Grace upon grace – 12 December 2014

This Sunday the Gospel takes a short excursion from Mark’s Gospel to John, in order to have Advent blessed once again with these sublime words:

From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God.  God’s only Son, close to the Father’s heart, he has made him known.   [John 1:16-18]

Last week the gospel reading announced good news – and the good news could scarcely have been more momentous.  It was nothing less than a radical shift in our understanding and encounter with God.  John dwells on exactly that contrast here.  The law was given through Moses -- grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  It is not that the law is set aside as though it is now abolished.  Law and behaviour matter as always.  God however judges us not by the law but by love, by grace and truth.  We know this, because grace and truth are what we encounter in Christ.  They are what we encounter when in silence and stillness we cease our attempts to justify ourselves.  And grace and truth are what we encounter in other people who open themselves to God. 

Grace, the lovely Greek word χαρις, usually goes with truth, as though they are twins.  After the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa they needed some serious justice mechanism to deal with the monstrous crimes of the past.  Under leaders such as Desmond Tutu they constituted the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  This was never perfect, and is still criticised by some, but it has remained a remarkable exercise in grace and truth.  The principle was, if you told the truth about all you had done, and heard the truth and accepted it from your accusers, then, knowing the truth, you might petition to be free of the legal consequences of the past in an act of grace.  Month after month, at immense cost to themselves, the commission heard these testimonies.  Truth and grace went together, belonged together, depended on each other. 

So John can write:  From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.  It is as though God has nothing other to give but grace – love independent of merit or worth.  “Fullness” is a special word in Greek which scholars go on and on about.  It reminds me however of the now frequently heard colloquialism, “like”…  I was like, O my god!  It denotes that everything in me was just that and nothing else.  We can borrow this colloquial adverb – God is like…grace upon grace. 

John goes on to write:  No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.  God is absent from our sight.  The best and primary view of God we have is Jesus.  John informs us, Jesus is close to the Father’s heart… he has made God known.  “I learn of God from nature,” announced the formidable chair-woman of a Garden Club, informing me where true revelation was to be found.  She knew how to fertilise her petunias.  I thought of Tennyson, and of nature “red in tooth and claw”, nature often just as beautiful as she sees, but just as often devouring its young, destroying cities and villages, growing malignant viruses… 

It is Jesus who draws aside the veil.  The view we get is partial, tantalising, perhaps.  But we do see the way to walk, the path to follow.  And to stop, be still and silent, is to check that we are once again, still, on that path.

Good news – 5 December 2014

This year the emphasis in the gospel readings shifts to Mark, probably the earliest of the NT Gospels.  And this Sunday, Advent II, we get the opening words in Mark:  The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ…  In Greek, ευαγγελια – it is colloquial Greek and it means simply that, good news, not primarily religious good news… any good news.  John the Baptist announces this good news.  He appears, not at the holy temple, but in the desert; not as one of the respectable in religion, but somewhat suspect and embarrassing: 

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” [Mark 1:4-8]

This good news tells of a fundamental shift in our understanding of God, faith and life and what we have to do.  It is so startling and unexpected that some sectors of the church perennially struggle to grasp it, and revert to the old more familiar ways instead.  Once again I need some help from Rowan Williams, who puts this in words I would not have been able to assemble.  He wrote:

A human being is holy, not because he or she triumphs by willpower over chaos and guilt and now leads a flawless life, but because that life is showing the victory of God’s faithfulness in the midst of disorder and imperfection.  The church is holy, not because it is a gathering of the good and the well-behaved, but because it is speaking of the triumph of grace in the coming together of strangers and sinners who, miraculously, trust one another enough to join in common repentance and common praise – to express a deep and elusive unity in Jesus Christ. 

That is the shift and that is the good news – it is about God, not about us or our behaviour.  Jesus is good news because he embodies God who actually loves what he has made, whose love is, as St Paul put it, unfailing, who brings enemies together and heals memories.  That is the good news, that God is not and never was our adversary. 

But we are conditioned to think in good and bad terms, categorising, struggling through the years to be better, to do better, as we think.  We are conditioned to assume we can hardly receive what we are not good enough for.  All of the rest of our life is about qualifying or not, deserving or not, achieving or not, winning acceptance and approval…  In contemplative life and prayer this is set aside because (if I may be so presumptuous) it is extremely boring to God.  The good news is that the transforming power is the Holy Spirit, the power of God in grace and mercy, peace and love.  What is asked of us is our humble consent.