Grace

This is the text of the reflections I offered to the congregation I serve in Charlottesville, Virginia on Sunday, February 17, 2019.

The choir just sang what is easily one of the most recognizable hymns ever composed.  (And the arrangement was by our own Scott DeVeaux.)  “Amazing Grace” was written in the mid-1700s by a preacher named John Newton.  As a young man Newton served as a mate on a slave ship where he, “gained notoriety for being one of the most profane men the captain had ever met. In a culture where sailors commonly used oaths and swore, Newton was admonished several times for not only using the worst words the captain had ever heard, but creating new ones to exceed the limits of verbal debauchery.”  (Wikipedia)

One day the ship was caught in a storm so violent, that everyone was certain the ship would be capsized.  Newton and another mate actually lashed themselves to the ship’s pump so that they could keep working – which they did for hours – without fear of being washed overboard while doing so.  This was a realistic concern.  Newton had watched a fellow crew member swept off the ship from the spot where he, himself, had been standing just a few moments earlier.  When Newton told the captain his plan to tie himself to the pump, he reportedly said, "If this will not do, then Lord have mercy upon us!"  He later said that it was during that storm that he began his turning from the life he’d been living, to the one which saw him ordained a priest in the Church of England and author of “Amazing Grace.”

The turn was a long, slow one, though.  He continued to serve on slaving ships, eventually becoming a captain, and never saw nothing wrong with this abominable, abhorrent trafficking in human beings.  “He admitted that he was a ruthless businessman and [an] unfeeling observer of the Africans he traded.  Slave revolts on board ship were frequent.  Newton mounted guns and muskets on this deck aimed at the slave quarters.”  [Excerpted from the essay about Newton on the website The Abolition Project.]

Many years later, though, after he had left the slave trade and had become a committed Christian, he also became an ardent abolitionist fighting against the he had, himself, both participated in and profited from.  The lyrics of the first verse offer something of a personal testimony to the salvific power of grace.

Now, “grace” is one of those words to which some UUs have an almost allergic reaction.  Perhaps that’s because it’s so intimately connected to two other, for some, problematic words – “sin,” and “God.”  I’m going to set “God” aside for a today, but I do want us to consider the word, “sin.”  And I want to talk about “sin” because I think that the Christian concept of “Grace” can’t really be understood without understanding the concept of “Sin.” 

Ready?

If there’s one thing that many UUs have as much problem with as we do the idea of “God,” it’s “Sin.”  That’s because we know what “Sin” means; we know what being called a “Sinner” means.  It means that we’re a “loathsome insect … ten thousand times as abominable … as the most hateful, venomous serpent.” 

Those phrases come from a sermon delivered by the ever-cheery Johnathan Edwards titled, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”  Here is perhaps the most famous passage:

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear you in his sight; you are ten thousand times as abominable in his eyes as the most hateful, venomous serpent is in ours.”

I told you he was cheery.  I’ve really got to read a little more:

“You have offended him [and that’s God, again] infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince, and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else that you did not got to hell the last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell since you have sat here in the house of God provoking his pure eye by your sinful, wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.”

Hearing this kind of rhetoric from a Unitarian Universalist pulpit, it is possible, of course, that some of you think you have done so.  See, we don’t talk about “sin” because we “know” what it means:  It means that God – the ultimate Pater Prosecutorial – is constantly watching for us to make the slightest slip so that he – always “he” –  can come crashing down on us with all the authority of … well … of God Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth and all Things Visible and Invisible.  It means that we are not only “sinners in the hands of an angry God,” but that we’re, “worthless in the eyes of a judgmental God.”

 

And we “know” that “sin” is not just an existential state, it is also a laundry list of things – both general and very specific – that we shouldn’t do.  (Because it would make us even more loathsome and abhorrent, I guess.) 

I came across a blog post this week with the title, “A List of Sins from the Bible.” 

“Idolatry, greed, covetousness, love of money, gluttony, complaining, not loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, tempting God, high-mindedness, disobedience, witchcraft, lover of self, putting family, friends, job, or anything else above God including food, money, sports, inter [sic], TV, Internet pornography, movies, cars, attachment to riches or material goods and dozens of other things.

