Grace on Tuesdays

Grace on Tuesdays                                                            

            Yes, if you have a bit of English language background (lunch today with high school and college teachers of English!), you can get some significance from the word “Christmas.”  But I wonder whether people hearing/reading Chinese can get there sooner. Christmas Eve?—“Peaceful Night.” Christmas Day? “Holy Born Festival.” 

            Whatever your language(s), in the midst of great festivities or quite alone, the word we heard in worship tonight is a word God gives in grace for this Holy Born Festival:  Immanuel, God with us.  

Grace on Tuesdays
OK, actually it was a Wednesday: 25 June, 1530. At the risk of their lives seven princes offered grace to their emperor, in the form of a confession of their faith in Christ, in the city of Augsburg, Germany. 
Permit a paraphrase: we cannot get right with God by our work or control. We can be right with God when we trust that God has worked for us in Christ, because of his gracious heart. To make possible this trust in God’s Good News, God created ministry, giving his Word of honor in many forms so that God’s Spirit can lead us to trust him. BTW, this trust is bound to bring forth good fruit in our lives. 
OK, for a more precise rendition, see paragraphs/Articles IV – VI of the Augsburg Confession, in print or online. Just remember to listen for grace, God’s grace.

               “I was a sensitive child with a deep yearning for God, though I was always a little unsure of how God felt about me. In a religious climate that valued righteousness and exactness, I worried that I didn’t measure up.  I busied myself with the work of becoming worthy of God’s favor, seeking always to do more and sin less.

               “I had a chance to hear Jerry Root, a theologian and C. S Lewis scholar.  At one point he said, ‘I’m a Christian because I know enough of my deficiencies to be devasted.  I don’t think I could live life without forgiveness and without the love of God.’

               “I had never before heard faith framed this way. I’d understood a life of faith to mean working hard to overcome my deficiencies. Hearing a mature, thoughtful Christian stand and acknowledge his deficiencies, name his devastation at them, and declare his utter reliance on God’s forgiveness and love—on grace —struck me to my core.  I expected shame, but God took it all and exchanged it for redemption and love. 

               So wrote Katie Langston in Lutheran Forum in the Fall 2017 issue.  I was struck:  grateful to have known grace so many years, and yet still I try to measure up.  Yeah, give it up.  Quit.  Enjoy the redemption and love in Christ:  grace.

Does the Gottman Method of Relationship Therapy permit a parable or two, earthly stories paralleling God’s gracious method of relating with us?  Three possibilities:

As relationships grow, 1) Couples “Express Fondness and Admiration” for each other.  Christian worship? God speaking love and people responding:  see Psalm 8!  2) Couples make a point to “Turn Toward One Another,…[simply] expressing interest or acknowledgement v. ignoring.” Is that daily praying?  3) And this: “69% [of conflicts] are perpetual in nature, meaning they are present throughout the course of time….”  How hard we work at trying to get the sinless, perfect relationship with God, while at least 69% of our conflicts with God are perpetual in this life!  

I do not discount the evil of sin, its destructiveness,—I have too much personal experience to do so!  Still, it seems that as the Gottman Method identifies good options for human relationships it can help us see better God’s relationship with us.  God expresses fondness for us, turns towards us, expects that there will be troubles in the relationship—all of that in grace, in Christ.

(The Gottman data was retrieved on 18 June from https://www.gottman.com/blog/an-introduction-to-the-gottman-method-of-relationship-therapy/)

Grace on Tuesdays

Is it true? We ask, “What activities at church would attract people?” That’s a good question; I am grateful for people who work hard on activities at church. But we can also ask, “What activities as church would make God’s grace attractive to others?” Or, to put the two together, “What can we do at church (the building) to equip the church (people) to practice grace daily wherever they are?” To tell the truth, grace can be frightening—that much love?!—but grace can also be….grace, an embrace, in Christ.

Posted in FB 2019.06.04

Perhaps it’s the intensity of the buildings in our part of Hong Kong, the wonder of forty-story apartment buildings side by side by side.  Perhaps that is why I felt challenged recently, while watching Christian music on my computer,  that the visuals were beautiful church buildings or beautiful hills and mountains.  I found myself asking, “Is there no beauty in the city, no grace?” 

There was grace in the city, two thousand years ago, miracles and parables and a gracious Thursday meal.  As for “a hill green hill far away,” the grace was pretty ugly. 

Published on FB 2019.05.28

May 29 at 8:30 PM · 

Grace on Wednesdays! That’s my shelter in my embarrassment for the Grace on Tuesdays typo, “hill green hill.” I’m covered by grace even when my grammar is bad.

Grace on Tuesdays

He said, “We all got secrets. I got them same as everybody else—things we feel bad about and wish hadn’t ever happened. Hurtful things. Long ago things. We’re all scared and lonesome, but most of the time we keep it hid. It’s like every one of us has lost his way so bad we don’t even know which way is home any more only we’re ashamed to ask. You know what would happen if we would own up we’re lost and ask? Why, what would happen is we’d find out home is each other. We’d find out home is Jesus that loves us lost or found or any whichway.”   

Retrieved from info@frederickbuechner.com of 5 June 2019

Posted 13 June, 2019

Grace on Tuesdays

A friend asked, and we did—talk.  But another time recently it was a stranger, the guy next to me at lunch at the conference. He didn’t ask; we just started talking.  Of course, some conversations can be artificial or manipulative. But then there are the ones that are real, that promise more another time, even.  I “find” myself because I am connected with you in the conversation. Which is surely part of what’s going on when we talk with the Word made flesh, in grace.

14 May, 2019

Grace on Tuesdays 
Working through the Bible readings for last weekend, I noticed what Paul did in his farewell speech to the elders from Ephesus. “I commend you to God and to his word of grace” (Acts 20:32).
1) “Good point,” I thought, especially in these days of US graduations, “We commend you to God’s care.”
2) “And we commend you—all of us–to Bible Study.” I paused. I wondered. “NIV? ESV? Message? uh…. which app? what phone?…. uh….book? uh…” They had none of that; but they could hear grace in God’s Word, and surely Paul is inviting us to do the same . I commend you to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up….

7 May, 2019

Grace on Tuesdays—well, yes, other days too!

I noticed some “Alleluia!” music playing on YouTube, from whatever source. I was passive, just noticing. Then, just listening. Then I began to realize it’s my “Alleluia,” too. In Christ, Grace opens for us this music, whatever the melody, whoever the singer. We are invited to join the celebration.