Struck by Grace

Rev. Millie Rochester

February 8, 2009

I used to love playing a game of word association -- still do, sometimes -- in fact, that's how the title of these reflections came to me. For some reason, the phrase "struck by lightening" came into my head, and that phrase became "struck by grace."

The word grace automatically triggered Amazing Grace, a hymn that has been described as a white spiritual. It's also said to have been the anthem of the Cherokee Nation during the Trail of Tears in 1838 and 1839; and was sung at the funerals of Richard Nixon, Sonny Bono, and John Kennedy, Junior.

It's an incredibly popular song, has inspired plays, movies, and documentaries. Bill Moyers produced a program about Amazing Grace that featured a scene filmed in Wembley Stadium, in London.

"Various musical groups, mostly rock bands, had gathered together in celebration of the changes in South Africa, and... the promoters scheduled [the]…opera singer, Jessye Norman, as the closing act...." When [Miss Norman] was ready to sing, the unruly crowd hooted and called for [the band] Guns and Roses. Alone, a capella, she began to sing Amazing Grace, very slowly:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost but now am found -- was blind but now I see.

"A remarkable thing happened... Seventy thousand raucous fans fell silent before her aria of grace. By the time Norman reached the second verse, 'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears relieved...,' the soprano had the crowd in her hands."

Jessye Norman later confessed she had no idea what power descended on Wembley Stadium that night.

You may know about the Englishman, John Newton, who wrote the song. The fabric of his story is woven of fact and myth. In 1748, Newton was the captain of a ship conveying slaves from Africa. According to the myth, the captain was in a storm, in danger of losing the ship and his life; and in desperation he prayed for help. When he, the ship, and its contents survived the storm, he had a conversion experience that made him see how evil slavery was. That experience compelled him to compose the song. That's the myth.

In fact, I understand that Captain Newton retired from the sea after becoming prosperous in the slavery business. He returned to England, and became a talented preacher, eventually a Church of England priest. Newton had a great talent for hymn writing. He wrote hundreds of them, some in cooperation with a poet. As time went on, he did become an abolitionist, and actively campaigned against slavery. It's out of this understanding that Newton wrote the hymn Amazing Grace.

Whether we accept the myth or are content with the facts associated with the song's origin, it does make a good springboard for considering the concept of grace. It's an idea especially associates with Christianity, though there are references in the Hebrew Scriptures. The question for us is, can we derive relevance as Unitarian Universalists, regardless of our theological leanings? I think we can.

Let's begin with what the Theological Word Book of the Bible tells us. The author distinguishes between the use of the word grace in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. In the Old Testament, the word is assigned to kindness and graciousness in general, with no particular tie or personal relationship between the individuals involved, and generally shown by a superior to an inferior when there is no obligation to do so. Grace is also a reference, though, to a specific kindness that gives pleasure to both giver and receiver; and that meaning does imply some sort of special relationship.

In the New Testament, grace indicates quite specifically God's redemptive love, always active to save the people and keep them in relationship with God. The implication is of God's continual, unfailing faithfulness both to his covenant and to his people forever.

The song contains a strong notion of faith that mirrors the theology emerging at that point in history. John Wesley's influence was growing. He argued that the grace of God is not given to human beings because of the things that they accomplish or the goodness of their character. Instead, he said, humans must accept that there is nothing we can do to earn God's forgiving grace, because we will never be able to deserve such a gift through our own works; but God gives it anyway.

The author Frederick Buechner, in his book Wishful Thinking, puts it this way:

Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you. There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.

On that basis, the John Newton story -- the factual one -- might illustrate a subtle function of grace in the evolution of a person. Think about the first verse of the hymn: "Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me."

We don't hear that word -- wretch -- very often nowadays, but it bears examination. I'm taken with Kathleen Norris' observations in her book, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith. She notes that the Oxford English Dictionary assigns a romantic connotation to the Old English: "a wretch was a wanderer, an adventurer, a knight errant. In Old Teutonic, however, a wretch meant an exile, a banished person, and it is there that the word's negative connotations begin to haunt us." As it is used today, Norris says, the word wretch "means not so much one who has been driven out of a native land, but one who would be miserable anywhere...someone who is exiled from being at peace within the self."

Newton believed he was a wretch; that at times all of us are, and are saved through the grace of God at conversion -- according to the words of the song: "the hour I first believed."

The implication that God chooses to bless some people with a state of grace but not bless others is abhorrent to most of us, for Universalism teaches that we are all saved. Yet, who among us has not at one time or another felt estranged, even wretched? Is it not possible to experience that sense of alienation while knowing, consciously or subconsciously that all will eventually be well, or at least better? And, again, a question that particularly applies to us -- is it absolutely necessary to believe in a supreme being in order to achieve that assurance? I don’t think it is.

