All is Grace: A Harvest Homily

Joel 2.21-27 God pours down abundance upon you

1 Timothy 6.6-10 The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil

Matthew 6.25-33 Your heavenly Father knows all your needs, but seek first the kingdom of God

 

 

 

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‘Grace’ is the word we Christians use to account for the gift of God, that God bestows on us, simply by being God.

 

That sounds both quite simple and quite dense all at the same time; and it’s a really important basic of Christianity.

 

God gives of Godself.

 

Grace means ‘gift’: freely given; unmerited; unearned.

 

Out of nothing God brought the creation into being.

 

Out of nothing he brought you and me into being.

 

That’s grace in action.

 

The sun and moon, the stars, the wind, the mountains and hills, trees, seas creatures, birds of the air and cattle, me and you – none of us did anything that deserved to be created, and none of us can be fulfilled any more than to praise and magnify our Maker eternally.

 

With all the elements of creation we are creatures, albeit - as we shall see – we are creatures bestowed with a responsibility and capacity to respond to grace.

 

This sense of the graced nature of the creation and our lives is captured by St Paul when he says:

 

we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of the world. (1 Timothy 6.7)

 

They’re words used at a funeral service, and perhaps really should be uttered at a birth.

 

We brought nothing in, we take nothing out: all is grace.

 

Actually, these words are for every single day.

 

It’s no use saying thank you for the gift of life, of food, of clothing annually and neglect to say it daily.

 

That is why I am such an advocate of the practice of saying ‘grace’, as it is known, before meals: in that way we hallow the gift we receive ultimately from the abundance of God’s creation.

 

Saying ‘grace’ acknowledges that all that sustains body and soul is [God’s] grace.

 

But grace can be dis-graced.

 

A graceful life - a life full of grace - is a life lived open to the prompting and gift of God, it is a life which the Christian aims for, being so at one with God, in Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, that all that we think and speak and do is animated by Him.

 

A dis-graceful life - a life evacuated of grace - is a life shut down to the prompting and gift of God, it is an unrighteous life, that rejects grace, rejects the gift of God, and seeks other routes to contentment: money and power and prestige being the obvious ways.

 

St Paul nails it again, from our second reading:

 

…those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. (1 Timothy 6.9,10)

 

So, a driven pursuit of wealth, power and prestige is dis-graceful and leads not to contentment but to ‘many pains’.

 

The call of the scriptures is to graceful, full of grace, lives; lives that are contented.

 

The full of grace life knows its dependence on God.

 

This is the life of a saint.

 

The Archangel addresses the Blessed Virgin Mary in a Greek phrase hard to translate but is best rendered “filled with grace”, “created by grace”, “full of grace” (Luke 1.28).

 

St Stephen, the first Christian martyr, is described as being ‘full of grace and power’ (Acts of the Apostles 6.8)

 

And all this comes from Jesus Christ who is, in the words of St John’s Gospel, ‘full of grace and truth’ (John 1.14) and that from his abundance ‘we have all received, grace upon grace’.

 

The saintly life which, frankly, we are all called to, otherwise you might as well go home now, is one that is grace-ful and grateful.

 

The life of the saint is a life that fixes first on God’s life and grace, in other words on the kingdom of God.

 

It is a graceful life that Jesus describes in today’s gospel, a life that lives non-anxiously, but lives thankfully.

 

And it seems our fellow creatures are somewhat better at doing this than we are.

 

Consider, says Jesus, the birds of the air or the lilies of the field.

 

The birds don’t stockpile and, ironically, they don’t even have a ‘nest egg’; but they are fed and are sustained.

 

The lilies of the field, with their surpassing beauty, don’t angst in the mirror, or on social media, about how they look; but they are simply beautiful.

 

Seeking first the kingdom of God, and putting aside our worries, cares and concerns, even about things we think are so important, is the start of the graceful life, or perhaps the recovery of it.

 

The time we live really graceful lives is when we know our need for grace, or even more just live in grace.

 

The infant at her mother’s breast has no concept of worrying about what to eat or drink or about being clothed.

 

Likewise, the person with dementia or with Down’s Syndrome, who accepts care and feeding, without asking for it or seeking it, lives close alongside grace.

 

Isn’t it telling that our culture is so scared of both the dependent infant and frail adult.

 

We have become so dis-gracefully nihilistic that we can’t savour the gifts we have, but resort to a destructive path that shuts God, our creator, out of the picture.

 

Little wonder that inconvenient lives are valued less than ones that appear rich, successful, powerful, prestigious.

 

How contrary to the Gospel is that?

 

Let’s go back to grace.

 

The most beautiful human life, is a life responding to grace.

 

It is a life of gratitude that knows it’s dependence and that offers all it has back to its creator ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’.