”

The author, Jack Wellman, an Evangelical Pastor, was just getting started.  He goes on to list a a great many more things that God is on the look-out for, more than a few of which I am sure we here this morning, “sinners” that we are, are now or have been engaged and entangled with.  It’s worth mentioning, that there are several things on Pastor Wellman’s list which we, good UUs that we are, would consider virtues, things to be proud of.  Yet for most of us even those that we’d aren’t good aren’t things we think should condemn someone to the eternal fires of hell – if we believed in “hell,” of course.

I want to be really clear here – I’m not for a moment suggesting that this is how all Christians understand the concept of “sin.”  Yet there’s no question it is precisely the way that word is often used.  But whenever I hear that word being used that way I want to say, “Hello.  My name is Inigo Montoya.  You killed my fa …”  No.  Wait.  It’s that other great line.  I want to say, “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”

There are actually seven different words used in the original Greek of the Christian scriptures which are translated into the single word, “Sin.”   Each has a different meaning, nearly all of which have gotten lost in that unfortunate simplification and which, together, paint an entirely different picture than we have been led to believe.

One is a term from archery that means, “to miss the mark.”  Sinning can be understood, then, simply as missing the mark.  Nothing “abominable” about it at all.  We all do it.  We try.  We try our best.  And sometimes we just don’t quite hit what we were aiming for.  We don’t keep our cool as much as we’d hoped we would have; we forget that we’d meant to give someone the benefit of the doubt; we join in when others are speaking snarkily about someone even though we’d promised ourselves we’d stop doing that.  We miss the mark.  We “sin.”

Some of the other Greek words mean, “diminishing what should have been given full measure,” (or, maybe, not giving it our all).  Then there’s “ignorance when one should have known;” “refusing to hear and heed God's word,” (or, let’s say, ignoring that still, small voice of inner wisdom even when it’s more like shouting at us).  My favorite of them all is, “lying down when one should have stood.” 
Is there anybody in here this morning who has never behaved in ways that could be described in at least one of these ways?  Oh man, I surely have.  I’ve missed the mark; I’ve held back and not given everything I had; I’ve done things that I should have known not to do; and oh how many times I’ve lay down when I should have – and could have – been up and doing something. 

You see … the concept of “sin,” when properly understood at its spiritual core, is not all that much about judgement.  It’s really an observation.  I have two eyes, one nose, and one mouth.  I have a tattoo on my right arm.  I breathe air and can’t breathe under water.  I often miss the mark.  I sometimes do things when I really should have known better.  I don’t always give everything I can.  I sometimes drop down, out of sight, when I really should be present and counted for.  And except for the the tattoo, I’d wager that’s true for just about all of us, true for just about anyone we might ever meet.  That’s really what it means to say that we’re all “sinners.”

Well … what about “grace?”  “Sin” and “Grace” really go hand in hand.  They should, at least, because each is needed to make sense of the other.

I don’t know about you, but I know that I struggle with “Imposterism.”  That’s the psychological condition, sometimes called “Imposter Syndrome,” in which I look at myself and all of my accomplishments and am afraid that I’m really just a fraud one slip from being found out.  A few years back, we brought in a facilitator to lead a weekend retreat as the kick-off to a multi-session program called “Beloved Conversations” that was designed to help groups deepen their ability to talk about how racism plays out in the world, and in our own lives.  At the end of the first night of the retreat all of the participants sat in here – which is actually a really powerful thing to do at night.  We sat in here and went through a process that led us to our deepest, core, most fundamental fear.  There were some really impressive people here that night – if I were to read off a list of them, those who’ve been around a while would recognize a veritable who’s who of the best and brightest.  The room was full of really highly successful people, and just about every one of us said pretty much the same thing when we were asked to share – some version of, “I’m afraid that if people really knew me, knew the real me, that they wouldn’t love or respect me anymore and that I’d be abandoned.”  Just about every … single … person.

I’m not good enough.  I’m just not good enough; I don’t deserve this good fortune.  I’m not good enough; I don’t deserve this success.  I’m not good enough; I don’t deserve to see my dreams come true.  I’m not good enough; I don’t deserve to be happy.

Yes?

