josephholubsermons
October 24, 2010 Pentecost 22
1 Chronicles 16:1, 7-12
Luke 17:11-19
Remembering With Honest Discernment
Walking
Into Grace
“Remember the wonderful works the Lord has done, the miracle and the
judgments God uttered.”
(1 Chronicles 16:1, 7-12)
The Israelites of the Old Testament, at
key moments in their
life together, paused to look back and
remember.
The context of the verses of our OT passage for today is one of
those key moments.
King David is in the process of
making Jerusalem the
religious center for the Israelites.
David is about to bring the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem
for the first time as part of the ceremony for the dedication of
Jerusalem.
The Ark of the Covenant was the box that supposedly contained the
tablets of stone upon which were inscribed the very heart of the Torah.
David had the ark loaded onto a custom built cart and made the
ceremony into a circus parade complete with horns, harps and cymbals.
He set up a big tent in Jerusalem to house the ark and provided
for refreshments with a scrumptious buffet.
And then with trumpets blaring and drums beating, David
outrageously cut loose by stripping down to his skivvies and led the
parade into Jerusalem himself while doing an ecstatic dance.
It was a spectacle indeed!
(2 Samuel 5 & 6; 1 Chronicles 15 & 16)
He then appointed a musically talented family to
sing a song of thanksgiving,
a few verses of which are a part of our scripture for today.
The “song”, in its entirety, is a
remembrance - a
remembrance of how the
Israelites perceived God had been involved in their life together
and had empowered them to
arrive at this day and this place.
For me, the point
in all of this is that Israelites paused to
remember with discernment.
They paused to look back, reflect and discern how they perceived
God had interacted
with them and who God was shaping them to be, and as a result of that
discernment were empowered into the future with a sense of hope and
purpose. What Israel discovered
in the remembering was that God had become known to them in
many experiences of grace.
When you read the song in its entirety, it celebrates their
experience of God’s grace beginning with the
covenant with Abraham
stretching to the moment of the ark arriving in Jerusalem.
What this all means for me
and what, I think, it can
mean for all us is this: In my opinion,
remembering with honest
discernment is a
deeply spiritual practice.
It has been my
experience that when I look back and remember my life with honest
discernment, what I see is that countless times I have
walked into an experience of
grace that I did not expect and almost always caught me by
surprise; an experience of grace that reshaped and renewed me and
empowered me forward.
For me, remembering with honest discernment
is a deeply spiritual practice of looking back over my life: my
day, my week, my year or even years (whatever) and discerning
where I have come from, where
I am going and most importantly
who I am becoming.
It is a time to remember and ask important questions,
“Was I brave in love today or
a coward caving in to my own self-indulgent interests?
Was I giving this week or taking?
Was I gracious or judging?
Was I generous or close-fisted? Was
I hospitable or stand-off-ish?
Was I humble or arrogant.
Did I consider the other’s situation or was I deafened by the
noise of my own self-serving agenda?
Was I open in compassion or defensive in fear?
Did I include others or exclude others?
Did I lose my way or stay on course?”
My remembering with honest discernment can
take me in many directions to
assess who I am and who I am becoming.
I also find that remembering with honest discernment is a practice that
I sometimes avoid like the plague!
I often find ways to escape and steer clear of such
reflective remembering:
surf the internet, turn on the television, pick up a
newspaper, magazine or a book, find a chore that could easily wait until
tomorrow. I find a myriad
of ways to escape into the shallow waters of life so I won’t have to
journey into in the deeper water of
remembering with honest
discernment.
But,
when I have taken the
time to remember my life with honest discernment, to my shock and
surprise, I have made some
amazing discoveries
and become aware of some
astounding revelations.
Perhaps the first one and
biggest one is the awareness that
I have survived.
After 62 years, 7 months and 11days, I have made it to this year,
this day and this moment.
When I look back I realize I
need not have made it.
There have been a few times I never thought I would, and I nearly
didn’t. There have been
despairing times when I didn’t want to make it and secretly hoped I
wouldn’t; those times I was
ready to give up the whole thing.
