Grant your people grace to love what you command …
Fifth Sunday of Lent, BCP page 219
Grace - a word used in so many ways, so many contexts. We speak of physical grace - of a dancer, an athlete, a pod of dolphins arching through the air in unison and then slipping ever so smoothly back into the sea. Some use the word to identify what was known in our family as the blessing, namely the prayer before meals: please, let’s say grace, which moves us into the realm of the religious meaning of the word. So what is that meaning? Frederick Buechner tells us that, “There’s no way to earn [grace] or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.” He goes on to say that our faith assures us that we are saved by grace. “There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do.” This is at once deeply reassuring and, especially for the doers among us, somewhat frustrating. What do you mean, there’s nothing I have to do? “Grace is a gift,” Buechner says. “there for the taking, if we’re willing to do just that, reach out and take it.”
So this Lent I’m going to focus on grace. After nearly a year of limited human contact, very limited opportunities to receive communion, months of extraordinary racial tensions and political upheaval, I’m going to try to take time every day during Lent to focus on grace. Perhaps that will consist of thinking about it, writing about it, reading about it, trying my very best to live as one who has been blessed with it or a combination of these and other approaches. Maybe this will help me repress my obsession with checking the news feed on my phone multiple times a day. Perhaps it will help me rediscover the peace that Paul always links with grace in the salutations of his letters: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” It seems to me this link is no accident. Being filled with grace, grace-full, would empower one to be gracious with oneself and with others. It seems as though that would in turn bring a certain amount of peace. However, just as doing something that we know makes us happy for the express purpose of being happy will NOT make us happy, similarly trying to be grace-filled or gracious won’t make it so. Rather we have to simply be open to the possibility of grace, willing to accept the gift of grace day after day until it slowly but surely becomes part of who we are. I hope that this Lent will be grace-filled for each of you, however you choose to mark this most introspective season of the year.
