Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, September 26, 2021, at 8:00 & 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher
Amazing Grace!
“Grant us the fullness of your grace…that we may be partakers of your heavenly treasure.” (Collect, Proper 21)
The prayer this morning asks for the fullness of God’s grace. This request may seem at first blush presumptuous. Do we dare ask, or even hope, for the fullness of God’s grace? Assuming we even know what this is, are we worthy of receiving so much bounty? Many, if not most of us, think less highly of ourselves than we ought and certainly believe that God does not view us as worthy of great honor or praise. Receiving God’s grace is what opens the door to partake of God’s heavenly treasure. Again, we may not even be sure of what such treasure consists, but we are pretty darned sure that we don’t deserve it. But the writer of this collect evidently thinks to.
There is a candy store in the Lower East Side of Manhattan called Economy Candy; and when you go inside, you’re sure you’ve died and gone to heaven. Candy aisles stretch from the front to the back of the store, with shelves that reach to the ceiling. Every kind of commercial candy you’ve ever heard of is there, plus candies from around the world as well as the store’s own brands. It isn’t healthy to spend more than ten or fifteen minutes in such a place, for there is the danger of a diabetes attack or hyperglycemia—from just looking and thinking about all those delectable sweets.
Now, imagine our life like this. Is it an exaggeration to view your life as so dripping with the love and beauty of God? The only thing that keeps us from this realization is that our eyes are clouded from the dazzlement being so every-day and ordinary. Our ears do not hear the sweet music of God’s presence in every beat of our heart and every sound in the spaces we walk in.
Gerard Manley Hopkins was a nineteenth-century English poet and Jesuit priest, and I love the opening lines of one of his famous poems:
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed….
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lies the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghose over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Everything is holy; all things shine with God’s presence and love, and all is here just for you and me. How do we know this? Open your eyes and look around. Who else is looking? It is you who are looking, and it is you who is receiving, this flood of images, sounds and smells. Let it all in. It is the heavenly treasure flooding your senses, filling your experience.
Last Sunday for our gradual hymn we sang a hymn that really dazzled me. Did it you?
It reads:
1 God is Love: let heav’n adore him;
God is Love: let earth rejoice;
let creation sing before him,
and exalt him with one voice.
He who laid the earth’s foundation,
he who spread the heav’ns above,
he who breathes through all creation,
he is Love, eternal Love.
2 God is Love: and he enfoldeth
all the world in one embrace;
with unfailing grasp he holdeth
every child of every race.
And when human hearts are breaking
under sorrow’s iron rod,
then they find that selfsame aching
deep within the heart of God.
3 God is Love: and though with blindness
sin afflicts the souls of all,
God’s eternal loving-kindness
holds and guides us when we fall.
Sin and death and hell shall never
o’er us final triumph gain;
God is Love, so Love for ever
o’er the universe must reign.
What is so charming—and challenging—about these lovely words is that it affirms with no hesitation that God’s love enfoldeth the world in one embrace. If we consider this picture, and I urge you to do so now, then there is no person, no place and no time when this embrace is absent. It is here now but for our reluctance in seeing it. As the poet Kabir writes, “The Lord is in me, and the Lord is in you, as life is hidden in every seed. So, quash your pride, my friend, and look for him within you.”
This is no gleefully pleasant Mary Poppins affirmation. The hymn sings, “And when human hearts are breaking under sorrow’s iron rod, then they find that selfsame aching deep within the heart of God.”
God’s embrace never releases us. When we ache, God aches. The deepest sorrows are known and felt and experienced by God, because he holds us during such times, perhaps closer than ever.
The Christian story is about presence. The treasure lies at our feet in just being alive. It can be so intoxicating that we might question if we are in a dream or if life may not be a mirage. You know and have experienced how wonderful it is when a friend is just sitting with you in times of celebration or heartache. We experience this presence in worship as we celebrate together as a family, drink coffee together as a family. These are hints, foretastes, images that express the presence of God with us, beside us, in us at all times and in all places. This, then, is the fullness of grace we were at the beginning reluctant to recognize or accept, feeling perhaps that we were not worthy. But we must be worthy, because (guess what?) these riches are right here at our feet.
So, what do we do in order to unveil and intensify this presence I speak of? My guess is that the less we ponder what to do the better. Just be present! Being present is our natural state. If you have to think about it, you are shifting away, however slightly, from this presence.
Quiz question: what’s the best gift we can give one another? The answer: presence!
How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven
No ear may hear His coming
But in this world of sin
Where meek souls will receive him still
The dear Christ enters in
O come to us, abide with us
Our Lord Emmanuel
Amen.