Though I was not in the country when it happened, I was informed that our commander in chief sang a verse of that quintessential hymn shared across so many religions at the funeral of those who were so tragically killed as they worshiped that Sunday morning in their church – Amazing Grace… Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me… We have all sung it. We have all tried to let those words be the truth about who we are. Yet, how often, after singing that, do I revert back to living my walk of faith as if it all depended upon me? As if it is all about how good I am and how faithful I am, and in a way that says that grace has very little to do with how I live. Is grace really enough? Do I truly let it be really enough for me?
I was able to visit Dave and Ann Larson Friday night. So if there is good news to report about his ALS, is that he now has a piece of equipment that allows him to type and then ‘speak’ with his eyes. The computer tracks his eye movements as he looks at a screen, and then when his eyes stop on a letter, it ‘chooses’ that letter. Once done “typing” he looks at another icon that tells the computer to ‘speak out loud’ what he has typed with his eyes. It is amazing technology, and has re-opened channels of communication without someone having to hold a card with an alphabet on it and go line by line, letter by letter. That is the good news.
For everything else now, he is completely dependent on those around him. Talk about a “thorn in the flesh.” And yet, there is no ‘pity me’ in his eyes – just that same gentle humor and great courage that has been his response to the disease since day one. He has learned, and continues to learn, in ways that most of us hope we never have to, that God’s grace, mediated through family and friends and now even through technology – is still enough for him…
Is grace enough? Paul, that great spokesman for God, bold missionary to the gentiles, the mind and personality that would write over half of the New Testament, struggled with grace being enough. By his own admission, he wrestled with that “thorn in the flesh” – that temptation to do everything on his own without having to rely upon God. He was smart enough and gifted enough to pull it off. Except, fortunately for him and for us, in that one area. We don’t know WHAT that ‘thorn’ was, only that it was an area in his life where, no matter how smart or holy or prayerful or skilled, he could not get through this on his own.
But here is what we do know. After trying again and again to do just that – to get by on his own strength and merits – to not have to rely upon anyone but himself, Paul prays himself to a different place. It is a place where only Jesus matters – a place where only GRACE matters, where he is able to completely surrender all of his life and his struggles into the hands of God. In that moment, grace becomes enough. It becomes enough to allow him to meet every insult, every hardship, every persecution and every calamity. “Grace is indeed enough!” St. Paul shouts to us in that second reading.
Do we trust that? Deep down in your bones, are you and I able to sing full throatedly and full heartedly that song that President Obama led at that funeral service? Can you sing that refrain with your lives when, like my friend Dave, you are dependent upon everyone one else for everything?
This week – do a ‘President Obama’ and sing, if you can, (read if you must) those words about the Amazing Grace that surrounds us all, and let that grace become the source of your life and love and ministry. Then, like St. Paul, like my friend Dave, like so many throughout the ages of the church, may YOU discover that grace is indeed, always enough!