Grace

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

Grace

Brothers and sisters, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Marriage is an arena where this idea gets a lot of traction.

Politics needs to be an arena where this idea is at least entertained.

Here are some thoughts about making marriage work from Chris Thurman, a “clinical theologian” who teaches sometimes at our church in Austin:

1. Stay in your own backyard.
2. Own your own stuff.
3. Give more than you take.
4. Don’t be full of yourself.
5. Get your mind right.
6. Stop talking trash.

Here is a poem from my favorite pastor-poet-guy Steve Garnaas-Holmes about … politics?

We plead for God to intervene,

even “just this once…”

But I don’t think that’s how God works:

the Holocaust would have been a good time to do so.

No, God doesn’t stop the tyrant,

or nudge the car on the icy road.

God is not a Big Guy with a magic finger

he deploys now and then (but not always).

 

God is the Love at the heart of all being,

as constant as gravity, infinitely attentive,

and can’t be more present or active than right now.

 

When we ask for God’s help,

what we mean is to align ourselves

with the great power of God’s grace already at work.

Like musicians in perfect tune,

we create harmonics, notes that sound

though none of us is producing them.

Our harmony with God creates an energy field

that does indeed change things.

 

In troubled times it takes great concentration

to align ourselves with grace instead of force,

with love instead of fear.

We begin by allowing ourselves to be loved,

along with all the rest of Creation,

and then we fall into that love,

and let that love flow through us into the world.

 

I think that’s what we mean when we pray,

“Please, God…”

 

I think I choose to fall into the lap of grace, God’s ocean of grace, that infinitely deep pool, spreading out across the universe, where my body might drown but my spirit rejoices with the truth. Or I can stay up on the shore, maybe inching toward the pool, sticking my bare foot in but holding tight all the rest of my clothes …

In troubled times it takes great concentration

to align ourselves with grace instead of force,

with love instead of fear.

I guess I could just turn around and walk away. Too wet, I’d say. I can’t see the bottom, I’d think. Steve writes about the “we” when he writes, but I’m thinking about the “me” when I walk away. And in marriage too … submit to one another … it’s all about the “we.”

What does Chris mean by “stop talking trash?” Here’s a short list that covers a long life, in marriage, friendship, politics, and everyday business: withholding, countering, discounting, sarcastic jokes, blocking and diverting, blaming, criticizing, trivializing, undermining, threatening, name-calling, forgetting, commanding, denial, raging.

So. I do all those things, and I think we all do at times internally or out loud. And here’s the thing about grace is that God doesn’t stop me. Instead he provides the way back, into our center where he lives within me forever and for always. He teaches me to see my fear, confess it and receive his forgiveness. Then I can forgive myself. And I learn to forgive you, too. Do unto others.

This is a profound mystery.

I think that’s what humility is made up of: fail, see my failure, receive forgiveness and learn to pass that forgiveness on to my wife, my friend, my brother, my ally or even the one I sometimes see as my enemy.

Behold, thus is the man blessed who fears the Lord. May we see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of our life.

(Ephesians 5, Psalm 128, Matthew 11, Luke 13)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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