by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

A sermon given December 21, 2003

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

Welcome to this place of worship during this Holy Season.

May love surround you and

Peace be with you

As we gather here

To be called to our truest selves.

Come, let us worship together.

It was starting out that year not to be a very good Christmas.  I was a single mom with two little boys, six and seven, living in Lexington, Kentucky.  It was during the economic downturn in the 1980s, and I was unemployed.  I had two master’s degrees and thought I was highly qualified to do something—but everywhere I turned, they said no.  They said, “Overqualified.”  Or, “Sorry, but forty other people with more experience than you have applied.”

And so, as I said, it was starting out not to be a very good Christmas.  My boys and I went shopping for a Christmas tree that evening, and their spirits were up.  When we got to the Christmas tree lot, they ran from tree to tree, calling out the merits of each, deciding which one would come and grace our home that Christmas.  They picked out a beautiful mid-size tree:  “This is the one!  This is it, Mom!”  But when I went over and looked at the price tag, I knew it was too much.  “Boys, I think we need a smaller tree,” I said.  “No, this one, this one!” They pleaded.  “I just don’t think we can afford it,” I said, and so we went in search again and found a smaller tree. 

I was getting my checkbook out to pay, my breath a fog in the cold night air, when the manager of the lot said, “Ma’am, your tree is already paid for.”  He pointed to the mid-size tree that the boys had first chosen.  “That one,” he said.

“What?  Why, who paid for it?”  I asked.

“I don’t know his name.  An elderly man.  He had white hair.”

“But where is he?  I want to thank him!”  I glanced around the lot.

“Oh, he’s gone,” the manager said.  “He said to wish you and your boys a Merry Christmas.”  I never found him, that man—never knew his name.  But the warmth that he brought to our Christmas that year remains with me still.

What we have by grace.  Grace cannot be earned.  It is not deserved.  It is something freely given, with no price attached.  Our commensurate response can only be deep gratitude.  Gratitude for the plenty of this world.  Gratitude for love.  Gratitude for the amazing surprises that awaken us once more to hope and joy.

Grace lights upon us when we least expect it.  Where does it come from?  Not from the realm of the mundane, from the place of planning and practicality, but from the realm of mystery, from the movement of a divine energy beyond our knowing.  Most languages have words that are akin to grace:  the Native American orenda, the Spanish duende.  It is a universal phenomenon that emerges from time to time in each of our lives, and lets us know that we are not walking through this world alone.

The alternative to a life open to grace is the belief in self as the center of things, the belief that you have accomplished everything through your own merit.  “I have worked hard for what I have, and other people should do the same.”  It is a philosophy long on pride and short on compassion.  And one day the self-made man runs into something that he can’t fix, can’t overcome.  It is at that point that grace might have a way in.

We come to those desert places in life where we are not only up the creek without a paddle, but where the whole creek has dried up.  We don’t see anything good in the future.  There have been those moments of grace in the past, we know, those miracles of living that have visited us from time to time—like the time when our child was born; or when we first looked into the eyes of love and we knew it; or when our call just lay so clearly and joyfully before us.  But in the down times, all that seems beyond us, impossible somehow.  No more miracles. 

But holiness can light upon us at any time, and often there is an element of surprise.  We may squirm around in our dissatisfaction, trying this, trying that.  We may go to workshops, travel, have an affair, spend money, ask advice, we may pray earnestly, and still feel in that desert place.  And then, something changes.  There is a visitation.  This time grace comes to us in a flurry of wings, and we can’t miss the message—like the young peasant woman Mary, of Nazareth, whose angel in its full glory said to her, “Hail, thou who art highly favored, the Lord is with thee.”  And like Mary, we are troubled and afraid, but we must finally say, like Mary, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.”  Other times grace seems to slip in unawares, and in a quiet moment, with no fanfare, we realize we have changed.  We are confident.  We step forward in our beauty instead of hiding.  No longer in denial, we stand in our truth.  We notice that we have softened and find ourselves less given to anger and more given to love.  Forgiveness becomes possible.

It seems that we often have to go through these barren times, these humbling experiences, to accept ourselves as the imperfect creatures we are, before the ground of grace can open to us.  We have to discard the self we have always imagined ourselves to be, the self we have treasured and kept close.

Poet David Whyte introduced me to a poem by Rilke entitled “The Swan,” in which Rilke describes the swan out of water.  It is a clumsy creature that looks as though it doesn’t belong to the earth.  Each time the swan takes a step it lists way over to the side and looks as if it will fall over, and then it takes another step and lists way over to the other side.  It seems about to trip over its own feet.  But a transformation takes place when the swan enters the water.  “To die,” says Whyte, “is to let go of the ground we stand on.”  To die to the old self, to open to the new.  Rilke compares the awkwardness of the swan to our own stumbling lives—he writes:

“This clumsy living that moves lumbering,

as if in rote through waters not done,

reminds of the awkward way the swan walks.

And to die, which is a letting go of the ground

we stand on and cling to every day

is like the swan when he nervously

lets himself down into the water

which receives him gaily

and which flows under and after him

wave after wave

while the swan, unmoving and

marvelously calm,

is pleased to be carried each moment

and more fully grown,

more like a king,

farther and farther on.

