“Jesus and his disciples went into Capernaum; and when the Sabbath came, he entered the temple and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”
Yesterday, as I sat with 100 other people at St. Thomas Church listening to the Rev. Paul Edwards teach us about grace, I understood more clearly than ever before what it means to teach as one having authority and not as the scribes. From all accounts, the scribes of Jesus’ day were the creators, keepers and interpreters of documents. They were part of a learned class of people whose service ranged from secretaries who copied documents to government officials who administered the laws of the land. As keepers and interpreters of the Law, they were an integral part of the infrastructure of Jewish society. They were guardians of tradition and order, with a scroll for every topic, a prescription for every situation, an answer for every question. Their teaching was a careful recounting of the information they had gleaned over the years—information that had been passed down through the decades from scribe to scribe. I imagine the people knew exactly what to expect when the scribes were teaching in the temple, and I imagine they were rarely surprised or disappointed.
And then Jesus comes into the temple, and everything shifts. He teaches in a different way. His teaching is not about the law or the traditions of the faith. His teaching is about grace. His teaching comes from being in relationship with God—not from doing a list of things. He teaches with authority because he knows God. His teaching throughout the Gospels makes it clear that we are called to know God—not to know about God. At the conference yesterday, we experienced teaching with the authority that comes from bone-deep knowledge. I don’t think anyone left the conference with any doubt that Paul Edwards knows God.
The conference Paul gave us yesterday was called Church without Walls. I’m fairly sure that many people arrived with the expectation that they would learn some new strategies to re-think the way we do church. As the day progressed, it was very clear that the title had nothing to do with the walls we build around our worship, our fellowship and our spaces and everything to do with the walls we build around our hearts.
I wish that you all had been at the conference, because it’s impossible for me to show you everything that Paul showed us. I wish you all had been there, because yesterday was my second experience of his teaching, and I know what a difference it’s made in my life. Last February, our bishop brought Paul to lead a retreat for the Standing Committee and Board of Trustees of the diocese. Bishop Mary has known Paul since she first attended his church more than 20 years ago, and her spirituality is based in the understanding of grace that she found in his teaching. Thanks to the bishop and to Paul Edwards, I’ve learned that grace is about “how” not “what”. I’m beginning to learn how to move consciously into God’s grace, and I’d like to share a little bit of it with you this morning.
There are three central principles related to this understanding of God’s grace. The first is that it’s always there. It’s always here. It’s always available to us. Grace abides in us. Whether we abide in grace is another thing entirely. Sometimes we don’t know that we’re out, but we almost always know when we’re in. The other two principles are rational thought and conscious wondering. Rational thought sees the external physical. Rational thought is the place where we tend to live, but it’s not where grace is to be found. If you’ve ever tried to describe to another person a moment when you’ve experienced the presence of God, you know that words aren’t really up to the job. Words are tools of the rational mind. They do not connect us to grace. The link between rational thought and grace is conscious wonder. Conscious wonder senses the internal spiritual grace. We’ve talked a lot about wonder in the last year. I’ve noticed that when we wonder together, interesting things happen. When we wonder together, I don’t hear much about why we can’t do something. When we wonder together, a sense of excitement builds in our midst and good stuff bubbles into our awareness. When we wonder together, we are floating in God’s grace, and marvelous things happen.
We think with our heads and wonder with our hearts. Conscious wonder opens the heart. It’s not rational. It’s not learned by studying. It’s discovered by doing. And the more we do it, the more we’re able to abide in the grace that lives in each of us. So, how do we do it? First we have to know the difference between “how” and “what”. Abiding in the grace is not about the things we do. As Paul says, we can pray prayers and not pray. We can sing praise hymns and not praise. We can take communion and not be in communion. We can go on retreats and not get anything out of them. Any of these things ever happen with anyone here? So, if doing things doesn’t make it happen, how can we move into grace? There’s only one way—to open our hearts. To move out of our rational thinking and into our conscious wondering.
I’ll give you an example of how that works. Earlier this week, something happened that didn’t meet my expectation. I was zero to 60 in about 10 seconds. I immediately started thinking of all the things that would happen downstream to this event and almost as quickly started thinking about alternative actions. My mind was a jumble of stuff. I was concerned, I was worried, I was growing angrier. Finally—after about seven minutes—I noticed what was happening in me. I noticed how very far “out” of grace I was. That moment was the turning point for me, and I walked away to find space to move out of my head and into my heart. To move out of chaos and into God’s grace. It took a few moments, but the grace was there, and my breathing led me to it. Being in conscious wonder and rational thinking are not mutually exclusive, thanks be to God. When I was grounded in grace again, I was able to think creatively about ways to deal with the event I had let knock me out of center—the event I had let knock me out of grace.
Being in grace doesn’t mean that all goes well. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t any problems or that there will be magical solutions. It’s not about putting on a happy face and ignoring what’s going on around us. It’s about being with the God who loves us, with the Christ who leads us and the Spirit who gives us new life. God’s grace is the gift that’s freely offered to us and always abides in each of us. All we have to do is say yes.
Thanks be to God.