More from the vocabulary of faith
Some of you will have read that I have been preaching through a series on the ‘vocabulary of faith’. Last week I was preaching on the subject of ‘death’, and this week on ‘grace‘.
‘Grace’ is one of those words which has grown invisible with familiarity and repetition – like an old painting on the wall. The pictures below used to hang in my grandmother’s house. They depict ancestors of mine about whom I know next to nothing. As children, we took the paintings for granted. Over time, as two coal fires made the pictures slowly disappear, so their stories did too. Now the pictures have gone – to a National Trust collection, and the stories have too. In the sermon, I decided to take people on a walk round a gallery of pictures of grace, before returning to Psalm 145, and making a quick trip to Shiraz in Iran. Not really sure how well the gallery worked, but some may find it helpful to walk through it below…If you are interested to know what happened after that – the whole sermon can be heard here.
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Noah
The playground is forlorn and crumbling. Weeds grow up through the soft tarmac. The swing hangs drunkenly from just one metal chain on the frame. The slide has sticky patches of spilt lager on its once shiny surface. The rocking horse is a pirate horse now – one eye scratched off and a string of missing teeth. The words sprayed on the see-saw are ones no child should see, so the missing handles don’t matter. In the corner one child, just one, is picking litter up from the long grass.‘Noah’ God says, ‘I’ll save Noah’.
Mephibosheth
Rumours were flying about the young King – this young champion with his giant-slaying sling, and his easy manner. As happy with a harp in his arms and a poem on his lips as with a sword in his hand, apparently. Where shreds of the old regime were clinging on, though, they kept their heads down. What if he were to come knocking – paying old debts and mopping up the stains of an old reign? The day they knocked, though – it was with smiles not swords – there was no terror there. Mephibosheth, the former king’s grandson, was carried in their burly arms all the way to the palace – withered legs swaying to and fro with each step. ‘This one’ says David – ‘I’ll bless this one’.
Adulteress?
They hunt as a pack, these men, watching each other’s backs with Masonic zeal. In their eyes a kind of clinical holiness burns, and few dare to question their judgement. Pushing their way through the crowd, they shove their visual aid through the ranks of the inner circle towards the teacher. She stumbles and falls, skirts riding up as she strikes the dusty ground with a flash of thigh and a suppressed yelp of pain. He avoids her eye – catching theirs instead; unmoved by their nine yard stare which crumples everyone else. Doodling something in the earth he invites the sinless one to step forward, pick up a stone, and start the bloodletting. Silence falls. ‘This one’, he says, ‘I forgive this one.’
Peter
The fish are just bones now – scattered by the fire where they were cooked.The early sun which saw them brought ashore has climbed higher, and catches the last wisps of smoke from the cooking fire. Most look full and happy, some slightly stunned and one looks…haunted. He stares out at the lake, but his eyes see another scene. It’s dark where he is looking – and he winces to hear the sound of his own voice a few nights before. ‘Jesus? I don’t know the man. Leave me be’ Jesus will not leave him be, though, and addresses him with a tone he thought he would never hear again: ‘Simon, son of John…’. ‘This one’ he says. ‘I can work with this one’
Church youth club
The tension still hangs in the air, like the electricity after a storm has passed over. The casual observers tread a little more carefully. The quiet ones hug the corners. The noisy ones toss the details to and fro across the group like a carcass passed between hyenas. The culprit is heading home now, cackling with her friends about swearing in the helper’s face and putting her in her place. And what of the helper? Dries her tears, crumples her tissue up with just a little more force than it needs and bows her head in prayer. ‘That one’ she says ‘I’ll pray for that one’.
There are plenty of others, of course.
- Some hang in the church hall where a harsh word is bitten off before it is spoken and listening takes the place of talking
- Some hang in the car park, where an extra minute or three is taken to listen to the story which needs to be told
- Some hang in a home, where cluttered minds and cluttered lives are moved aside to share the cup of communion
- Some hang in a hospital ward where words run out, jobs get left behind, and the silent holding of a hand speaks more than a thousand words
I was taught as a young Christian that grace was simply “God’s undeserved kindness, but it is so much more than that. Properly understood it becomes a good habit –like healthy eating or recycling. Grace is God’s goodness to us – savoured, packed down and recycled into something good for others. Maybe Christians only really know what they mean by grace when they pass it on?
To return to Psalm 145…