Newton believed in a personal God, and perhaps you do, too, but many of us would be faced with a problem of semantics, at the very least. I've often quoted my colleague the Reverend Alice Blair Wesley, who once told me the only advantage of using the word "God" is that it's a short word. But, it's a word we associate with the supernatural, often the divine; and Unitarian Universalists generally tend to define reality with less focus on God, and more on humanity. Even a sense of spirituality, if not fixed on, at least places a high priority on the affairs of humankind. We make our own lives, create our own salvation, our own wholeness, our own peace. Maybe we make our own grace.

There was quite a reaction to the word "wretch" in the hymn Amazing Grace. You might notice that in our hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition, there is an asterisk next to the word, indicating another option -- "soul." Perhaps Kathleen Norris would be less distressed by that substitution than the more common "someone," which she says is not only

wretched English, [but] laughably bland, which, taken altogether, is not an inconsiderable accomplishment: "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved someone like me." Someone? Anyone?

she asks.

Norris goes on to wonder if "anyone who has not experienced wretchedness -- exile, wandering, loss, misery, whether inwardly or in outward circumstance -- has a superficial grasp of what it means to be human... if you can't ever admit to being a wretch, you haven't been paying attention." Acknowledging that condition is the basis for empathy, Kathleen Norris is saying; it's the means through which we "offer mercy to the wretched of the world... feed the hungry, tend the sick, clothe the naked, and visit those in prison."

The human condition is a paradox. We know we will eventually die, yet we go on living. By the same token, we endure wretchedness, yet we survive. The remedy for alienation -- the saving grace -- is the force of support we offer one another.

This idea reminds me of Mary Oliver's well-known poem "Wild Geese:"

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

There are a zillion stories of people who testify to having been touched by grace -- we've all heard them -- of people who feel they or a family member have been miraculously cured of disease; or people who have come out of college not knowing what they'll do with their lives, gone away to a foreign country not understanding the language even, and found themselves mysteriously serving other people's needs as well as their own.

Even I have a personal example, from the time shortly after I decided to upend my life and my family's lives by becoming a minister. I had been accepted to Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago, but the program required supplementary study with a local seminary. I investigated the possibilities, but finally had to admit that there didn't seem to be a local seminary -- not even if I stretched the definition of the word "local." Finally, I let that detail go, deciding it would have to be resolved further down the road.

What happened next was uncanny. Literally, the following Saturday, there was an article in our local newspaper announcing the imminent opening of a Methodist seminary fifteen minutes from our house. Its purpose would be for students to study locally, and continue at a seminary away from home.

But that’s not all – Classes were scheduled to be on Fridays and Saturdays, which were my days off.

Was that grace? Co-incidence? Or perhaps the Zen concept of an un-aimed arrow, in which the universe somehow controls the course of the arrow?

It was a mystery and wonder that moved me to a renewal of the spirit. I felt personally struck by grace [though not necessarily singled out – maybe it wasn't all about me!! After all, I was only one of two dozen students who enrolled in the Northwest House of Theological Studies its first term. Maybe I was only an incidental recipient of grace].

Unitarian Universalist minister Rupert Lovely has said, "There are only two things you have to do: be born, and die. Everything else is a choice." Grace is the opportunity for revision, fulfilled or unfulfilled only by choice; a free and unmerited gift that empowers us to live a better life. Thomas Wintle, in the quarterly journal of the American Unitarian Conference, writes,

The "free and unmerited" part is important. Think about this: most religions, indeed much of the world, is based on "merit"--you have to earn your way into favor. Whether it is by performing certain rituals or learning some secret knowledge, performing special deeds or achieving a level of enlightenment, the idea is that YOU must rack-up the points in order to be saved. In the secular world it is the idea of quid pro quo and tit-for-tat and 'you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours'.

Each of us, distinctive in our individuality, has an infinite capacity to create -- and to revise -- our sense of self and the world, and we are each continually changed by our interactions with the rest of the world. And no one promised it would be easy. But if courage is, as Hemingway famously said, "grace under pressure," we might also say that grace enables courage under pressure.

According to the existentialist Paul Tillich,

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, 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 the fact that you are accepted!" If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment...reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance.”

This is what it is be in fellowship with one another: knowing we are accepted, not alone; for by joining together, we give to each other more than we could ever give alone. Something special emerges when we gather together -- an antidote to the wretchedness of estrangement.

