In the Christian Church we tell a story … it is a story that is familiar and with a cast of characters that we know very well – men and women with familiar names that we have known since our childhood in Sunday School when we began to hear about their lives and adventures and the things that they did.
It is a story that seeks to teach us about life, faith and what it is that we are to do and to be about as we live and breath and move through our days.
It is a familiar story that we can almost recite from memory. Yet, even after 50, 70 or 90 years of telling and retelling it, there are still new lessons to learn and new insights to be had, because it is not a static story from the past, but rather is a story that ebbs and flows with events and happenings in the world, and most importantly, it is a story that is entirely dependent upon our relationship with God, to be understood, and to be told …
Our story – the one that brings us here – is ultimately the story of how God repeatedly connects with people – with us – and repeatedly shows boundless and limitless love and grace for us and to us … our story is the one that tells us that the Resurrection is real, and that its evidence and proof is found ALL around us every day.
But, what do we do with this story? And more importantly, does it really matter any more?
This past week, I’ve gotten back to reading – something I haven’t been able to do much of in the last couple of month … and what I ended up reading was a book on preaching, and the next book by Canadian writer, minister, musician and social activist Time Hufff, who has previously written “Bent Hope” about his life and ministry on the downtown streets of Canadian urban centres.
While the books seem somewhat divergent in their themes, as I read them in the wake of Easter, and reflected on our Scripture Readings today I stumbled across a theme that united them and that helps to challenge and motivate us as a community, while we gather to break bread and pour out the cup.
The theme is the centrality of Grace in the life and work that we share together in faith.
We talk about grace regularly in the Church, we even sing about it at times … and yet, we seldom really think about the implications of this gift. It is simply part of the milieu in which we live and breath as people and as members of this thing we call Church.
Yet, Grace is central to all that we do and all that we are as Church. Without Grace, we have no reason to gather, and no theology to live and to share.
Grace is what defines us, unites us, and motivates us. Grace is God’s love expressed and shared with all.
Without grace, there is no church.
And yet, how much thought do we EVER give to grace, or where we encounter it in our lives?
Therein lies the problem, or the challenge with our story as a Church – we seldom think about what it is that we believe and that we embody, and we are even less inclined to do anything with it … and that is where the two books I’ve been reading this past week intersect … the book on preaching stresses the importance of preaching and proclaiming the importance and centrality of Grace to the world, while Tim Huff’s book “Dancing with Dynamite” celebrates the presence of Grace in the most unexpected of places and in the most unlikely of moments …
One story Huff tells struck me as an apt story to be recounted as we stand on the other side of Easter and wonder what to make of the Resurrection.
The story Tim tells is of a young man he met on the streets named Bronty. Bronty was tough and hard – the kind of tough and hard that one finds on the streets where survival of the fittest is taken to a whole new level.
Bronty was pierced and tattooed, and his clothes were covered in spikes and studs and deep dark imagery of skulls and death and so on. He was a young man of the streets, and was clearly using his tough monster like persona in an attempt to find a place of safety in a neighbourhood populated with a myriad of other monsters. Bronty was trying, and succeeding in out toughing the street toughs around him.
Tim notes that he spent months trying to break through Bronty’s tough exterior, and to learn more about the young man who lurked within. His breakthrough came when Tim started asking him about the patches and imagery that peppered Bronty’s clothing. Tim describes Bronty’s uniform as: “an impressive montage of ghoulish favour, but for one glaring exception – the item that Bronty would not leave behind in his scramble to leave home forever …”
Tim opened his chapter on Bronty by musing about what we would take with us if we had ONLY two minutes to move through our homes before abandoning it forever … what items would we tuck in our pockets, or our bags and take KNOWING that we could never come back, and knowing that we had only two minutes …
In Bronty’s case it was a tiny yellow smily face patch that said in black lettering around it’s edges “God made me special” … in the midst of patches and pictures of skulls, and demons and death and all the darkness was a single fabric patch that in bright yellow proclaimed the contradictory message – “God made me special” in the life of this troubled young soul.
“what’s the story about this one?” Tim finally asked one day …the answer was not easily forthcoming … Bronty tried to avoid answering him … hostility filled the air … yet Tim persisted, and managed to tease out the story of the little yellow patch that began with the words – “there was this little old lady …”
What followed was a story about Bronty attending a Bible Camp at a local church where each day ended with this little old lady named Grandma Lu would come and sit on a chair as each child left the camp and she would give them a small gift and take a moment to tell each of these children by name – “God made you special.”
“Bronty, God made you special …” Grandma Lu said one Friday afternoon as she placed a small yellow patch in his hand …
And years later, that small yellow patch was hanging, guarded and protected amidst ALL the other dark imagery that Bronty could muster … a glimmer of grace in a troubled and pain-filled world … Tim ends his story by saying that three years and two prison stints later Bronty tracked him down to tell him that he was starting over in his life, and the ONLY patch he was carrying as a small yellow patch that with a bold smiling face proclaimed the reminder – “God made you special”.
The essence of Tim’s story is grace …the grace that tells a tough street thug that he is special … the grace that motivates a ‘little old lady’ to sit day after day on the front steps of her church and tell each of the children leaving the summer Bible camp that they are special … the grace that persists in the midst of darkness reminding ALL of us that when we least expect it – in the most unlikely of places, we WILL encounter it, and we WILL be transformed.
Grace is the story we have to share, and that we are to celebrate, and fortunately, sometimes the most startling moments of Grace come in the most unexpected of places … our calling as a people of faith is to go out into the world and share the bounty of Grace in all that do …
May it be so – thanks be to God … Let us pray …
No comments:
Post a Comment