by Rev. Thomas Disrud

A sermon given March 11, 2001

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

OPENING WORDS

We come this day in thanksgiving for the wonder of this spring day,

for sunshine and rain, for moments of grace, big and small.

Let this be a time to celebrate life, a time to know love, a time to give thanks for all we have been given. Come, now, and let us worship here, together.

Several years ago, I was not feeling particularly good about my life. I had been working for a few years as a copy editor at a newspaper, but no longer found it particularly satisfying. I was aware of this, and yet I didn’t seem to be doing much about it. Things weren’t so bad, I told myself. I was making decent money and my life was pretty comfortable. I liked where I lived, and had lots of friends, and yet something was missing. Looking back, I can see that I knew I needed to do something else, that I needed to be in a different place, but at the time I just couldn’t get off the dime.

Then one day I heard something come out of my mouth. I worked with a number of people who had been at the newspaper a lot longer than I had been there, and they were not at all happy with what they were doing. In fact, they hated what they were doing. They complained and were cynical, and generally not all that pleasant to be around. And yet, they never did anything about it. For a variety of reasons, like being tied to this certain location, they were not really able to move. They would probably be working for 10 or 15 more years and they knew they would very likely be at the newspaper. Because of this realization, at least on some level, I think they were pretty angry about it.

So on this particular day, I don’t remember exactly what it was I said, but in a moment I could hear the words that were coming out of my mouth and I could hear that I was getting bitter myself. Suddenly I was able to see a little bit of myself in them, or a little bit of them in me. I’m not exactly sure which it was. What I saw was that I, too, was starting to sound jaded about my work, and all of a sudden I had a flash of myself several years down the road, still in this job, feeling like I didn’t have any choice and not at all happy about it.

The moment of clarity was a turning point in my life. Before this time, I had a sense that I was supposed to do something else but I didn’t get myself together to do much about it. But now I knew it was time. Instead of just thinking about it, I started making plans. Within a year I had left that job and I have never looked back.

That was an experience of grace for me. It was a time when I suddenly got clarity and was able to see. I look back now and know that I was not happy—and how easy it would have been to stay there and one day wake up to feel like I didn’t have any options.

I don’t know exactly where that came from. Looking back, I can see that I was ready to hear the words myself. And yet I’ve wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t been moved at the time. Would I have stayed there? I don’t know. But what I do know is that it was a turning point, a moment of grace.

Not every experience of grace has to be some life-transforming event. It can happen in ways large and small. It may be we remember it for years, or forget about it in just a few minutes. Some things may better be called graceful moments.

Defining grace can be difficult, and yet we usually know it when we experience it. What it brings is that sense of the unexpected, that in the experience we have been given some gift that we did not anticipate. Those moments can come when things are going well. They can come when things are not going well at all. They are those moments when we find ourselves surprised, and opened by what happens.

Two days in a row this week, I was driving into the office and took notice of bumper stickers on cars. On the first day, it was a sticker that said, "Honk if you love cheese." Maybe that has something to do with being from Wisconsin, but I have to say it made my day. It pulled me from my serious thoughts to something lighter.

The next morning, I was on my way into the office thinking about the appointments of the day and feeling some anxiety about all that needed to be done. This is when I see the next bumper sticker. It said, "I’d rather be here now." I’d rather be here now. I had to think about that one, because of course I was rushing into the next moment before I had a chance to be in the present moment of driving my car. Slow down, I say to myself. Be here now. And for the rest of the day, the phrase was with me.

As moments of grace go, seeing a bumper sticker may not be the thing that changes our life. And that is not the point. What it does is help us to pause and perhaps have some awareness of something that is happening, perhaps something we have been taking for granted. What it gives us is an awareness of life and ourselves in relation to that life. It asks us to look at the world in perhaps just a little different way.