The deepest spiritual understanding of the concept of “sin” says, essentially, “Okay.  So what?  Nobody’s good enough!  Everybody is fallible!  Everybody’s flawed!  Everybody fails!  What makes you so special that you think you’re the only one who secretly isn’t a good enough friend, or lover, or parent, or racial justice warrior, or whatever.  Get over yourself!  We’re all in that same boat.” 
The concept of “sin,” no matter how twisted it has become through the years, is simply telling us that we’re right, that we’re not perfect, and that no one else is either.  This means we can stop wasting energy comparing ourselves to somebody else who we’re convinced is somehow better than us.  We can let ourselves off the hook, because nobody’s got it all together.

That’s the lesson of “sin.” 

The lesson of “grace” is that none of that matters, because we live in a world of beauty even with our flaws.  People love us even with our imperfections.  In the theistic context from which these terms come, “grace” means that God loves us not because we’re good enough to deserve it, but because God is good enough to casually and extravagantly exude love like the sun just shines.
“Grace” tells us that we don’t need to earn our place in the Universe.  As the well-known poem “Desiderata” put it, “You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.”

Sin and Grace.  We aren’t perfect, but we don’t need to be perfect to be happy.  We miss the mark, but we don’t need to hit the bullseye every time to be “worthy” (whatever that means).  We don’t always give it our all, don’t always show up, don’t always listen to our own inner wisdom, but we don’t need to do any of that to be loved.  We are sinners, among sinners, but that’s not a judgement, just an observation.  And it’s okay, because grace doesn’t require us to be anything other than what we are. 
Now … isn’t that amazing?

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Amazing! Grace

These are the explorations offered during worship at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia this past Sunday.

[Listen to the sermons]

Amazing! Grace: Was Blind But Now I See  ~  Wendy Repass     I was listening to a friend describe grace. She’s an alcoholic but she’s been sober for several decades now. She said, “how is it that I have remained sober, whereas others have gone back to drinking? But for the grace of god go I.”

And this struck a chord with me deeply. I thought about Mary who over the years would get angry more and more often during times of trouble. When she had a baby, Mary’s fits of rage became frequent- blaming, yelling, screaming and hitting in anger at loved ones.

I could see her spiraling into this recurring behavior, completely blind to the effect she had on other people. Lashing out at loved ones at the moment when she needed support the most.

How is it that she cannot stop herself and snap out of it? Why does she seem blind to her own behavior?

Perhaps grace is like when you’re working on a math problem, and you work at it and try to do it, but you just can’t get it. Then you put it down. A day later, or a week and all of a sudden you’re like “Ah-Ha!”

Or maybe it’s like when you see someone else mired in the same kind of addiction you have and you wonder, wow, how did I ever break free of that? People tell you it’s because you worked hard, but you know deep down inside that there was a time you couldn’t even see, that you were absolutely blind. And you wonder in amazement at how you got here.

Or maybe it’s like what happened to John Newton. John was a slave ship captain who enjoyed “an easy and creditable way of life” (1) until he was forced to resign because of health problems. He got an administrative position, but he eventually got involved with a church and became a minister. Years later, Newton would write, "I think I should have quitted [the slave trade] sooner
had I considered it as I now do to be unlawful and wrong. But I never had a scruple upon this head at the time; nor was such a thought ever suggested to me by any friend." (1)

He wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace”. Eventually public opinion started to turn away from slavery. 30 years later he would write a popular pamphlet talking about his days as a slave trader, apologizing for it and campaigning against slavery.

30 years is a long time. But grace was seeping like water onto a desert in Newton’s world. The culminating effect of changing attitudes in society, the fact that he had to stop working at that job and his entry into the ministry all culminated in him gradually being able to see what he had done.

May we see even though today we are blind. May we recognize our own blindness so that we might have compassion for the blindness of others.

“Let the desert rejoice.... For waters shall break forth in the thirsty ground....The wasteland will be turned into an Eden.... You will become like a watered garden.”(2)

(1)   “Africans in America”, PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p275.html

(2)   Excerpts from Isaiah, Bible as arranged in “Addiction & Grace”, Gerald G. May, 1991.

Amazing!  Grace.  ~  Erik Walker Wikstrom     Amazing Grace.  Perhaps one of the most popular hymns of all time that nobody every really sings.  At least, not the way it was meant to be sung.  That first line?  “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me”?  It’s been recast as:

·         That saved a soul like me . . .

·         That saved and strengthened me . . .

·         That saved and set me free . . .

