In this season of the Reformation & of Thanksgiving, I feel compelled to dwell one more month on the word “grace.” It is a word at the very center of who we are as Lutherans. In his book Wishful Thinking, Frederick Buechner writes this amazing description of grace:
“After centuries of handling & mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody’s much interested any more. Not so with GRACE, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious & graceful still have some of the bloom left. Grace is something you can never get but only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries & cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.
A good sleep is grace & so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever TRIED to love somebody?
A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people 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.
The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you ARE because the party wouldn’t be complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful & terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you.
There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out & take it. Maybe being able to reach out & take it is a gift too.”
Buechner may be Episcopalian; but his understanding of grace is very Lutheran & very deep. Grace is all about God—all about the giver. We are simply fortunate enough to be the recipients...all of us...every single person on this planet. Jesus opened his arms on the cross; & in so doing, he sent the gift of grace flying all around the world.
Take God’s gift of grace. Unwrap it. Make it a part of your life. Discover how it frees you to offer yourself back to God & to your fellow humans...gracefully & graciously.
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Rick