Mercy and Grace

Plato, in his Timaeus, says “So, Timaeus, it seems it would be your task to speak next – that is, after

you’ve called upon the gods in accordance with custom.” [27B]

In like manner, I will call upon both St. Augustine, the patron saint of theologians, Bastet, the Egyptian cat goddess, as well as Polyhymnia, the muse of sacred poetry and eloquence, in order to ascertain how mercy and grace play upon the human stage.

What value is there in finding mercy and grace? How do we know if we have found mercy and grace? The Israelites of the Torah, especially if you lived within a day’s walk of Jerusalem, had it easy. They has a cadre of priests, to whom you brought you doves, lambs, or bullocks, if you were really a big sinner, and the priests would make your sacrifice on the altar in front of the temple, and you were good for another few days, weeks, or months, depending on how big of a rascal you were. Jesus, according to Hebrews, put an end to that, by being the last high priest, of the order of Melchizedek, the first order of priests, from Genesis. One way of reading Hebrews is that Jesus give all the Jews in the Diaspora, those living in Ephesus, Alexandria, Byzantium, Cyrenia, Rome, and Athens a break. They no longer had to schlep all the way to Jerusalem, over difficult roads and seas, to have their sins forgiven. It was all done for them.

But there was no longer any “receipt” for two doves paid for sacrifice. That’s were the “boldly” in the meme comes in. We are now on the honor system, and being on the honor system is sometimes tough. We have to be like the skeptical Agent Dana Scully to the wild eyed alien-hunter, Agent Fox Mulder of the X-Files.

But that’s not what I’m really here to tell you. This should just get you to the right place to accept what I have in mind. Remember when we talked about forgiveness and the fact that He is expecting us to forgive our enemies before we can expect forgiveness from Him. Remember how it is even in His prayer. Well, I suggest that Grace and Mercy are treated in the same way upstairs. Since we have no App on our Smartphone or Tablet to signal whether we are in His good graces, and are up to date in the grace and mercy department, we have to assume that if we have faith that we are, and pay it forward, we will be in His good graces when our ledger is tallied up when the time comes.

The company line is that we are rewarded with grace even if there is no way we can afford to earn it by being… aha … and there’s the rub. We don’t even know what it means to earn His grace and mercy. So why try. But at least we have a reasonably good idea of what can really foul up our ledgers. We don’t even have to be murderers, rapists, or adulterers to make His virtual police blotter. Being greedy is high on the list. In fact, it may even be worse than murder, if that taking of a life was due to a momentary blindness in judgment. Greed requires intent, and it is intent which runs all through your daily life. It is so consuming that you lose any sense of compassion for those in need.

So, that’s were mercy comes in. Grace is a bit abstract, but when we are in the forgiveness and mercy shelves of the library, we have no trouble reading what those notions are all about. It mean that if someone whose politics runs counter to yours, you welcome them into your church with as much enthusiasm as your closest confidant on political matters. The past is entirely in God’s hands. We deal with what is set before us, with mercy and forgiveness. We don’t only act on it, we preach it, and we write about it.

That writing business may be more powerful than you may think. Robert Heinlein, the dean of classic writers of science fiction, added an exchange in his novel, Between Planets which went like this:

The banker reached into the folds of his gown, pulled out a single credit note. "But eat first—a full belly steadies the judgment. Do me the honor of accepting this as our welcome to the newcomer."

His pride said no; his stomach said YES! Don took it and said, "Uh, thanks! That's awfully kind of you. I'll pay it back, first chance."

"Instead, pay it forward to some other brother who needs it."

Heinlein lived this philosophy, and passed it on to other great writers of science fiction, such as Ray Bradbury, who wrote stories with the same theme. This is not something which only happens in TV commercials. Speaking of and to everyone with love, mercy, and forgiveness gets communicated in actions.

Take this with you in this Easter season.

Amen.

-- Bruce Marold

God's Love and New Beginnings

I love to see crocuses in the springtime. They are always among the first flowers to grace our lawns and gardens, and to me they are a sign of hope. Even when the ground is still rather cold--and sometimes still covered with snow--the crocuses dare to break through the hard earth and blossom. They let us know that another spring, another season of new growth and new beginnings, has arrived.