The great Protestant writer Kathleen Norris has lamented that these alterations are “laughably bland.”  The whole point is that the narrator of the song has known a wretched life . . . absolutely wretched, horrible . . . and not just the outer circumstances of his life, but his inner life as well . . . he’s been a wretch.

And John Newton certainly knew both things.  He was, as is now well known, involved in the English slave trade – first as a sailor on slave ships and then, eventually, as a captain.  He was involved with the buying and selling of people.  Or, to look at it another way, he was involved with the debasing and dehumanizing of people to such an extent that they could be seen as commodities.  From the abolitionist perspective he developed later in his life, and from our perspective today, that earlier time was certainly most wretched.

And personally he knew a wretched existence as well.  In his days as a sailor he was continually getting in trouble on ship.  He wrote obscene songs about his captain, songs that were so popular with the crew that they even started singing along.  (Not so popular with his captain, I’d imagine.)  His language was so profane, in fact, that in a profession rather well known for its salty talk, he was (and I love this line) “admonished several times for not only using the worst words the captain had ever heard, but creating new ones to exceed the limits of verbal debauchery.”   On one occasion he got himself into so much trouble – and I truly wish I knew what he’d done – that he was chained up below decks like the slaves they were carrying and was then himself sold off the ship into slavery in Sierra Leon.  (I’m thinking he knew a thing or two about wretchedness.)

He was saved from his enslavement by another ship’s crew, the crew of the Greyhound, in whose company he then set sail.  It was while aboard the Greyhound that he experienced another kind of wretchedness – a severe storm that challenged the ship to its core.  Newton watched as a crewmate was washed overboard from a spot where he’d been standing only a moment earlier.   When he and another shipmate were set to operating the pumps, they had to lash themselves to them so as not to be washed away.  And Newton himself spent eleven hours on deck steering the boat – and this, after hours and hours of battling the storm in other positions.

At one point, after speaking with the captain about a possible plan of action, Newton said, “If this will not do, then Lord have mercy on us.”  They made it through, and surviving this storm provided an opportunity for Newton to reconsider his life.  He saw their survival as nothing but God’s mercy, yet he knew that he had not only neglected his own faith but had actively opposed it . . . in himself and others.  He was want to ridicule people who spoke of religious things and even reveled in declaring that their God was nothing but a myth.  And now he felt as though he’d just been saved by this God he ridiculed.  He felt as though he, a wretch of a man who’d known a wretched life, had just been saved and suddenly it seemed as if he’d been blind his whole life before and now could see.

Powerful stuff, right?

Of course, we’re not wretches, right?  I mean, none of us could say that we’ve lived the kind of wretched life John Newton had, right?  That’s why we sing all sorts of things other than “saved a wretch like me.”  Right?

When the Worship Weavers were discussing this service in our meeting last month one of the members said that they resonated with the song as someone who was thirty-five years sober.  Looking back at their life of active alcoholism was without question or doubt looking back at a wretched life, a life of blindness.  Looking at their life’s trajectory, the gift of sobriety, the grace of sobriety, was a “sweet sound” indeed.

This got me to thinking about one of my teachers, Gerald May.  Gerry was a psychiatrist who was interested in spiritual direction – he was also the younger brother of the more famous Rollo May.  In his fantastic book Addiction and Grace, Gerry makes the point that there are all kinds of addictions – the obvious ones like alcohol, drugs, food, and gambling are just the tip of the iceberg.  He suggests that anything we can’t give up, anything that we find ourselves locked into and unable to let go of, can be understood as an addiction.  So, some people are addicted to the accumulation of wealth, others to “being nice,” and others to “being right.”  Does any of this ring a bell?

And one of the things about addiction is that not only are we caught up in it, virtually powerless to let go of it, but that this is true to our own detriment.  It’s not just that you think that making money is a really good thing, it’s that you think so to such an extent that you spend all of your time involved in its acquisition even to the point of being unable to actually enjoy any of it.  Or you think that “being nice” and keeping everybody happy is so important that you aren’t nice to yourself and you, in your own life, are anything but happy.  Addictions warp our minds and our hearts, twist our souls so that the good we seek becomes a harm – and we end up becoming trapped, enslaved.

