On Being Totally Undeserving of Grace

There have only been a few times in my life when I’ve received real grace. Or at least a few I’m aware of. I’m sure I’m actually receiving grace all the time and Spirit is looking at me right now rolling Her eyes as I take the miracle of breathing for granted yet again.

But what is grace? Anne Lamott says “I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”

Richard Rohr tells us “It is at the bottom that we find grace; for like water, grace seeks the lowest place and there it pools up.”

And one of my favorite ministers, totally worth quoting at length, Barbara Brown Taylor says, “Like every believe I know, my search for real life has led me through at least three distinct seasons, not once or twice but over and over again. Jesus called them finding life, losing life, and finding life again, with the paradoxical promise that finders will be losers while those who lose their lives for his sake will wind up finding them again.

In Greek the word is psyche, meaning not only ‘life’ but also the conscious self, the personality, the soul. You do not have to die in order to discover the truth of this teaching, in other words.

You only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will live.”

In other words, it’s kind of hard to talk about grace but we all know it when it comes. It’s that thing that happens that’s so far beyond our capabilities it astounds us. It’s so big that there’s no way we could ever deserve it, earn it, work towards it, or make it happen on our own in a thousand lifetimes.

Grace is the rising tide of Spirit that lifts all boats and the craziest thing about grace is that there’s usually nothing you can do to stop it. At least I’ve never been able to.

When I was younger I had some fixed ideas of fairness and personal justice. And I was deeply committed to making sure that the people I thought had done wrong received their just rewards.

Now of course, I was also one of those people. I cheated, I lied, I hid, I let fear run my life, I was cruel and selfish, I got drunk and vandalized property, I hid from hard conversations, I was nice to people’s faces then talked shit behind their backs, and I was also really really hurting. Not for any reason other than that I was just a young woman in her 20s who hadn’t quite figure it out yet.

But I only saw all those other people who were doing the same thing as me (or maybe I was just projecting and paranoid) and I thought deserved some kind of punishment.

Then I heard something one day from a wise mentor. She said it seemed like I wanted punishment for everyone else and grace for me. Or some days when I was really low, punishment for me and grace for everyone else. Those are the two linked ego dragons of arrogance and self-deprecation and I was in deep cahoots.

She went on to say the only way it works is judgment for everyone or grace for everyone and the choice is up to me. I didn’t get it right away. I’m sure I stayed on the ‘judgment and punishment for everyone’ side for a while. But slowly something shifted as I’ve walked a path of grace, which is to say, my birthright path as a human.

I’ve made terrible missteps at the various hospices and hospitals I’ve worked at; saying things so spiritually harmful and stupid only to have families smile and still hear something beautiful.

I’ve done the same in my sermons only to have congregants come up afterwards and thank me for the message I was trying to say.

And has anyone here ever read a 5th step to a sponsor? Wow, talk about grace. There’s nothing more astoundingly liberating that sytematically sharing all the worst things I’ve ever done, all the most bitter resentments I’ve ever nursed, all the angry retaliations I’ve ever taken, and having that person say, “Yes, I’ve done that too. And God still loves you.”

So what’s the bottom line on grace? Just that it’s there’s nothing I or you or anyone could do to deserve it and that’s the point. Grace doesn’t live in the realm of deservingness, or enoughness, or earningness. Grace doesn’t make those crazy distinctions between right and wrong. Grace makes no distinctions at all. That’s its gift.

Grace is the water we swim in, the air we breath, the blood in our bodies. It’s not just something that happens to us. It is us, interwoven eternally.

As a final note on grace, I’ll point to Jesus’ baptism during which God emerged from the clouds and said “This is my beloved child, with whom I am well pleased.” God said that before Jesus really did anything at all. The baptism happened before his entire earthly ministry.

Look what can happen with a grace like that. May you know that this grace is also eternally yours. Amen.