Crocuses make me think of the hope we have in and through Jesus Christ, which we have pondered anew throughout this Holy Week. As Father Cliff reminded us in his sermon on Palm Sunday, the primary message and meaning of this sacred time is God's love for us, as expressed in the passion, death,and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. God's love has triumphed over pain, brokenness, suffering, and death. Knowing and experiencing this in our own lives gives us the hope that sustains us in our ongoing journey with Christ.

As we conclude our Lenten meditations on forgiveness and reconciliation, it is helpful to remember that God's love makes possible the seemingly impossible. When we seek forgiveness from God or others, or when we seek the willingness to forgive those who have hurt us, let us have faith that forgiveness and reconciliation can, and will, happen through God's grace. Even when the damage may seem irreparable, God's love for us reminds us that it is not. God's love will break through our resistance, pain, and fear if we remain open to it. And like the crocuses that brave the cold, hard earth to bloom each year, we will have the courage to break new ground so that forgiveness and reconciliation can begin, and blossom into something new and beautiful.

There is a lovely hymn by John Crum, entitled "Now the Green Blade Rises",that I think expresses the wonder and beauty of Easter very well. The words are as follows:

"Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green."

As we celebrate Christ's resurrection and continue our journey through the coming year, may we remain open to God's love for us in Jesus Christ, so that this divine love may "spring up green" in each of us as well.

-- Stephanie Stover

Choose Grace

Because grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things

Grace finds beauty
In everything

Grace finds goodness
In everything 

Grace by U2

     Now that the mounds of snow have mostly melted, I am overjoyed to see the snow drop and tips of daffodils peeked out of the garden beds, pushing up from under the leafy debris.  But also uncovered is refuse, garbage: at the side of the highways; blown up against fences; fluttering in the trees, and piled by the rivers.  My eyes are glad for the rest from the unending winter blanket of white, but at least the snow covered up the obvious wastefulness of our human race, consumed with constant desire for consumption and temporary material joy.  

   
     My part in the cycle of purchasing unnecessary items is fluid.  Today I can choose to buy plastic eggs or colored grass or a stuffed animal which will eventually end up in the mountain of animals in the corner of my children's room.  Or I can choose to recycle the materials I already have laying around my house, repurposing them for a new use, or I can plant a seed as a gift to my children, or bake the special Easter bread a friend taught be how to braid, or dye our eggs with onion skins and herbs.  I can choose to bring beauty into the world without also damaging it.  I can teach my children how to walk gently on the earth.  

     I can also make the choice to accept God's grace and mercy, given to me as a gift in spite of my human errors.  And when I accept that grace and mercy, I cannot help but be transformed at my very core.  And when I am transformed, I cannot help but choose life-giving activities, loving gestures of my gratitude for God's gift.  I am a like a cup which receives God's blessing and cannot contain that blessing and so it runs out again, giving life into the world, "and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,[a] who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20)

Peter, Judas, Me--Fools All

It's April Fool's Day and I am pondering being a fool, at the same time that I am pondering Wednesday in Holy Week.

Catholic priest and spiritual writer Henri Nouwen reflected that Holy Week always give us a choice between being Peter and Judas.  Human as we are and sinners as we are, we all betray Jesus in various ways.  1) in ignoring his commandments: love God and love our neighbor 2) go into the world and preach the Gospel  3) in choosing to waste our lives  4) in ignoring his call  5) worst of all is when we do it knowing full well that we are doing it.

There is no help for it.  As long as we are human, we give in to self interest, laziness, anger—all those things we used to call “vices” or “deadly sins”.  Most destructive of all is the sin to which Judas succumbed: despair.  Peter betrays Jesus but he recognizes it, and weeping repents.  He turns again back to life.  He may not have done exactly the same sort of betrayal before or after, but Scripture gives us a picture of a fairly cantankerous fellow, and he was probably not perfect even after Christ’s death and resurrection. 

Judas, on the other hand, when he realized what he had done, hanged himself.  Whether it was because he was too proud to ask for forgiveness, or he became a victim of a doubt in God’s kindness and mercy—considered himself to be so evil God could never forgive him—he did not turn back to God.  Sometimes, we give up on ourselves, even when God hasn’t.  The likelihood is that if he had turned back, he, too, would have been forgiven, as had so many of the sinners that Jesus spent time with.


We often think of Judas as the most evil person who ever lived.  He was a thief.  He was a snitch.  A turncoat.  But plenty of other people have done those deeds—all the informers who worked for the Nazis in World War Two, or for the KGB in Russia, for instance.  Judas was not rare—he had a run-of-the-mill sort of wickedness.  But because it was Jesus he betrayed, rather than his grandmother, we particularly remember him. 

