Expecting Grace

We are approaching the end of Lent, which, of course, means, we are approaching the Passion …

We usually walk through this in church in a kind of curious symmetry with the world around us. But, for the past few years we have walked the way of the Passion in real life. We have had to fear for our lives and to save our own lives, we have had to learn to fear contact with each other. We have had to forgo the love of those who love us the most for fear we might infect them and lose them. We have had to fear that we might lose them anyway.

And, now, as though it weren’t enough, we must fear the spread of war, because the war in Ukraine is clearly a war on the liberal world—by which I mean the world of reason.

We pray for grace, and we find grace, in simple things. Yesterday I took my car to the carwash, and there was a young man there who clearly was on his first day. He was doing a great job. I noticed the boss giving him instructions and moving him around from station to station, but really, he was doing a fine job, smiling and welcoming customers and working them through quickly. So, for me, there was grace in discovering a little bit of his story. I just hope, for him, there was grace in a job well done all day.

It is in the ways our hearts appreciate and absorb good feelings that we learn to walk in love.

It is so easy to lose synchrony in the middle of a complicated life. It is so easy to be distracted from grace. It is so easy to turn away from love. But it is always possible, even in the deepest depths, to return to love.

Today we read in Isaiah [43:19] God announcing: “I am about to do a new thing, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” Do we not perceive it? We err when we fail to understand that God offers us this change in every moment. We are called to joy, we are called to gladness, we are called to reap a harvest of joy. In fact. we are called [Philippians 3:14] to “press on” to joy, to press on “toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God.” Which, is love.

We are called, to expect grace, to be alert for every opportunity for a new thing. We are called to perceive the springing forth of grace in every part of life.

LGBTQ people live in what is called a “liberal” world. It is a world of reason, a world in which law promotes justice, the rights of individuals are guaranteed by law, righteousness inheres in the extension of the security of individuality, and all of it is powered by love, which is built up by more love, which is the source of grace.

We must be aware. We must perceive where grace reaches out to touch our lives. We must be alert to the operation of the passion in our everyday lives. We must not fear, even as we learn to cope. We must above all participate in the building up of the world of reason with the love God has given us.

5 Lent Year C RCL 2022: (Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126 In convertendo; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8)

©The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.