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There but for the grace of God...

3/20/2015

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. Ephesians 2:8
When I was first ordained, the priest I worked for used to talk from time to time about his experience as a chaplain-intern at San Quentin, the California state prison. He used to say that as he got to know some of the prisoners and their stories, that he could see himself in a similar situation, if his life had unfolded differently….there but for the grace of God go I. And if this story sounds a little familiar to you, it’s because the priest, Len Freeman, along with his wife Lindsay, is the author of our Lenten devotional booklet this year. Just this past Tuesday, Len’s reflection was about his time at San Quentin.
When I was in high school the New York state women’s prison, Bedford Hills – a maximum-security facility – decided to try having a less-restrictive family visitation day in the form of a carnival/fun fair day, for the inmates’ children. The organizers reached out to our local Girl Scout council to organize some of the activities and provide volunteers. I went as a volunteer, and while I was there I had the opportunity to talk with some of the women as they watched their kids having fun with the different games, winning prizes, showing off for their moms. It was only later that I learned from one of the guards that a woman I talked to for a while had been convicted of murdering her husband for the insurance money. There is no way from my conversation with her that I would ever have guessed...there but for the grace of God go I.
And I’m sure we all have had the experience of watching or reading or hearing a news story about something that went wrong in a person’s life, someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or made a series of bad choices – and found ourselves saying…there but for the grace of God go I.
Now, there are several ways to say those words. The first is to shake our heads, and cluck our tongues, using them to distance ourselves from the other person’s misfortune or wrong-doing: “There but for the grace of God go I; thank God I am not like that!” Then, if we think a little more honestly about what we are hearing and seeing and find ourselves saying, we probably feel that we are lucky, that we while we have been vulnerable, we have not fallen off the precipice: “Phew, dodged a bullet...there but for the grace of God go I.”
There’s a third way to say those words – recognizing within ourselves the very same tendencies, nature, sinfulness, capacity for failure, bad circumstances, as the person the news is talking about – and then feel gratitude, relief, and renewal that God has intervened in our life somehow to lead us away from the edge of the cliff: “There but for the grace of God go I.” And if we’ve actually fallen off the cliff at some time in our lives, and have found our way back to life and wholeness and truth, then we know that we are where we are solely by God’s good and generous grace.
For by grace you have been saved, through faith – Paul says in the letter to the church in Ephesus, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.
What, then, is grace all about?
Grace is the favor, goodness, loving-kindness, and mercy of God towards us – us as humanity, and us as individuals. We don’t earn God’s grace, or merit it, or win it, or even cajole God into giving it to us. We don’t earn brownie points, collect them all up, and then come up with the grace prize at the end. Instead, grace is given to us as a gift by a generous and loving God. Grace precedes us, and follows us, we can grow the roots of our soul deep into God’s gracious love and care for us. And grace isn’t given just once, or twice, or even three times – a spiritual “three strikes and you’re out.” God’s grace is like a spring of water, bubbling up from the dry and thirty ground, ready to refresh and water our lives.
There is a small hitch in all of this, however. Just like any gift, we have to be willing to receive grace – to receive the love, favor, goodness, and mercy of God. Imagine a door into a hallway, and you are on the inside. From under the edge of the door comes a beautiful light, and all around the door frame the light is seeping through, as well, trying to get in. But you have the door closed; and more than that, you have your foot bracing the bottom of the door so that no one on the other side can get in. If you’ve ever had a teenager barricade him or herself in their room, or if you’ve ever braced a door like that yourself, you’ll know what I mean. The grace of God comes to us as the light of life-giving love. Yet unless we take our foot off the door, our hand off the lock, God will not come in - that’s where faith comes is. We trust that as we take our foot off the door, the grace of God enters our lives, and restores us to wholeness, goodness; right-relationship with God, our neighbors and ourselves; God’s grace brings us salvation, freedom, and joy through the vehicle of our faith and trust. And out of that renewal and wholeness, we turn to God with thanksgiving, and offer ourselves, our souls, and bodies in service through generous good works and right actions.
The gift of grace is like a flower; when we first receive it, it is a tightly curled bud, lovely and fresh, but showing only a bit of color. As time goes on, the bud opens, blooms, reveals depths of color and texture and shape that surprise and delight us. The difference between God’s grace and the flower, however, is that grace continues to unfold, develop, blossom; with grace there is no end and no decay.
And all of this is available to us because Jesus, God Incarnate, fully human and fully divine, willing and voluntarily stepped into the stream of human existence, human sin and failure, human death and destruction. Jesus could have done something different, but he didn’t. He faced the powers-that-be, he sorrowed over suffering humanity and made our grief and wounds his own. He accepted death on a cross so that he might rob death of its meaning and power. Death was not the end of grace, but Christ’s death and resurrection was the means of God’s grace to us.
So wherever we find ourselves this day – whatever our struggles, our sins, our failures, our short-comings, our fears; whatever our hopes, and joys, and longings – the grace of God is there…for us, and for our salvation, that we may be God’s whole, renewed, and redeemed people in the world, signs of God’s grace and favor to all.
Let us pray. Lord, let us lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim till all the world adore his sacred Name. Amen. ~ Hymn 473