Some say that that’s what happened with Thomas Jefferson and slavery – he was intellectually opposed to the inhuman practice, but he was so caught up in the lifestyle and the ways of life of his day that he could not let go of it.  Enslaved persons were necessary in his kind of life, and despite the dissonance between the institution of slavery and his values about freedom he couldn’t let it go.

That was certainly true of John Newton.  Even after his conversion experience he continued to run slave ships for several years, although each trip became increasingly more difficult for him until he finally collapsed from the strain, never to sail again.

The truth is, my friends, that each of us . . . (I was tempted to write “some of us” in order to give you an out and increase the chance that you’d feel positively toward me, something I’ve been known to struggle with) . . . but the truth is that each of us knows our own kind of wretchedness.  Each of us has our own blindness.  Each of us knows that place – oh, probably not to John Newton’s extent but don’t let’s let that stand in the way of our acknowledging that we do, in fact, know it – and if we don’t also know the sweet sound of grace then we know what it feels like to yearn for it.

And when we feel it – like the calming of the seas that have been throwing us about; like the breaking of the storm clouds, the cessation of the rain, and the coming out of the sun – we may well be surprised.  Amazing!  Grace!  And that’s part of the truth about grace, too.

Last week I said that there is no limit to grace, that it abounds, that it exists all around us and that we just have to be open to it.  But it’s not as easy as that, is it?  It’s not as simple.  There’s something fundamentally mysterious about grace; it’s beyond our control.  I don’t even know for sure whether we should say that grace is that moment, that event, in which our lives are opened up or if it’s that ineffable “energy” (for want of a better word) that’s moving in, and around, and through our lives making those moments, those events, possible.  And that’s probably okay.  It’s okay for us to front some mysteries and allow them to remain mysterious.

What I do know is that there are “many dangers, toils, and snares” in this life.  I know that all of us have our moments of wretchedness.  And I know that I wish grace on us all.

Will & Grace

These are the sermonic explorations shared on March 5, 2012 at
the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia.

[To listen]

Thomas Collier:  Grace – the new topic for the month of March.  (Eric?  What are you doing?  Atonement, was hard enough, then Incarnation in December I had to stretch head and heart on that topic and now???? – Grace!!)

Well, as usual I don’t have a clue what Grace is.  I mean, I understand that the definition of Grace is, a free or unmerited gift, but that begs the question of who is the giver (religiously speaking), and why me?   There are more worthy and more needy people than me.  And if grace is accidental, a positive synchronicity then there is no giver, and without a giver, how can it be considered a gift. So grace, beyond reading the definition of what it is supposed to mean, I can’t say that grace makes a whole lot of sense to me.  The dictionary was not much help, this time. 

Grace – Graceful. Now that makes sense, that I can understand; fluid, smooth, flawless, beautiful.

That is grace I can hold onto – That is grace I can see – That is grace I can hope for.  I hope for you, for me, for us all – Life lived gracefully.  A Smooth, flawless, beautifully lived life.

That would be wonderful if it weren’t so incredibly unrealistic.  Sometimes life is graceful and sometimes life is a bellyflop. 

I struggled to find an image for this grace-less-ness and the best I could come up with is an old Calvin and Hobbs cartoon where Calvin is at the top of Mayhem Mountain and Hobbs is questioning the rationale behind pushing off.  They, of course, GO and Mayhem ensues.  They fly (uncontrolled) through the air, crash into just about everything they could crash into and then end up at the bottom, bumped, bruised, scratched … and triumphant! 

Sure, there are times when life is grace, beautiful moments; then there are times when Grace, the dancer, falls flat on her tukus and everyone stifles a laugh because they know its not socially appropriate to laugh especially when the person sitting next to you is genuinely concerned for Grace.  Yes, I too am concerned for Grace … but Grace just fell on her butt and that was funny. 

A life well lived comes with a fair share of grace-less crash-bang, fall-down, bruises and scars kind of moments.  The kind of moments that really make stories, that make stories great. The kind of moments that make us laugh.  We will wait through the entire series of credits to get to the outtakes – the crashes, the bangs, the epic failures of the movie.  And sometimes the outtakes are more entertaining than the movie.  I am not speaking metaphorically, so don’t go home and ponder that as a life lesson. 

