Field Notes on Grace

"Grace of God" in Greek

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a conversation starter:  Where did you last experience “grace” and what did it look like?

In the spirit of Stanley Hauerwas’ latest book, Working with Words, which is one Christian theologian’s exploration of language about God, I want to propose a conversation around “grace” and where we encounter it in the world.  This is not a conversation only for Christians.  It’s for everybody everywhere- and I’m looking for your input regardless of creed or lack thereof.

“Grace” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and I quote, is: “unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification…a virtue coming from God…a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine grace…approval, favor,  mercy, pardon…a charming or attractive trait or characteristic…a pleasing appearance or effect : charm…ease and suppleness of movement or bearing…used as a title of address or reference for a duke, a duchess, or an archbishop…a short prayer at a meal asking a blessing.”

So the invitation is to share how you have experienced “grace” lately wherever that may be- even in church.  If you haven’t experienced grace lately, you can share how you imagine “grace” to be.

I’ll start.  The other day my family ended up, a bit bored and hungry (it was around lunchtime), at our local playground.  We soon discovered that a mega birthday party for someone we had never met was about to take place.  There were the bouquets of balloons, bounce houses, snow cone machine, tables of food and pony ride.  All for a guest list we were not on.  This was most evidenced by the fact that every person showing up to the party was a well-dressed African American carrying a large present for the now one-year-old birthday girl who would never remember this extravagant fun.  In short, the whole affair was over-the-top in a wonderful, serendipitous way, and we had stumbled into it.

Needless to say, we felt a bit out of place: while the playground appeared to be still open to the public, we had stepped into a private, invitation-only celebration.  We wondered whether we should go.  Our kids were hoping to stay and play.  And so we had lingered just a bit, all the while wondering when would be our cue to leave. 

Just then, the mother of the girl walked over to me, the obvious interloper.  I wondered if this was it- the time when we would be told that the playground had been reserved for the occasion and we needed to leave.

I asked her about the cause for celebration.  She told me. And then the unexpected happened: “You all are welcome to stay and join us for the party. We’ll have snow cones and lots of food.  Help yourselves to everything! And there will be a pony ride, too.”

And so we had stayed.  Uninvited, ill-prepared but lavishly welcomed nonetheless.

Got an intelligence report on grace?  You can either post it in the comments section below or e-mail me at (kristinarobbdover@gmail.com); I’ll share it at the end of the week!

Related articles

• Grace (kevinnunez.org)
• The Grace of God by Andy Stanley (rwpbook.wordpress.com)
• Grace (onelightmanywindows.wordpress.com)
• Less grace and more law? (brokenheartedboldness.wordpress.com)
• Gen X: Sanctifying Grace (vitaconsecrata.wordpress.com)
• The Grace Card…don’t leave home without it! (aprilhawk.wordpress.com)
• Quotable Quotes – Tozer on Prevenient Grace (basictheology.wordpress.com)
• God’s Grace In My Life (kevinnunez.org)

The Gift of Trying and Failing

Garrison Keillor read this poem by Wendell Berry on yesterday’s “The Writer’s Almanac”:

IX.

I go by a field where once
I cultivated a few poor crops.
It is now covered with young trees,
for the forest that belongs here
has come back and reclaimed its own.
And I think of all the effort
I have wasted and all the time,
and of how much joy I took
in that failed work and how much
it taught me. For in so failing
I learned something of my place,
something of myself, and now
I welcome back the trees.

There is something profoundly reassuring in the truth that when we fail, the trees still come back.  With the healing passage of time God’s vegetation gradually fills in all of those places in our lives where we have sown where we cannot reap.  A law of nature, maybe- or of grace?

(As an aside, if only this law also applied to the piles of laundry sitting on my couch for the last two days waiting to be folded! If a forest can grow without my help, why can’t laundry find its way into drawers, too?)

I am re-reading Jesus’ parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30)- this time in a new light, thanks to Berry.  Do you remember the story?  A master entrusts each of his servants with a certain number of “talents” (a money denomination in the ancient world).  The first leaves with five and comes back with five more.  The second leaves with two and comes back with two more.  The last servant hides his one talent in the ground.  When the master comes back, he has nothing but praise to shower upon the first two servants, but the third servant meets a sorry fate:  “take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents,” his master demands.  “And throw that worthless servant outside into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (vv.28-30).

I used to assume that the first two servants were just shrewd portfolio managers: that they by sheer effort, wise decision-making and innate giftedness earn the master’s admiration.  But the text actually makes no suggestion of the sort.  There is no indication that the doubling of the two servants’ talents has anything to do with how they go about choosing to invest.  All we really know from the text is that they do invest- how, with whom, or where remains unknown. For all we know, they could have been cultivating “a few poor crops” on a field that ended up overrun by trees.

And then we come to the third servant.  His failure is not that he invested his money and came back empty-handed, or that he planted a crop only to have it fail.  His failure is that he never tried in the first place.

The question, then, is why?  Why did he not try?  Why did he not stake out his own little plot of land and begin planting, or at the very least put his one talent in the bank to accrue interest?

One compelling explanation is that he misread the character of the Master (v. 24), so that it was the servant’s own distorted picture of God as a hard-driving, unfair manager that made him afraid to try and ultimately cost him everything.  When he comes to the Master, the servant says,  “I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed.  So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground.  See, here is what belongs to you (vv.24,25).”

But there is another way to answer this question.  Maybe the servant had discovered a bit of who God really was and decided that he did not want to have any part in Him.  Maybe he had decided it would be too “hard” to take what this God was giving at face value.  Maybe his words to the Master were not a misreading at all but, rather, the truth that when unveiled unlocks the whole point of this parable.

Because there is something “hard” about the grace of God: it really is not about how well we do based on any of our own merit.  We could even go out tomorrow and plant “a few poor crops” that fail.  God’s trees will still come back.  God really does harvest where God has not sown.  All we need to do is give our best college try with what we have been given.

“Falling Short”

Image via Wikipedia

Remember the actor Jeff Bridges? (“True Grit” and”Crazy Horse” are his more recent movies.)  He also sings country and his second album just came out.  The lyrics from his song, “Falling Short,” touch on themes of original sin, divine judgment and grace and the quest for existential meaning:

Am I falling short, or do I fly?

When I miss the mark, do I hit the sky?

In my wondering, do I answer why?

I’m alive.                                                                                                                           

So, make a space, boonswaggle back,

leave a sign, dodge the wrath

of myself, and leave the math to God.

Falling short, I hit the spot

of the place where I was shot

From the womb of my mother

I’ve fallen short.

But is there another place where I can be?

Is sore just the place for me, it seems?

Where I can do what I’ve been given, my holy view of ever giving

Am I falling short, or do I fly?

When I miss the mark, do I hit the sky?

In my wondering, do I answer why?

I’m alive.