All the swan does is yield, is enter the element where it belongs.  That is what the Divine is ever leading us to do, to enter the place where we belong, the place that makes us feel most fully alive.[1]

Sometimes the way to grace is through suffering.  Not that suffering is ever an end in itself, or a thing to be sought, but it will come, and paradoxically, the fullness of being we seek may lie on the other side of the very barrenness we try so hard to escape. 

Writer Sharon Salzberg tells the story of her spiritual teacher, Dipa Ma.  When Dipa Ma was only twelve years old, she entered into an arranged marriage. Joining her husband in a foreign country at age fourteen, she was very lonely and cried often.  Her husband was kind, though, and eventually they fell in love.  Year after year passed, but no child was born.  Her husband’s family encouraged him to put her aside and choose another wife. 

Finally, though, after 20 years of marriage, her first child—a daughter—was born, only to die at three months of age.  Another daughter was born four years later.  The following year Dipa Ma became pregnant again, but her son died at birth.  Her grief over the deaths of her children affected her health.  She became frail, and she learned she had a dangerous heart condition.  Then her husband, who had been in fine health, had a sudden illness and died.  Dipa Ma was brokenhearted and felt that she might herself die of grief.  She describes the moment when she asked herself, “What can I take with me when I die?”  She thought about it.  She looked around.  She said, “I looked at my silk saris and my gold jewelry, and I knew I couldn’t take them.  I looked at my daughter, and I knew I couldn’t take her.”  She said, “Let me go to the meditation center.  Maybe I can find something there I can take with me when I die.”

Dipa Ma found a monastery where she could practice meditation, but when she arrived, she was so weak that she had to crawl up the temple stairs in order to get into the meditation room.  As she learned to practice meditation, she looked deeply into her pain and found great compassion there, for herself and for all beings.  She began to heal.  She had come to understand the fragility of life.  She understood that no one escapes loss and suffering.  Her practice brought her peace. 

Dipa Ma became a revered teacher.  She reflected luminous love and compassion to everyone who came to her.  Her profound understanding of the vulnerability of us all allowed her heart to be big enough to exclude no one.

The great theologian Paul Tillich reflects on the relationship of suffering to grace in his book The Shaking of the Foundations.  He writes:  “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 . . . 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.”

The nature of grace, then, is that we can’t earn it or plot and plan to get it.  Will power is useless.  We can’t buy it.  We have to humble ourselves and to be willing to step out of the place that has always held us, however awkwardly.  And another quality of grace: theologians call it “habitual grace”—it is always there. 

Al Tuggle tells a story about his growing up days in South Georgia.  He says that when he was a young boy he and his buddies were passing a cornfield one day, and it didn’t take them long to discover the great fun of throwing ears of corn at each other.  In just a little while, they ruined a lot of corn.  The farmer discovered what they were doing and quickly put a stop to it.  The boys apologized and did what they could to clean up the area and to straighten up the stalks that could be saved.  The farmer was gracious and generous.  But Al still had to face his parents.  They dealt with the cornfield incident, Al said he was sorry, and he was forgiven.

Then his father said something to Al that he has never forgotten.  “Now,” his father said, “there is something important I want to pass on to you.  As you go through life, you can do a lot of things that will affect your mother and me.  You can make us very angry, you can make us very sad, you can make us very embarrassed.  There is one thing, however, you cannot do not matter how hard you try.  You cannot make us stop loving you.  You are our son, and we will always love you, no matter what.”[2]

Grace is something like that.  It’s a message from the Holy One that reads as follows:  “Well, here you are on this good earth, through no fault of your own.  Hey, welcome to the party!  It wouldn’t be complete without you.  You’ll be a part of it all.  You will love and you will lose.  You will walk through days of sunshine, and you will slog through the rain.  Don’t be afraid.  I will be with you through it all. There is nothing you can do to make me stop loving you.”[3]

“Hail, Mary, full of grace.”  Full of grace, full of graciousness.  What does it mean to be gracious?  All of us have the capacity to be carriers of God’s grace on this earth.  Imagine all of us moving amongst one another in kindness and in caring.  Grace can shine through us when we realize that the Divine presence exists within us—yes, sometimes beaten down, sometimes quieted, sometimes denied—but there, within us, to be awakened when we allow it, is this Divine presence.  We can evoke the power and beauty of grace.

Candles characterize the season:  the candles of Christmas, the candles of Hanukkah, the candles of Kwanzaa.  “Let there be light” surely is a personal message to each of us.  Let there be light.  At our candlelight services on Christmas Eve, you will see what a great light is made when all of us light our candles in the dark.  The Holy One has given us—every one of us—the possibility to carry the light, to pass it on, to kindle and strengthen the light in one another. This is how we can choose to live.  By the grace of God, let it be so.  Amen.

PRAYER

Gracious God, forgive us when we choose to stay in the darkness, when we shy away from the light.  We pray that your grace might especially fall upon all who are feeling lost this day, on all who thirst for your truth, on all who believe they are beyond help.  Hold us in your care, surprise us with joy, as we go through this holiday season.  Let your love shine through us, and make us instruments of your peace.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

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Copyright 2003, Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell.  All rights reserved.