While we’re on bumper stickers, many of you have probably seen the one that says "Grace Happens." It is in response, of course, to the one that says "S--- Happens." Now, both have their truth. We do in fact know that bad things happen and that there is not a thing we can do about it. But we also find that life has a way of coming together, that even when we are in pain, there are those moments that help us come to a place of healing. We cannot expect it and we can’t always understand it, but it is something that comes simply as a gift. Life—all life—is a gift. It is not something we can create, but something we have been given. And grace is an awareness of that life and the preciousness of that life.

I didn’t quite know what to make of grace for a long time. In childhood I came to see it as some mysterious power that brought us wretched sinners up out of the swamp of sin. We were saved by grace alone, and without it, we were powerless. It was all up to God. We are born in sin and it is up to God to get us out of that. I wasn’t sure where I fit in.

But I’ve since come to see grace in perhaps a broader view. It is a way life that moves to bring us toward wholeness. Thomas Merton said, "Grace is not a strange, magic substance which is subtly filtered into our souls to act as a kind of spiritual penicillin. Grace is unity, oneness within ourselves, oneness with God."

Now just where this comes from is a matter of some theological discussion. Some would say it is part of some divine plan that brings us to a place where we can experience it. Others might say that in fact it is not part of some plan, but more credit it to a sense of serendipity. That we happen to be in the right place at the right time and it is all a matter of the confluence of events.

I’m not sure where it comes from, and I’m not entirely sure that it really matters. If we have an experience, whether we believe it comes from lived experience or serendipity or some force outside of ourselves, we have the experience. We can’t know exactly how this happens, and that is OK. That is part of a mystery we will never know. We are called to be open to this mystery, to put ourselves forward and to recognize it with a sense of gratitude.

Ramakrishna said: "The winds of grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail."

The great theologian Paul Tillich wrote of grace as that which brings us to the awareness, first and foremost, that we are loved and accepted.

"Grace strikes when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes when we walk through a dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being has become intolerable to us. It strikes when, year after year, the longed for perfection of life doesn’t appear, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes, at that moment, a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept that you are accepted. If that happens to us, we experience grace."

Acceptance that we are accepted. At first that sounds like it should be easy, but it is not. It may we one of the hardest things we’ll ever do. It is something we may need help with, and this is where grace comes in. At its most elemental form, it brings an awareness that we are connected and that we are precious for just being who we are. It brings us to an awareness of how we are in relationship with all living things, how we are loved and how we each have the capacity to love.

But the acceptance that we are accepted is something some of us work our whole lives to know. With grace can come the awareness that we don’t need to try to be someone else, to be taller or slimmer or have different colored eyes. We are whole and good just the way we are. This might contrast to many of the images we receive in our culture that tell us we have to be all kinds of things in order to fit in and be loved.

All that is asked of us is that we might be who we are called to be and to live out the lives we are called to live. And with it the faith that grace will help us to know this fullness of life.

Whatever it is we might believe about the meaning of grace, for many of us, when we hear the music and words of the hymn "Amazing Grace," there is a sense of being in the right place. It calls to something deep within us.

For starters, most of us have known a sense of being lost at some point in our life—when we have been in grief, in despair, trying to figure out who we really are. And we can relate to the sense of finding hope and peace in the midst of this. That, just when we felt alone, we came to know that we were not alone. And the coming of the awareness that eventually we will find our way.

The words for "Amazing Grace" were written by John Newton, who lived a remarkable life. His story can help us understand something about where these words that speak to us today come from.

Newton was born in London in 1725, the only son of the captain of a merchant ship and a very devout mother. His mother taught him to read by age four and he was studying Latin by age 6, all so that he might become a minister.

But that was not to happen right away. When he was seven, his mother died, and by the age of 11 he was going to sea with his father. This work exposed him to a rough and dirty life he had not known before. When he was 19, he was captured and forced to work on a man-of-war ship. The conditions were intolerable and eventually he tried to desert, but he was recaptured and severely punished. When he could, he asked to be transferred to service on a slave ship, thinking anything would be better than what he was experiencing. But that was not the case. He ended up becoming a slave himself to a brutal slave trader in Sierra Leone. In 1748 he was rescued by a sea captain who had known his father. It seems that this might be a turning point in his life—that he would get out of involvement in the slave trade—but he did not. He went from being a slave himself to being a slave trader. For several years, he served on the crews of slave ships.