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 15, 2015

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No Power in Ourselves

3/8/2015

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To those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength. 1 Corinthians 1:24-25

When our children were young and we were living in Tokyo, our son made friends at his international school with a both named William. William’s mother was American, and his father was Japanese. His mother, Bernice, had moved to Japan shortly after college to teach English. Over time, she and a Japanese woman founded and ran a communications and public relations firm. This was highly unusual in Japan at the time – a woman owning a company, and a foreign woman, to boot. I never saw Bernice in that light, however. I knew her as William’s mom, who came to volunteer at school when she could – reading stories and baking cookies with the children. As time went on, Bernice and her family started coming to our church, and so we got to be better friends – hanging out together with our two-year olds, whose tolerance for sitting still in church was short-lived.

Eventually, Bernice determined that the type of education her children needed was not available in Japan, and that she would have to return to the US, which meant selling her company. She invited John and me to the farewell dinner – and what a different side to Bernice I saw! Completely bi-lingual, highly respected and admired by her employees, polished and in command of the event – even though it was her leave-taking. That aspect of her was there all along, I just never had the occasion to see it when we were running after pre-schoolers on the playground.

Jesus is the same way. We are, I think, so used to focusing on his compassion, love, healing, and teaching that when we encounter Jesus in the light we see this morning, we are a little shocked. Turning over tables in the Temple? Driving out the money changers with a whip of cords? Is this really the Jesus we know and love? And in case we think that this passage is an anomaly – it’s also repeated (with different details) in all four Gospels. And while it may be one of the clearest examples of Jesus’ anger or disturbing abruptness, it is certainly not the only one.

On and off over the last fifty years many Christians, and the Church as a whole (at least main-line Christianity), has worked really hard at expanding our picture of God so that we aren’t thinking of God as an angry Zeus throwing down random thunderbolts at human beings. That’s a good thing, because to limit our understanding of God to anger and punishment alone is not true to the way God is revealed in Scripture – either in the Old Testament or the New Testament; God is so much more than that. However, we’ve been a bit too successful in that project, and in focusing on Jesus’ compassion and mercy we can all too easily forget God’s anger at unrighteousness and oppression, we can forget that God grieves over our sins, and so we feel shocked when Jesus turns over that tables of the money changers.

What was that about, anyway? After Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he went to the Temple – the seat of spiritual presence and power for God’s people, but an institution and a symbol that had also become enmeshed with the ruling authorities who were colluding with the Roman overlords. The money-changers had a legitimate business; when people came to worship in the Temple, they were to sacrifice a lamb or a dove. But to transport a lamb or dove or some other animal from out in the country-side fifty or more miles away was not feasible, and so animals for sacrifice were available for purchase in the Temple. But there was another wrinkle. Roman money, Gentile currency, could not be used in the Temple compound, and so there was a system of currency exchange from Roman coins to specially-minted Temple coins which were then used to purchase the sacrificial animals. But the exchange rate was exorbitant, and worshipers really had no choice, they had to pay those rates. So Jesus wasn’t anti-commerce, particularly, but there was no way he was going to allow worship to be the venue for usury and highway robbery, and taking advantage of others. That made him angry.

And there was something else going on, as well. The Temple was the locus and the symbol of God’s presence with his people. But Jesus was saying that now there would no longer be any need for the Temple. He was the access to God, and he was the sacrificial animal – the Lamb of God, and he was also the presence of God in the hearts of God’s people. Where ever two or three were gathered together, Jesus said, I will be in the midst of them…not the minyan of ten needed for the synagogue, not the whole Temple infrastructure, but the intimacy and immediacy of knowing the Lord and Creator of the Universe in and through the presence of Christ.

And what was the result of all this? It’s what finally pushed the religious authorities over the edge. Jesus would have to go. Not only was he a thorn in the side of the Temple establishment, but he was upsetting the power structures, the not-so-delicate balance of power between the empire and the local rulers. Jerusalem was enough of a tinderbox without allowing more upheaval. The powers-that-be were threatened, and so Jesus would have to go.