 Look, its OK to laugh when another person has an epic crash because they are part of life, the person and the crashes.  I have done a lot of whitewater kayaking and we, the whitewater community, have gotten over the idea that laughing at someone adds insult to injury.  We laugh because the crash was funny, not because we are laughing at you (plus we have seen a lot of crashes an we know you are going to be OK). 

There have been times when I was laughing hysterically and offering a hand for support.  There have been many times when I was on the receiving end of someone laughing hysterically and offering a hand for support.  Actually the only time that laughter adds insult to injury is when someone is taking themselves a bit to seriously and in all honesty, we ALL crash so don’t take yourself too seriously.  Plus you are killing the potential mirth of the situation. 

In our daily lives, we are all usually in a crash or a state of Grace.  Usually.  There are those extreme times – Joyful times, which are more than just graceful, and Tragic times, where laughter can not penetrate. But the most of our time is spent in a crash or a beautiful flowing state of Grace. 

When life in is in the midst of a crash – when grace is gone – don’t forget to laugh.  The crash you are in may be physical, emotional or spiritual – don’t forget to laugh.  You may be on your knees alone or with a trusted companion - weeping OR pacing back and forth screaming (once again alone or with a trusted companion because its not Ok to do that in public).  Don’t forget to laugh.  It could be huge, “I have to write this down, this is a GREAT story” kind of hysterical laughter or it could be a small “I can NOT BELIEVE how messed up this is”  kind of laughter.  Don’t forget to laugh.    

There is as much if not more God in laughter as there is in quiet solemnity.

There is as much if not more Spirit in laughter as there is in quiet contemplation.

I really wish a beautiful, fluid Graceful life, for you, for us all. 

but when Not-So-Graceful happens

I wish for us all Laughter. 

Erik Wikstrom:  Our Universalist ancestors told the world, and tell us still, that there are no limits to the love of God.  Now we Unitarian Universalists, today, may want to have some freedom to express that phrase “the love of God” in different ways.  For some of us those words themselves are too limiting, they are too inextricably linked to images of a paternalistic Santa in the Sky who doles out goodies to the good and cosmic coal to everyone else.  (As if even God could make such a clear distinction between those two!)

Some people don’t like “theistic language,” or what our recent UUA President Bill Sinkford liked to call “the language of reverence.”  That’s okay, really.  We don’t need it.  In the Christian scriptures Jesus is remembered as saying that “God causes it to rain on the just and the unjust alike,” a passage often quoted by those long-ago Universalists.  We could just as easily, and just as accurately, say simply that it rains on the just and the unjust.  The sun shines on good people and bad people equally.  Green plants soak up carbon dioxide and exude fresh oxygen whether we deserve it or not.

And now we’ve come to a part of the concept of “Grace” that often causes fits for folks like us.  If grace is, as many would define it, an “unmerited” or “undeserved” gift or blessing, then many of us would draw the line right there.  What do I mean by saying “undeserved”?  It’s not like we’re still stuck in that “sinner” stuff, those old teachings that seemed to emphasize how “unworthy” we are.

Well no . . . we’re not.  And that’s part of the point.  But let me offer an illustration.

When I was candidating for this position the Search Committee looked at a lot of other highly qualified folks.  I had to demonstrate – prove to them and then to you – that I was up to the . . . opportunity . . . of pastoring this people.  And I think it’s fair to say that I earned my place in this pulpit; that I deserve to be here, ministering with all of you, co-creating this beloved community we call TJMC.

But do I – could I – deserve what it feels like when Scott plays?  Is there some way that I could earn the energy in this room when we’re weaving worship together?  The thrill that runs up my spine when I see what’s going on in our RE program, what could possibly make me worthy of that feeling?

Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  These things are completely unmerited, undeserved . . . they’re grace.

As is the sunset that reminds you that life is worth living at the end of  that day when you’ve not been so sure.  As is the look in your child’s eye when they look at you like you know everything and can do everything and . . . are . . . everything to them.  Grace.  Nothing but grace.

So our Unitarian Universalist ancestors told the world, and tell us still, that there are no limits to grace; that it falls on the just and the unjust; that it shines on good people and bad people equally; that no matter what we may know ourselves to be, it’s there – all around us (and within us too!) – just ready for the taking.  They preached that the question of whether or not you “deserved” it, or were “worthy” of it, isn’t really the right question.  Of course you don’t; there’s no way that you could.  So stop worrying about that.