Grace has to do with the connections we can forge by being open to the unconscious, to the spirit; to being willing to take risks and not be mired in dogma and solidified ways of thinking and teaching and learning. But to be open to grace, we must be open to accepting it. Then we allow for the possibility of true transformation.

If we believe in a deity, grace comes from that god; I don't personally need to name whatever that element of the universe is that is part of each and every one of us, yet greater than any of us. Like Charlene Spretnek, a writer on women's and eco-theology, I believe that when we experience consciousness of the unity in which we are embedded, the sacred whole that is in and around us, we exist in a state of grace. So, she says, experiencing grace entails the expansion of the consciousness of self to all of one's surroundings as an unbroken whole, from which negative mind states are absent, from which healing and groundedness result.

Note the absence here of a supreme being. Maybe even the staunchest humanist can understand grace in those terms.

Sometimes the consciousness of grace comes on suddenly, she tells us, and so intensely that the moment is never forgotten.

Several years ago, Regina Brett recounted a true incident, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It has stayed with me. On the surface, it's the story of a basketball game, and involves a dad and a son. The dad wanted his son to see the big game, so they arrived at the gym early to get a good seat. They sat in the bleachers waiting for the Junior Varsity game to end; waiting to see whether Wadsworth High School would clinch a league title -- and set a school record -- with its seventeenth straight win.

Suddenly, with one minute left on the clock, the Junior Varsity game came to a halt. Wadsworth was winning by ten points when the Cloverleaf High School coach stopped the game.

The crowd buzzed, wondering why the coach had called a timeout when the game wasn't close enough to win, when everyone was anxious for the real game to begin, the game that mattered.

That's when the dad noticed the short, thin player sitting at the end of the bench wearing the green Number 10 jersey for the Cloverleaf Colts. When the player rose from the bench, the dad noticed the boy's limp, the slight tilt of his head, the way his eyes looked a tad off, the scarred ear that had never finished growing in the womb.

The dad didn't know that a shunt in the boy's head kept him alive, drained the water from his brain and kept him from playing sports to the fullest. The boy couldn't afford to be hit in the head. Doctor’s orders.

The coach had planned to put Adam Cerney into the game, no matter how close the score. He knew how badly Adam wanted play against the school's big rival.

The dad and boy in the bleachers watched as Adam caught a pass and launched a shot from well beyond the three-point line. He missed.

Instead of pouncing all over the ball to charge down the court and rack up more points, the teenagers on the opposing team didn’t move. They wanted Adam to have another chance.

The clock ticked down. Adam shot and missed. Twelve seconds. He missed again. And again. Ten seconds. Nine seconds. The Wadsworth team refused to take the ball. One player even motioned for Adam to come closer, but the boy declined.

By now, everyone was standing and cheering for Adam Cerny. The people who knew him shouted, "Come on Adam!" and "Cer-nee, Cer-nee!" With four seconds left, Adam launched the ball. The buzzer split the air as the ball swooshed through the net.

The crowd went wild. Fans from both teams stood to cheer and clap. The Wadsworth players shook his hand and patted his back. The two referees on the gym floor applauded. One turned to the other and said over and over, "Man, was that nice."

The dad in the stands began to cry. When he looked up, his son, a child of five, asked if the tears were because Cloverleaf had lost the game. The dad just smiled.

Who, in that story, can be said to have been struck by grace? The focus was on Adam, who had persevered; we can speculate that he was imbued with the self-esteem to do so by any number of people, including his family, coach, teammates and players on the opposing team. I'm reminded of the reference I made earlier to the Hebrew Scriptures -- of grace bestowing pleasure to both the giver and receiver, implying some sort of special relationship between them -- in this case, true mutuality.

We begin where we are, as human beings, nothing but potential at first, but that potential is of no worth whatsoever in isolation. Every person in that story was transformed, the recipient of grace, for regardless of its origin, grace is a gift -- unearned but not undeserved; not the result or recognition of an accomplishment or milestone. Unlike a birthday or Christmas gift that one receives in recognition of an event, grace is given for no reason. The man who had brought his son to the game was struck by grace; the referees, the crowd, everyone engaged in that experience.

More frequent experiences of grace are less spectacular but still amazing -- when we are making music by singing together, or listening to music as it sings to our souls; when we are creating or absorbing art, poetry, or dance; watching a sunrise or sunset; when we are so engaged in conversation that all boundaries of separation are blurred; when we see the humanness in the face of a person with whom we disagree or don't even like, and know we are each and all a part of the human family, the family that strives to be as one with the universe.

May such grace break into our lives like waves of light, now and evermore. Blessed be.