And yet, as Paul makes clear in the epistle, the only true power is God’s power – it’s not in the sophistication of Greek philosophy, nor in signs and wonders that were important to the Jews of the time, nor in the politics or governments or business dealings of our own day. Paul squarely identifies power as belonging to God, and it’s a power that reaches its greatest point in the Cross – in Jesus’ death and resurrection. In the crucifixion it was not only our own individual sins that were nailed to the Cross and transformed, but over-weaning power structures, out-of-control ego, oppression, violence, and degradation towards others. All of these are shown by Jesus’ death on the Cross to be null and void, absent of any real meaning or clout. They have power to offer death, but they do not have power to offer life. Only God has that power, and that is exactly what happens on the other side of resurrection. Because Jesus defeated the power of sin and death, our sins, our short-comings and character defects, our emotional and spiritual chains can be transformed by the grace and power of God. Those things need no longer bind us, imprison us. That is true power.

And so, we see Jesus for who he truly is – God incarnate, the Messiah, the power of God and the wisdom of God – who is all righteousness, all goodness, all mercy, and compassion and justice and loving-kindness. Take that image of Jesus to heart, and you will find strength to help in time of need, rest for your soul, and courage in your rock and redeemer.

Let us pray.
Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. ~ Collect for Third Sunday in Lent, Book of Common Prayer

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Third Sunday in Lent
March 8, 2015

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The Family Tree

3/8/2015

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God said to Abraham: I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. Genesis 17:7

Have you noticed that genealogy has gotten very popular? With all of the online resources of web services like Ancestry.com, it is now quite easy to sit in your easy chair and begin to trace your family history. Of course, families have always told stories about their ancestors – whether in the recent past or long past – finding in those stories a narrative that describes what is important to the family, what values are cherished, how a family’s understanding of the world is shaped and formed. Those stories get told around dinner tables, as bed-time tales (“Tell me about the olden days, Granny”), when families gather for important occasions,
sometimes when a treasured object that has been passed down several generations is admired or used or asked about. No one really plans on telling these stories; they just show up, waiting to be heard, strengthening the bonds of family ties, and incorporating the next generation into the long, ongoing family story, passing along values and mores and sometimes even traits and characteristics – for good or for ill.

Today’s reading from Genesis is a family story. It’s part of the account of how Abraham and Sarah came into a covenant relationship with God. The back story to this passage is that Abram and Sarai (their original names) left their home in the city of Ur near Babylon and traveled, along with their extended family, northwest up along the Euphrates river and got all the way up to Haran in southeast Turkey, and they settled in for many years. Then God appeared to Abram and promised that his family would become a great nation, and that all the families of the earth would be blessed because of him. They were called by God to travel to a place that God would show them…no map, no other instructions or explanations; that’s not very much to go on! But they pulled up stakes and headed for the land of Canaan, what later would be called Palestine, and eventually Israel – with a little side trip down into Egypt to avoid a famine before they returned and settled in to the land that God had promised them.

Time went on, and God appeared to Abram again, encouraging him with a reminder of the promise of descendants who would be a great people. But Abram wasn’t so sure; he had no children as yet and was getting on in years, and so his heir was not going to be a member of his family, but a trusted servant. God reassured him, and told him that Abram’s and Sarai’s descendants would be as numerous as the stars. But Sarai got tired of waiting; she wanted a child desperately. And so she had her maid Hagar act as surrogate for her, planning to raise Abram’s and Hagar’s child as her own. That didn’t work out so well; Sarai became jealous after the baby was born, and demanded that Abram throw Hagar and her son Ishmael out of the camp, leaving them to their fate. Abram did so, but God stepped in provided for Hagar and her son so that they did not die in the desert.

Eventually Abram and Sarai did have a child – Isaac, the miracle baby - long past the time anyone thought it was possible to be giving birth. But before that happened, God showed up again – and that is where our passage for today comes in. God reminds Abram of his promise of land and descendants and makes a covenant with Abram – a sacred agreement. This covenant was based on God’s offer and Abram responds to it with faith, and trust. Abram would have a son, and the promises of God would be passed down the generations. As a sign of the covenant God does two things: he requires Abram and all the men of his family and tribe to be circumcised; it was to be a mark of the covenant relationship going forward. And then, God changes their names from Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah. Their new names were given to reflect their change of status with God; they were now in a covenant relationship with the Lord and Creator of the universe.