The real question doesn’t have to do with “worthiness” or “unworthiness” but, instead, willingness.  Because grace is all around us, like the air we breathe, but we have a choice about whether or not we acknowledge it; whether or not we accept it.

So there’s the question – the real question imbedded in the concept of grace – are you willing to accept it?  Are you willing to open yourself to it?  Trust it?  Live your life as though it were true?

Albert Einstein is reported to have said, “"The most important question you'll ever ask is whether the Universe is a friendly place."  It’s possible that he didn’t say this, but it’s an awfully good question nonetheless.  And the answer, I’m afraid is not quantifiable.  There is no definitive conclusion to be drawn by looking at the available data, because the available data unfortunately supports both hypotheses.  So we have to make a choice – you and I have to make a choice – with each and every day we’re above ground, with each and every breath we draw in each and every moment-by-moment encounter, we have to decide if we’re going to live in a friendly Universe or an unfriendly one. 

We have to choose whether we’re going to see the glass as half full or half empty because the objective reality is that it is both at the same time, yet it matters mightily which perspective we emphasize.  “It matters what we believe,” Sophia Lyon Fahs said.  A fuller rendering of her poem can be found in the back of our hymnal, but she said:

Some beliefs are like walled gardens. . .

Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies.

Some beliefs are like shadows.. . .

Other beliefs are like sunshine. . . .

Some beliefs are divisive. . . .

Other beliefs are bonds in a world community. . . .

Some beliefs are like blinders. . . .

Other beliefs are like gateways opening wide vistas for exploration.

Some beliefs weaken a person's selfhood. . .

Other beliefs nurture self-confidence and ignite the feeling of personal worth.

Some beliefs are rigid, like the body of death, impotent in a changing world.

Other beliefs are pliable, like the young sapling, ever growing with the upward thrust of life.

It matters what we believe.  It matters how we see that glass.  It matters what we think of the Universe.  And it is up to us to choose.

Buddhists teach us that even though we are breathing all the time we are hardly ever aware of – really, fully, deeply aware of and awake to –something as simple as our breathing.  Yet if we wake up – when we become aware – even something as simple as our breathing is recognized as being miraculous.  Awake or asleep – it’s fundamentally a choice.  A choice each of us has the power to make.  Right now.

And right now again.

Each of us can choose to breathe the air, and feel the sun on our backs, and let the rain drench us to the skin – there are no limits to the love of God.  There are no limits to grace.

Unless we put them there.

That’s really the message I have to share this morning.  The sun is always shining, exuding its energy indiscriminately, lavishing its life-giving power without condition.  Unless we create smog and pollution to block it out.  (And, of course, even so its energy gets through . . . we just make it harder for us to see it.)  The rain falls, and even our going inside does not stop its fall – we just prevent it from getting to us.  But it’s there.  And when it transforms into water vapor and enters the air it lands on even those of us who’ve tried to be safe from its touch . . . we just don’t know it

In the coming weeks we’ll explore this idea of “grace” from several angles.   This morning I leave these fourteen words for each of us to ponder:

There is no limit to grace.  Do you have the will to accept it?

Of Gratitude and Grace

Last evening a group of us gathered at Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist to explore the topic of "gratitude."  We've recently begun organizing our lifespan faith development efforts -- and in this I include our weekly worship -- around monthly themes.  In September we explored "hospitality."  In October we're dancing with "Atonement."  Next month our theme will be "gratitude," and our conversation last night was a way for our religious education leaders, and anyone else who was interested, to get a head start on thinking about our next month's focus.  (And the rich conversation also gave me gold for the sermons I'll be preaching!)

One of the things we did during this Conversation on Gratitude was to create collaborative an acrostic poem.  We thought about words that we associate with the idea of "gratitude" and then we took one of those words and wrote it vertically down the side of a piece of paper.  We then brainstormed words and phrases which begin with each of the letters of that word, and wove those together to create our poem.  (This is one of the things that our congregation's children will be doing during their religious explorations next month.)

Here is the poem we created:

          Gift of gladness
          Received and reciprocated.
          Aware of awe.   Ahhhhhhh.
          Cultivating communion with the cosmos.
          Embodying the energy of the entwined.

In Gassho,

RevWik