain every waking moment of her life.
She said, I did all I could to help my mother, but it surely wasn’t enough to warrant that kind of devotion. I didn’t deserve lunch some days, and I surely didn’t earn it, but my mother did it because she loved me.
Grace happened in her life! She knew unconditional love from her mother.
As a consequence, this woman opened herself up to a grace-filled life. She looked for opportunities at work and in her family to create grace-filled moments for others. In turn, grace-filled moments happened to her.
But some of us grow up without unconditional love and because of this, it is difficult to experience grace in our lives. Research tells us that without unconditional love we develop some of these characteristics:
A sense of being unworthy,
or insecurity
or worse we develop contempt for ourselves or for others.
Some of us even develop an arrogant, pride-filled demeanor to mask our unworthiness, or insecurity, or contempt.
Sometimes, all this makes us vulnerable to fear. And fear creates more fear and takes over our lives.
There are many stories of how this lack of unconditional love in our growing up years plays itself out and keeps us from having a grace-filled life. In fact, they show the hardship of accepting grace in our lives.
A much-discussed topic among ministers with whom I am acquainted, and that would be ministers from several different faith traditions, are our parishioners who become gravely ill and will not share their illness with their friends in their congregation. Our stories are all similar.
Once, in a church I served, there was a woman battling cancer. She didn’t tell me; her housekeeper inadvertently told me one day when I called. The housekeeper said she had gone for her chemo treatment. Then she asked me not to tell anyone; she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. This very sick woman, having gone to this church for well over twenty years, never told a soul in the congregation that I know of.
She cut herself off from the opportunities to experience a grace-filled life in her fight against cancer because she would not allow anyone to know, or to help, or to just love her through it all.
In the song Emily sang this morning “Lean of Me,” we heard the words, lean on me, I’ll help you carry on … swallow your pride … allow me to help, because I can’t help if you won’t allow me to help … lean on me …
Oh for some of us it is a hardship to accept grace.
We cut ourselves off from grace-filled moments because of one or some of those reasons I just talked and we know it.
Paul Tillich, one of the twentieth century’s most renowned theologians wrote in one of his sermons,
We know that we are estranged from something to which we really belong, and with which we should be united. We know that the fate of separation is not … a natural event like a flash of sudden lightening, but that it is a… [lived] experience in which we actively participate, in which our whole personality is involved…”
Miguel Unamuno, a great Spanish philosopher, tells us the same thing, and that we cannot just wish for our lives to be different, we have to actively pursue change so we can experience a grace-filled life. Although he doesn’t call it a grace-filled life, he calls it a “life in God.”
It is easier to believe we are unworthy than it is to change.
It is easier to believe we don’t deserve grace, than it is to change.
I am not saying we are totally devoid of love. Because for most of us, even if we don’t’ get unconditional love from our parents, we do get some kind of love from them and others as well. And I’m not saying we have to “do” something to deserve a grace-filled life, all I am saying is that many of us need to pursue personal and spiritual growth. In order to have a grace-filled life, we have to be open to a grace-filled life.
Anyone who has pursued personal and spiritual growth will tell you, it is worth the pain of change. The pain of change happens, because letting go of all that is familiar to us—even if it is a challenge—is painful. We suffer with our challenges or we suffer in letting go of them? Unamuno, talking about this pain of change, says, “it is the suffering” that makes us whole, and it is the suffering that unites us.
But, if we don’t do the personal and spiritual growth we need, can grace still happen? Yes, because it happens whether we earn it or not, it happens whether we are worthy or not. It is just harder to accept. A boss gives us extended paid leave to be with a sick relative, when we have no more paid leave on the books. That is grace happening.
A neighbor brings over a dish of food when he finds out we are sick. That is grace happening.
Someone changes a flat tire for us in the parking lot. That is grace happening.
Someone takes us to the airport so we don’t have to pay for parking. That is grace happening.
We become overwhelmed with grief one night, and we call a friend who just listens and doesn’t say a word. That is grace happening.
Our teenager cleans the house without being asked. That is really grace happening!!
Grace happens to us, because others act out grace-filled lives. And you know what, even when we have personal and spiritual growth work to do, we still, ourselves, make grace happen for others.
The parable from Meister Eckhart about the burro is a wonderful image for us of “grace.” We know it is not possible for the burro to know whether she “deserves” or “earns” that pear or the kind look, or the touch on her ears, they just happen, fueled by the Monk’s love of animals. That is “grace” happening.
Ultimately, though, if we don’t do this growth work, does it matter to God?
NO
God still offers us grace, still gives us unconditional love.
For in eternity, all that matters is God’s love.
Opening Words
Meister Eckhart (trans. Daniel Ladinsky) about unexpected love:
All day long a little burro labors, sometimes with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries about things that bother only burros. And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting than physical labor. Once in a while a kind monk comes to her stable and brings a pear, but more than that, he looks into the burro's eyes and touches her ears and for a few seconds the burro is free and even seems to laugh, because love does that: Love offers freedom.
Reading I
2 Kings 5:1-15, “The Healing of Naaman”
Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favour with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, ‘If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.’ So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, ‘Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.’
He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, ‘When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.’ When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, ‘Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.’
But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, ‘Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.’ So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, ‘Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.’ But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, ‘I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?’ He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, ‘Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, “Wash, and be clean”?’ So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant.’
Reading II
Excerpt from A Strange Freedom, The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life
Behold the miracle! Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale by which its portion may be weighed or measured. It does not seek to balance giving and receiving. Love loves; this is its nature. This does not mean that it is blind, naïve, or pretentious, but rather that love holds its object securely in its grasp, calling all that it sees by its true name but surrounding all with a wisdom born both of its passion and its understanding. Here is no traffic in sentimentality, no catering either to weakness or to strength. Instead, there is robust vitality that quickens the roots of personality, creating an unfolding of the self that redefines, reshapes and makes all things new. Such an experience is so fundamental that an individual knows that what is happening to [them] … can outlast all things without itself being dissipated or lost.
Posted by UNMC Office at October 7, 2007 11:00 AM