Grace Upon Grace

Rev. Karla Jean Miller
Eliot Church of Newton
January 4, 2008
John 1: 10-18


Two of the Boston Globe headlines said it all on New Year’s Day.
First:
“For many, joy this time is in ringing out the old…
Ringing out 2008!—let’s face it, 2008 caused ulcers!”
If you read through the end of the article, you would know that many people associated 2008 with anxiety. And no wonder—you know the mantra: Retirement funds shrinking, a horrible economy, violence abroad in so many places, and people not spending money because they are scared about just getting by. A local therapist noted, "This year, more than any other year in my 16 years of practicing psychiatry, I have more people telling me they are pleased to see a difficult chapter of their lives ending. I have never seen people be more anxious than they were in 2008.”
In short, the article notes, we all are glad to say goodbye to 2008, and although our expectations for 2009 aren’t necessarily sky-high, we believe things may at least be better, and we all are ready for change, desperate to start something new.

But then, the next headline in our esteemed local paper read:
“Why is Change so Hard?”
The gist of this article is one that any of us could write. The New Year is synonymous with change. Many of us resolve to do better—pay off debt, spend less money, work out, lose weight. But, after a few days or weeks, we let things go. Even successful people, at the top of their game, fail at personal change. Look at Oprah, the queen of proclamation of self-care, admits she hasn’t been caring for herself, she hasn’t been living her Best Life. Even our president-elect struggles with a cigarette habit that he would like to kick.

Now, I am sure none of you have been on your treadmills more the past couple of days than you have in the last 9 months like me. Probably, most of you haven’t ever resolved to “do better this year at…(fill in the blank).” Perhaps you chalked up 2008 to be nothing but glorious. However, if you do somewhat resonate with the Globe headlines, then today’s text might be Good News for you.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth.

We are embodied creatures. You and I. As one scholar notes: “We make the best sense of life when we understand the connection of our lives to our bodies and to the physical ground upon which we tread.” Our emotions are physical, as we have experienced this year, and even how they are explained in the Hebrew Bible.
For example:
“The nose burning hot” is an expression of anger.
“Tearing clothes and throwing earth on your head” is an expression of mourning.
In the Psalms, we see fear and anxiety and guilt expressed as “the body groaning, the heart melting, and bones out of joint.”
God’s compassion makes the body to dance and sing and collapse on the earth to sing.

We are embodied creatures, indeed.
And so for God to become human, and live among us, means that God gets what anxiety, what fear, what despair, what desolation and depression and pain all feel like. The Divine understands what the human story is all about.

The Word became flesh.
The English language doesn’t really have an exact rendering of the Greek word, LOGOS—which is typically translated as Word. In Asian cultures, Logos is rendered as Tao—the Way. “In the beginning was the the Way, and the Way was God, and the Way was God.” Another translation of LOGOS could be Story. In the beginning was the Story, and the Story was God and the Story is God…and the Story became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth . God knows the Story of our lives, God is the Story, embodied in Christ, and oh, because of that, we can put the stories of our worry and wonder into the great story of God’s presence with us.

The text goes on to promise:
“From the fullness of the Story made flesh, we have all received, grace upon grace.” And isn’t this true—in the past year of uncertainty, of mouth dropping open shock at the capricious greed of others, of unbelievable acts of violence and hate, not to mention the personal tragedies of our own lives, haven’t there been tiny points of grace, of hope, that made your story a little more bearable?

Grace upon grace.

For me, grace upon grace was manifest in unspectacular moments:
In embraces of comfort while grieving a loss of my beloved nephew.
In deep belly laughing while watching Saturday Night Live skits…
In the sweetness of a good conversation over coffee with a friend…
In the tears I shed even harder every time I watch the video of Christian the Lion being reunited with the couple who saved his life, with Whitney Houston singing “I Will Always Love You” in the background. (You-Tube video…if you haven’t seen it, allow me to share it with you later)

I experience those grace upon graces, feel them in my body in the ways the Hebrew writers describe.

Barbara Brown Taylor says that “for all our failure to honor them, our bodies remain God’s best way of getting to us.” The fullness of God, the grace of God is most deeply in understood in the touching, seeing, hearing and tasting God’s goodness and God’s presence made flesh among us. No wonder the Psalmist wrote, O taste and see that the Lord is Good (Ps 34:8).

So, there was grace in 2008, and yet, the future, well, what about 2009? Really. The reality of the world situation still looms. Is it too much to hope to change, when we know that change….is hard…and often we give up before we can even begin to think about being successful?

Stephanie Pausell, professor of ministry at Harvard Divinity School, grew up in the great state of North Carolina. When she was in second grade, the courts ordered her town to get serious about integration—for like many towns in the South, her town resisted “Brown vs. Board of Education” with a “school choice’ option. Faced with the court order, her town refused to open school. Choosing no school over integrated classrooms kept the schools closed for months.

In a neighboring county, for years, until the last two or so decades, there was a billboard at the county line that proclaimed, “The Ku Klux Klan Welcomes You.” (To this day, in many counties in NC, there are similar billboards) Both of these counties voted, by margins of 4 and 7 percent, respectively, for Barack Obama.
She writes, “All across the country, people are telling stories like these, stories of change you can see and even quantify…stories of courage and stories of communities gradually choosing a new narrative in which to live”

Indeed, change is possible—we have seen it in this past election, where the struggle for civil rights has been indispensably good for this country…as slow as change can be. The evidence of change is exhilarating and breathtaking, and when it is visible…it feels “like resurrection.”

Rev. Peter Gomes defines “good news” as “we don’t have to be as we are.” We don’t have to be stuck. We don’t have to play the same old tapes. We can change…personally and collectively. We can be born, again, and again with God, season after blessed season.

But part of the reason that change is hard, is that knocks us off our feet, destabilizes us, causes disequilibrium when things are different—even if they are better for us. That’s why, for the most part, effective change requires persistence. But, friends, we don’t have to be as we are. That is Good News, indeed. Thank God. And we can change.

The Word made Flesh in Jesus never stops inviting people to change. The story of God with us believes that we are embodied creatures that are “capable of radical change” Even when we choose not to accept the invitation, Jesus continues to invite us. Even when our attempts at change are falter and fail. The invitation is offered, again and again:

Come, sell all that you own, and give to the poor. Your treasure is in me.
Come, love your enemy.
Come, follow me, and I will make you fish for people.
Come, all you who are weary…and let me give you rest.
Come, and I will fill you the fullness of God,
Come, take this bread, drink this cup, and remember me.
Because I am the Word made flesh,
the Story that lives among you,
offering you grace upon grace, upon grace.
Amen.










Benediction
From the Iona Community

We stand to face the future:
God behind us in the past
Christ before us; the way ahead;
Christ beside us in this moment;
Christ beneath us in our weakness;
Christ above to shield us-
Beneath the shadow of his wings we are safe;
Christ between us to bind us in the unity of his love;
Christ in us equipping us with his all sufficient grace.
Thus armed and guided, and protected we face the New Year.
Now we arise and go forth on the journey before us,
Knowing that, where Christ leads, life is a journey home.
Therefore we travel in faith, in hope, and in love,
in the name of the Father/ Mother, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
May the blessing of God
be upon us
all this year
and into eternity. Amen.