And God kept his promise; Abraham is understood to be the ancestor, the founding father, of all three major world religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And the primary characteristic of Abraham that is valued and treasured and held up for succeeding generations is his faith and trust in God – not always perfect, sometimes a bit wobbly, tested over a many, many years, but a faith that held onto that sacred promise of God. So Abraham and Sarah are our ancestors; they are the patriarch and matriarch in our family of faith. We can trace our spiritual lineage back to them, and we receive their gift of faithfulness and trust in God.

But there’s a cost associated with that gift of faith, or perhaps a consequence of being in relationship with God; that cost is change. All of those things that we look to God for – guidance, comfort, wisdom, healing, strength, courage, love, salvation – all are given to us as gifts. And in response, God asks us to change, to be willing to let of our need for control, to have our character and behavior shaped by God’s values and standards, to remember that we are part of a very large family of faith centered in Christ and stretching all the way back to Abraham and Sarah. We need to align our values and our actions with this family story that reaches its high point in Jesus.

Change, of course, is hard. We don’t like having our routine, our habits, our values up-ended and disturbed. It’s easier and more comfortable to pretend we didn’t hear Jesus saying that he would suffer and die; that means we might have to, also. It’s easier and more comfortable to pretend we didn’t hear the Old Testament prophets speak on God’s behalf against kings and rulers who price-gouged, and short-changed, and oppressed the poor and the aliens in the land, and led them recklessly into war. Most times the kings reacted by arresting the prophets, rather than changing. It’s easier and more comfortable to pretend we didn’t hear St. Paul proclaim loudly and clearly the Jesus is Lord and Cesar is not, and that a Christian’s first loyalty is to Christ, and his or her citizenship is in God’s realm, God’s kingdom. Paul parlayed his Roman citizenship (precious in the eyes of the world) into an opportunity to go to Rome and preach to the people there, and perhaps even to the Emperor. Paul did not survive his house arrest. A large part of what it means to be a Christian, to be a follower of Jesus, is to live life from God’s point of view, not from our own, and not from the viewpoint of institutions and values and cultures that don’t mesh with what God expects.

And so we have this season of Lent – every year – to help us sort through, pack away, get rid of, all that is not part of the way life is lived in God’s family. And on the reverse side, we get a chance to practice those attitudes and disciplines of prayer, Scripture reading, generosity, humility, and dependence on God, in a very focused and intentional way during Lent so that they might take hold and be embedded in us. We renew our faith by practicing being Jesus’ followers, and remembering our identity as members of God’s family, ready to receive anew the faith of Abraham and Sarah.

Let us pray.
Lord Christ, you bid us come and follow you. Let us this Lent see and know the habits, attitudes, values, and practices that you would have us change. Help us to let go of all that is not worthy of you, and help us to embrace the people and the story of your family of faith, taking our place in it to be, like Abraham and Sarah, a blessing to the world. Amen.

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The Family Story

3/2/2015

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God said to Abraham: I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. Genesis 17:7

Have you noticed that genealogy has gotten very popular? With all of the online resources of web services like Ancestry.com, it is now quite easy to sit in your easy chair and begin to trace your family history. Of course, families have always told stories about their ancestors – whether in the recent past or long past – finding in those stories a narrative that describes what is important to the family, what values are cherished, how a family’s understanding of the world is shaped and formed. Those stories get told around dinner tables, as bed-time tales (“Tell me about the olden days, Granny”), when families gather for important occasions, sometimes when a treasured object that has been passed down several generations is admired or used or asked about. No one really plans on telling these stories; they just show up, waiting to be heard, strengthening the bonds of family ties, and incorporating the next generation into the long, ongoing family story, passing along values and mores and sometimes even traits and characteristics – for good or for ill.

Today’s reading from Genesis is a family story. It’s part of the account of how Abraham and Sarah came into a covenant relationship with God. The back story to this passage is that Abram and Sarai (their original names) left their home in the city of Ur near Babylon and traveled, along with their extended family, northwest up along the Euphrates river and got all the way up to Haran in southeast Turkey, and they settled in for many years. Then God appeared to Abram and promised that his family would become a great nation, and that all the families of the earth would be blessed because of him. They were called by God to travel to a place that God would show them…no map, no other instructions or explanations; that’s not very much to go on! But they pulled up stakes and headed for the land of Canaan, what later would be called Palestine, and eventually Israel – with a little side trip down into Egypt to avoid a famine before they returned and settled in to the land that God had promised them.