Like Peter and Judas, we sin and must repent and be forgiven over and over.  If we are willing to listen, daily we can hear God’s words of love and forgiveness.  It’s not a one-time over-and-done thing.  It's harmful fantasy to think that because we are Christians, we can keep from sinning.  But we need not to be discouraged.  Christ’s love is so endless and boundless that he will never send us away.  He has made us, knows us for what we are, and *EVEN SO* loved us enough to die for us.  It is a subtle kind of pride for us to take God’s job on ourselves and assume that we are beyond God’s reach.  That is true only if WE put a fence saying "God, keep out" around ourselves.

So which flavor of fools will we be?  The despairing fools who believe God is too weak to forgive even a great sin?  The proud fools who won't admit to sin and ask for forgiveness?  Or the fools who recognize their own foolish fallibility, and don't hesitate to follow the King of the Fools--the One who foolishly laid down his life for all the rest of us?

(Source of painting unknown)

What is God Like?

(Today's celebrity guest writer is the Rev. Bill Lewellis. He is the canon theologian and the retired communications minister of the Diocese of Bethlehem.) 

Parker Palmer once obsessed about defending God – until God said to him, “Parker, I can take care of myself.” I remember a similar transition in my own understanding: that God seeks not the defense of an apologist but the response of a lover.

It was during the early 1960s when I studied theology in Rome. My professor for the course on Revelation shifted the traditional focus of the course from a defensive attempt to prove how reasonable it was to believe in God to a powerful reflection on the mystery of God, on the mystery of God telling God’s secrets, on the mystery of God seeking/inviting relationship.

He led a quiet revolution. I discovered one practical effect within the next ten years while teaching religion at a local Catholic high school. The sequential structure within Roman Catholic school religion textbooks had been reversed. The traditional sequence had been: teach the commandments first (what must I do?) then the sacraments (relationship with God).

Think about the significance. What does each sequence say theologically?

In French-accented Latin, my Jesuit professor lectured about God’s revelation as an act of love: that God should speak to me, lifting the veil of transcendence, telling God’s secrets, inviting me into the mystery of divinity is in itself an act of love beyond all telling.

Beginning his first lecture, he paced along the long length of a raised platform in a large lecture hall. He stared at a blackboard that took up much of the wall behind him. With hardly a sound, he made one tiny dot on the blackboard. He paused, dramatically. “The white dot is what we know about God,” he said. “The blackboard is what we don’t know. What we know about God is little – but the little we know is precious.”

God’s self-disclosure, he said, is first of all an interpersonal act, not the communication of a fact or of a law. Revelation is God's gift of self-disclosure.

In his Theology and the Arts: Encountering God through Music, Art and Rhetoric (Paulist Press) Richard Viladesau wrote that revelation, as received by us, "is first of all a consciousness of an excess of meaning beyond every content, an orientation to absolute mystery."

God's self-disclosure is mediated incarnationally through ideas, persons, events, acts, institutions and symbols, even words. We receive this transcendent gift as a limited embodiment.

The clearest embodiment to me has been Christianity. This does not, however, put God's self-gift in a box. It has been communicated also in the entire history of human culture. Someone once said that when God tired of waiting for the church to move on segregation, God sent Jackie Robinson to major league baseball.

The human side of divine revelation is conversion, our acceptance of God's self-gift. Intellectual, moral and religious conversion.

This week, we celebrate God’s mercy, God’s loving kindness, God’s compassion and the possibility of doing all things in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s one great Mediator.

Ask this week, “What is God like?” Then, consider that God is like Jesus.

... with God All Things Are Possible

Last summer, I got an email from my college roommate which began, "Don't freak out, but I have to tell you I just got diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer."

That one hurt. It was especially painful to read at the particular moment she sent it, as I was preparing to officiate the memorial service for another close friend, Dave, who had died from the same disease. It was hard not to ask what God was up to in this instance. Sure, with God all things are possible - including the very real possibility of losing two people in a cruel way and in fairly short order. It's not fair, that someone will likely only get to live half a life, that a couple of little kids won't remember their dad, and that the rest of us will have to find a way to fill in the other holes left behind.