Not long after being freed, he was a passenger on a trading ship off the coast of Newfoundland, when a violent storm struck, ripping away the upper timbers of the ship on one side. The panicked sailors and passengers, including Newton, went to work with buckets and pails to bail out the water that was filling the ship, and somehow they managed to stay alive. In the midst of the storm, Newton found himself praying for mercy, even as he doubted that the God he had been taught to worship would take mercy on someone like him, who had lived such a profligate life. When the ship finally reached port, just as they consumed the last of their food and fresh water, Newton wrote in his journal that he began to know "that there is a God that hears and answers prayers."

Some versions of his story have him making a deal with god that if he was saved by the storm, he would never take part in the slave trade again. But that is not apparently how it happened. He returned to the slave trade and actually became the captain and commander of a slave ship. The trade was too lucrative to give up.

Some years later, when he was about to make a trip to Africa for more slaves, he took ill and gave up command of his ship. The captain who took his place and most of the officers on the ship died and it was brought home with great difficulty. Over time, he came to see this as a message from God about the evils of the slave trade. But not right away.

It was some years later that Newton would hear the great Methodist minister, George Whitefield, preach. Whitefield used the text where Jesus quotes from Isaiah: "This is the year of the Lord’s favor … it is time to release the oppressed, give sight to the blind, and preach good news to the poor."

Something in these words changed Newton’s life. He repented and vowed to no longer deal in the slave trade. He became a minister and his church became so crowded during services that it had to be enlarged. It was during this period that he wrote the words to the hymn. There was no music, the words were just chanted. The tune we are familiar with is apparently an American folk tune written in the 1800s.

Eventually he became acquainted with a member of Parliament who brought Newton in to preach against slavery. It was years before the slave trade was outlawed, but Newton, for years, continued to preach against it.

What was it that brought him out of the slave business and into the business of preaching against slavery? In his life, he experienced a transformation. How he went from seeing himself as wretched person who sold other people, to a person saved by grace.

He had thought for many years that his wretchedness was what defined his real self. But it was not. He came to see the beauty in himself. With grace he came to accept himself as good, and as he was able to see this goodness in himself, he was also able to see it in others. When he came to know his truest self, he knew that he was not a person who could buy and trade other human lives.

He saw his life as having been saved by God’s grace, meaning that even though he was a man who did things that were bad, he asked God for help and God answered him. The God he had been taught to believe in didn’t have to forgive him, but did anyway, and gave him a gift. God not only saved him from the storm at sea, but also helped him see that he was living his life in a way that was evil, and offered him an opportunity to change, to minister to others, and eventually to help abolish the evil of slavery.

And what of our lives? What are those things that separate us from God, ourselves or others? What are those things that keep us from doing what we are called to do, or trusting enough to let others know who we really are? What are those fears that hold us back from doing those things we want to do? What are those things that keep us from giving and receiving love in the world?

Words of Carl Sandburg:

Let me go to the window,

Watch there the day-shapes of dusk

And wait and know the coming of a little love.

There is probably no better time than spring to preach a sermon about grace. These are the days when we are gifted with the renewed awareness that a tree might pop out in bloom at any time and grace us with its beauty. Even when we know it is going to happen, every year there is a wonderful sense of surprise about the whole thing. The earth, with its beauty and strength, reminds us of the gifts we have been given. All we are asked to do is pay attention and give thanks. Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of life, we give thanks for this day and all that is our life. For sun and rain, for all the surprises that come our way. May grace open us and transform us. May it bring us to an acceptance that we are accepted. May it help us know, and also bring, the coming of a little love. Amen.

BENEDICTION

On this day, and in all your days, good people, may you rest in the grace of the world, and may you be free. Go in love and go in peace. Amen.

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Copyright 2001, Rev. Thomas Disrud.  All rights reserved.