Time went on, and God appeared to Abram again, encouraging him with a reminder of the promise of descendants who would be a great people. But Abram wasn’t so sure; he had no children as yet and was getting on in years, and so his heir was not going to be a member of his family, but a trusted servant. God reassured him, and told him that Abram’s and Sarai’s descendants would be as numerous as the stars. But Sarai got tired of waiting; she wanted a child desperately. And so she had her maid Hagar act as surrogate for her, planning to raise Abram’s and Hagar’s child as her own. That didn’t work out so well; Sarai became jealous after the baby was born, and demanded that Abram throw Hagar and her son Ishmael out of the camp, leaving them to their fate. Abram did so, but God stepped in provided for Hagar and her son so that they did not die in the desert.
Eventually Abram and Sarai did have a child – Isaac, the miracle baby - long past the time anyone thought it was possible to be giving birth. But before that happened, God showed up again – and that is where our passage for today comes in. God reminds Abram of his promise of land and descendants and makes a covenant with Abram – a sacred agreement. This covenant was based on God’s offer and Abram responds to it with faith, and trust. Abram would have a son, and the promises of God would be passed down the generations. As a sign of the covenant God does two things: he requires Abram and all the men of his family and tribe to be circumcised; it was to be a mark of the covenant relationship going forward. And then, God changes their names from Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah. Their new names were given to reflect their change of status with God; they were now in a covenant relationship with the Lord and Creator of the universe.

And God kept his promise; Abraham is understood to be the ancestor, the founding father, of all three major world religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And the primary characteristic of Abraham that is valued and treasured and held up for succeeding generations is his faith and trust in God – not always perfect, sometimes a bit wobbly, tested over a many, many years, but a faith that held onto that sacred promise of God. So Abraham and Sarah are our ancestors; they are the patriarch and matriarch in our family of faith. We can trace our spiritual lineage back to them, and we receive their gift of faithfulness and trust in God.

But there’s a cost associated with that gift of faith, or perhaps a consequence of being in relationship with God; that cost is change. All of those things that we look to God for – guidance, comfort, wisdom, healing, strength, courage, love, salvation – all are given to us as gifts. And in response, God asks us to change, to be willing to let of our need for control, to have our character and behavior shaped by God’s values and standards, to remember that we are part of a very large family of faith centered in Christ and stretching all the way back to Abraham and Sarah. We need to align our values and our actions with this family story that reaches its high point in Jesus.

Change, of course, is hard. We don’t like having our routine, our habits, our values up-ended and disturbed. It’s easier and more comfortable to pretend we didn’t hear Jesus saying that he would suffer and die; that means we might have to, also. It’s easier and more comfortable to pretend we didn’t hear the Old Testament prophets speak on God’s behalf against kings and rulers who price-gouged, and short-changed, and oppressed the poor and the aliens in the land, and led them recklessly into war. Most times the kings reacted by arresting the prophets, rather than changing. It’s easier and more comfortable to pretend we didn’t hear St. Paul proclaim loudly and clearly the Jesus is Lord and Cesar is not, and that a Christian’s first loyalty is to Christ, and his or her citizenship is in God’s realm, God’s kingdom. Paul parlayed his Roman citizenship (precious in the eyes of the world) into an opportunity to go to Rome and preach to the people there, and perhaps even to the Emperor. Paul did not survive his house arrest. A large part of what it means to be a Christian, to be a follower of Jesus, is to live life from God’s point of view, not from our own, and not from the viewpoint of institutions and values and cultures that don’t mesh with what God expects.

And so we have this season of Lent – every year – to help us sort through, pack away, get rid of, all that is not part of the way life is lived in God’s family. And on the reverse side, we get a chance to practice those attitudes and disciplines of prayer, Scripture reading, generosity, humility, and dependence on God, in a very focused and intentional way during Lent so that they might take hold and be embedded in us. We renew our faith by practicing being Jesus’ followers, and remembering our identity as members of God’s family, ready to receive anew the faith of Abraham and Sarah.

Let us pray.
Lord Christ, you bid us come and follow you. Let us this Lent see and know the habits, attitudes, values, and practices that you would have us change. Help us to let go of all that is not worthy of you, and help us to embrace the people and the story of your family of faith, taking our place in it to be, like Abraham and Sarah, a blessing to the world. Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Second Sunday in Lent
March 1, 2015

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There but for the grace of God...

No Power in Ourselves

The Family Tree

The Family Story

Sermons & Reflections

Archives

Categories

All Saints' Episcopal Church

There but for the grace of God...

No Power in Ourselves

The Family Tree

The Family Story

Sermons & Reflections

Archives

Categories

All Saints' Episcopal Church﻿

All Saints' Episcopal Church