Living with this kind of loss is, for better or for worse, part of the human condition, and has been since the dawn of time. As the only power in the universe big enough to exert that kind of control, it's incredibly easy to blame God for this reality. Except that it's not God's fault. It's nobody's fault. It's simply what IS. How we live with it is what really matters. That is the lesson Dave and Roomie both continue to teach: whom, and what, we have now are critically important, much more so than all the "What if...?" questions and the, "I can't handle your being sick" comments their illnesses bring bubbling up to the surface.

During the lengthy goodbye which happens around the Last Supper in John's Gospel, Thomas and Philip both ask Jesus how it's possible that they can see the Father. Jesus' answer to them is part rebuke, and part reassurance: How can you even ask this? Don’t you know me? If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen my Father, and if you believe in me and in the works I’ve done, you will do even greater works. (John 14:7-11, paraphrase mine) He continues by promising them that not only will he do anything they ask in his name, they will not be left alone. Someone else is coming, someone who will guide them into all Truth and help them to continue this relationship they’ve just barely begun. How he reinforces that point is almost disarmingly simple. “You will see me,” he says. “Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:19-20, NRSV).

That is what's possible, through God's mercy and grace: that this Jesus, who is about to voluntarily submit himself to the worst humanity has to offer, will live, and that we will continue to live right along with him.

-- Amy Spagna+

Mercy and Grace

(Today's celebrity guest writer is Trinity parishioner Loraine Johnson. She recently completed a yearlong residency as a chaplain at St. Luke's Hospital in Fountain Hill.) 

Reflection upon Matthew 21: 1 - 11

Writing has to germinate deep within when I am focusing on a topic meaningful to me. I awoke about the hour of Vigils with an idea for the theme of the week and Palm Sunday. When I was working my way through the Ignatian Exercises, I prayed and reflected upon the passage above. I was drawn to the voice and character of the donkey. I had to choose whether I would speak as the donkey or the colt. I selected the colt and left the donkey behind. This is how it unfolded:

Young Donkey Colt:  Two men I have never seen before are here, asking for me. They tell my master I am needed for a very special task. Don't they know I have never carried a man? I am not ready for this. Why don't they ask my mother standing right here? They are saying the Lord has need of me, and my master knows exactly what that means and seems glad. They promise to bring me back as soon as I have completed my task. I'm feeling skitterish about this.

They untie me and lead me to a young man they call Jesus. When he looks at me and places a hand gently on my back, I feel something strange. I feel I know this person and that I can trust him. I am not afraid. As he eases himself onto my back, I feel the lightness of him. How can he be so light? I also feel an energy pass from him to me. I can understand his commands if I just pay attention to him.

We enter the crowd that waits a short distance away. As we move slowly forward, they part for us to pass through like a great sea of waving green and colored cloaks thrown down at our feet. I lift my feet a little higher, stepping carefully, listening intently for the orders of my gentle rider. His hand never leaves my back as he calms me despite the noise and chaos all around me. We move forward slowly toward the big city ahead. I've never been there, but we are heading directly into this strange place. I am not afraid. I have my Lord to carry. Little me.

This happy event stands in sharp contrast to the shadow of the cross directly ahead. In fact, we wave palms and sing today before weaving them into crosses or tucking them behind icons at home to await the next cycle of Lent. As we read the Passion Play, I am shocked to hear my own voice saying, "Crucify him!"

"No!" I want to say. "I could never do that." But if I were honest with myself, I would admit I have crucified Jesus in many ways through my sins against myself and others. Sr. Joan Chittister says, "Every one of us is capable of every sinful thing. Most of us have simply not had the opportunity or the anger or the sense of desolation it takes to do it. While we're being grateful for that, it behooves us to be merciful to those that have."

Recently, I acted with poor judgment when I was working in a retirement home. I had a difficult time accepting my fallibility. I told my story to several trusted listeners and received some relief. Yet it haunted me. I knew the only way to be relieved of this was in total surrender. I prayed, "God, if it is your will, remove from me this need to be perfect."

I finally felt peace. By the mercy of God, I received this through no merit of my own. Pure love.

In addition to this, I had two coworkers share stories with me that showed their own vulnerabilities. This was a gift above and beyond what I deserved. A grace. Whenever I receive a gift such as this, I record it. I enter the date and event and take it into prayer for several days to see what might be the invitation. I cannot receive such gifts without responding to the challenge to stretch myself to love and show mercy to all.

Chittister quote from God's tender mercy: Reflections on Forgiveness.