Amazing Grace
Sermon preached at The Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia
on Sunday May 17th 2009 by The Reverend Alan Neale
“Amazing Grace”
Please, take a few moments to study the Cross that now hangs in our sanctuary. Twice, this past week, two brides have commented on one particular aspect of the Cross… it’s circle! One even wondered whether it was a “wedding cross” with the wedding ring attached! I disabused her and spoke a little of the Celtic theme of connection shown perfectly in… the circle.
These past 24 hours I have been thinking that we all are, in one way or another, involved in a circle… it is either a vicious circle or it is a circle of grace… but in either one we are surely, definitively involved… which one is it?
In the film “Doubt” (of which, by the way, there will be viewing this Wednesday in church)… in that film Father Flynn tells the well-known story of the gossipy woman who goes to confession.
The woman makes her confession and seeks absolution from the sin of gossip.
The priest said, “For penance, I want you to go home, take a pillow up on your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me.”
So the woman went home, took a pillow off her bed, went up the fire escape, and stabbed the pillow.
“Did you gut the pillow with the knife?” he says. “Yes, father”. “And what was the result?”. “Feathers, everywhere!” So the old priest told her, “Now I want you to go back and gather every last feather that flew out on the wind”.
“Well”, she said, “It can’t be done. I don’t know where they went. The wind took them all over.”
“And that”, he said, “is GOSSIP.”
There is about gossip a vicious circle that inexorably is magnified and generates to itself a remarkable energy and dynamism.
But compare, friends, the gracious circle that we observe in the Collect, the Prayer, for today… “O God, pour into our hearts such love toward you… that we loving you… may obtain your promises”.
There is in any form of addiction a vicious circle in which, for example, “one drink is too many, and one hundred is not enough”.
But compare, friends, the gracious circle that was experienced by many last Sunday (Mothers’ Day) when countless mothers received from their young children touching gifts which they knew (but did not mention) had been given by their partners to their children to give to them!
There is in the experience and expression of bitterness a vicious circle in which the embittered person seems almost taken over by the venom of bitterness and it begins to affect every aspect of their lives, their personality and even their very appearance.
But compare, friends, the gracious circle described in Acts 10 when Peter affirms the glorious truth that the Gentiles have received the Spirit for no other reason than that God chooses it thus to be.
And compare, friends, the gracious circle described in John 15:16 when Jesus tells the sad, depressed and soon to be bereaved disciples, “You did not choose me but I chose you and appointed you, commissioned you, that you should go and bear fruit… the kind of fruit that abides for ever”!
Next month I will celebrate 32 years of ordination… for 32 years this verse has been my inspiration and comfort, a springboard for ministry and also a safety net when discouraged.
“You did not choose me but I chose you… and appointed you” – and these words, today, the Lord Jesus says to each one of us, to me and to each one of you… will you not believe it and be changed?
In his magisterial commentary on John (“Readings in St. John’s Gospel”) Abp. William Temple writes, “Our action is all response; all initiative is with the Lord.. That is fundamental. Those of us who were baptized as infants are without excuse if we forget this. Our being Christians is no doing of ours, any more than our being civilized; it is something done to us and for us, not by us, though we have to make appropriate response in the form of obedience prompted by love”.
A friend of mine, for many years, recently accepted that she was “powerless over addiction and that her life had become unmanageable”. When she wrote to me and said that she had “given in”, I said how much better to “give in” rather than to “give up”. This morning she wrote these words, “Giving in… so counter-intuitive to my A-type personality. There is so much comfort in knowing that God is carrying me, and that I cannot control the universe!”.
Jesus says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you…”.
As Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians, God has chosen us before the foundation of the world. We are chosen… not to exclusion of others but to the inclusion of all.
We are chosen… when tempted to believe the insidious lie that we are alone and lonely, no matter how bustling the crowd around us, when tempted to believe this insidious lie… the clarion, affirming, constant voice of Jesus speaks to us… “I have chosen you”.
And “we are commissioned, appointed”… there are tasks for us to do which in partnership with God will have about them the touch, the flavour, the mark of eternity. And, the circle of grace continues, for “he whom God calls, God also equips”. Oh… alleluia!
We are to put aside engagement in the putrid, lifeless, death-dealing, self-crippling activities of vicious circles and…
We are to commit ourselves afresh today to engagement in the fragrant, vibrant, life-distributing, self-strengthening circles of grace…
We are urged by many, and rightly so, to take some care for our latter years… take care physically and, as much as is possible, take care financially. But how sad it is in pastoral ministry to observe that there are those elderly who have taken no care for themselves spiritually and emotionally and as they grow old they become more obviously bitter, crabby and constantly negative. But it is never too late for any vicious circle to be broken open and made available for the infusion of the grace of God. I know that I do not want to become bitter, crabby and constantly negative as I grow older… and I am sure that my wife would prefer this not to happen as well!
This past week Psalm 106 was read at Morning Prayer… I was deeply struck by verse 14… “A wanton craving seized them in the wilderness”. “In the wilderness” – when we are isolated, when we are idle we are remarkably vulnerable and susceptible to “wanton cravings”, engagement in vicious circles that will do us harm… but Jesus offers us companionship and partnership… herein is the beautiful, eternal circle of grace.
AMEN