There have been times of intense sorrow and grief that
overwhelmed me and almost suffocated me.
There have been times I have loved the people I have loved too
much for either their good or mine, and then there are those times I
missed the opportunity to love that would have made a profound
difference to the other, as well as to myself.
There have been countless times
I have followed too much the desires of my heart and those other times
when my heart called out for me to be brave and kind, and I did not
follow. There have been
times of enormous triumphs and success when I was truly at my best, but
also moments of miserable failure and huge disappointment.
My remembering with honest discernment tells me something else:
it tells me
that as weak as I have been at times, a strength beyond my own
has often risen up from somewhere to pull me through, as least thus far,
at least to this day.
My remembering tells me
that as foolish as I have sometimes been, a wisdom beyond my own
has flickered up just often enough to light a path for me to walk when
all appeared as darkness.
My remembering tells me
as faint of heart I as have sometimes been, a greater love has
often embraced me and kept my heart alive and from turning to stone.
In the end what I am saying is that when I
remember my life with honest
discernment, I begin to see how, all along the way of my life, on
every mountaintop and in every dark valley I have, repeatedly and
usually unexpectedly to my shock and surprise,
walked into GRACE.
And grace has worn many faces:
the loving concern of a friend or spouse; someone who took the time to
listen, a chapter in a book, a new thought arriving on the wings of a
sermon, a community that cared in some tangible way, someone who
admonished me in love, etc.
We had a discussion at church council on Thursday evening about grace.
“What is the definition
of grace? someone asked.
We kicked it around for awhile, and we concluded that grace is
something that really
cannot be pinned down.
It cannot be reduced to a doctrine or dogma.
It cannot even be precisely defined, but rather grace is more
like the reality of God’s presence that can only be experienced
and from which we cannot escape;
a presence that continually
desires to embrace us with the assurance of love; and renew and reshape
our humanity in that same love.
The gospels are a testimony that Jesus was the
embodiment of God’s grace
- and to engage him is to
engage grace - and to
follow him is to grow in
grace in our own lives.
What is grace? If
anything “defines” it,
Jesus life does! The
gospels show that the people he encountered walked into grace, almost
always unexpectedly and to their shock and surprise.
When those excluded
by their communities for any reason encountered him, to their
shock and surprise, they were
included in his community.
They had walked into grace.
When those who had been pushed to the margins
encountered him, to their shock and surprise, they were pulled
into the center of his community.
They had walked into grace.
When those who were hungry
didn’t know where to go for food encountered him, to their shock
and surprise they were fed with food that had been blessed by him.
They had walked into grace.
When those who were despised
and the butt of community scorn encountered him, much to their
shock and surprise he cherished them.
They had walked into grace.
When those who were hopeless and despaired
encountered him, to their shock and surprise they left more
hopeful than before. They
had walked into grace.
When those who were secure
in their own prideful self-righteous religious arrogance engaged him and
sought his approval, to their
shock and surprise they didn’t receive his approval but received his
admonishment. But it was an
admonishment of grace that contained the challenge for them to find
fulfillment and joy in the posture of humility and compassion
for those they had judged and excluded. They had walked into grace.
When those who stood around his cross of execution
encountered him, instead of hearing cursing and spitting as most of the
executed did, to their shock and surprise they heard him speak words of
love and forgiveness. They
had walked into grace.
The gospels are stories of all kinds of people, to their shock and
surprise, walking into grace as they engaged Jesus.
Today in this place and space we remember with discernment, the life of
Jesus who embodies grace.
In Greek, the word “remember” (ἀνάμνησις)
means much more that merely
recalling a past event,
but it means to
“relive as a present reality.”
We all come here today in as many states of mind and spirit as there are
people in this room, likely spread
across a spectrum that stretches from agony to ecstasy.
But no matter who you are or what
state your life is in, when you come to this table hosted by
Jesus, you are walking into
the very “present reality of
grace” to be embraced by the assurance of inclusive love and to be
reshaped and renewed by that same love – to be empowered out of this
place with new hope and purpose - to embody grace in your life so when
others encounter you they too might say that they walked into grace!