Sermon: Grace is Everywhere (March 30, 2014)

Sermon: Grace is Everywhere.

Ephesians 5: 8-14

Today we have heard such a beautiful passage from Ephesians: “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light – for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.” Nothing to add or subtract – it is a complete description of where we are and what journey we have walked through in recent years, together and as friends. Every journey has a call to transformation - spiritual and personal metamorphosis through the changes of light and shadows. It is interesting that light becomes most plainly evident when contrasted with the deepest darkness. We appreciate the ray of light when it is most needed, and we learn by experience that the deepest darkness does not necessarily indicate ‘emptiness’ - it simply means that there is ‘absence’ of the light. We will see everything we treasured and loved again, just as it is, when the light of God graces us.

As we age, and as life around us changes every day, we may feel that too many things are leaving us; we are losing them so fast and sometimes so brutally.  But the reality in God is that nothing has changed. Nothing has changed since the very beginning of the universe and human life on this earth through this very moment, now. When its appointed time comes, a form of life dies, yet the energy and vitality that has made the life brilliant and miraculous and so precious, the creative and ‘creational’ energy of construction and deconstruction, the energy of love that is born of divine blessing, never goes away, never falls extinct. It metamorphosizes … like forsythia. We see forsythia blossoming this month on Vancouver Island – and it is a perennial Korean favourite in the spring. It ‘diffuses’ itself into the vibrating, warm air of spring!, (... even as its flowers fall to the ground below.)

Like forsythia or wisteria, blossoming and releasing its burdens and blessings, a life releases and spreads itself everywhere – into the endlessly deepening and widening web of life -  into the whole universe. So, life itself is never non-existent even if it dies because it metamorphoses everywhere, blessing every creation of our God and vibrating like the energy of Springtime. Like spring, when the dull soil fractures open and reveals tiny sprouts of green rising like a million tiny miracles, life metamorphoses into a phenomenon of everything growing, everything new.

In contemporary theology, Christ is not only thought of as an individual, Jewish man who lived in Palestine 2000 years ago. We also have begun to appreciate the theological meaning of the Cosmic Christ. In this theology, we don’t demarcate between the natural and the spiritual (or supernatural). Christ is ever-present, through the web of relations of all sentient living beings and through the history of all human interactions and connections and relationships, and also through a spiritual realm we cannot ever fathom completely as long as we live here on earth. Christ is with us and through us and connects us with all living beings, as well as the natural and spiritual realms.

When I attended a workshop at the Duncan Hospice Society, the workshop leader addressed the time when people experience their loved one’s death. For many people, losing a loved one makes them feel a great existential anxiety. They ask, “Who will I become?” or “Where I will be?”, or “Where has my loved one gone, and where is he or she now?” Many of those who ask this question don’t claim any belief in a spiritual life or in religion. Yet the sharp realization of their loved one’s absence, the irrevocable fact that their loved one does not exist with them anymore makes them question their assumptions about the structure of the Universe as they ask, “Where is my loved one now?”

We Christians believe that our loved ones are with Christ in life, in death, and in life beyond death because Christ is everywhere, Christ is ever-present, Christ is ever-metamorphosing, Christ is the bridge between our physical life and our spiritual life; He is the link between nature and the supernatural, changing the face of life and the face of the earth forever. Christ is the name for every phenomenon of life, bearing witness of life, death, and resurrection.

This week, when I read through Fran’s on-line blog journal, I understood that Fran knew this truth of Cosmic Christ, as, in her writing, it was so obvious that her faith and belief is that everywhere God is grace and God’s amazing grace is everywhere. Honestly, her use of this particular geophysical concept of ‘everywhere’ touched me very deeply.

Here are two quotes from her journal that I would like to share:

The first one was written on Aug 22, 2012, at 9 am. “I remain grateful to God for the life I have led, for the many surprising gifts in the life I continue to live, for the company of the Holy Spirit, and the company of all of you on this mysterious journey. When I dare to face the enormity of love that exists in this world, I am overwhelmed. No wonder we are all hesitant to accept this Amazing Grace! (Yet) it is everywhere.”

The following quote also shows her exquisite, deep and beautiful spirituality. When she was writing this entry on Mar 10, 2013, she was struggling with shallow breathing and discomfort.

“Spiritually this is a tough place to be, especially when I stand in the place of preaching the Good news! So once again I look the cross, and this is really new in my life. I have always focused on joy and resurrection and Life. But for me right now, it is comforting and encouraging to think of Jesus in that place of horror, taking on the whole of the world’s pain to experience it, out of that iron-clad covenant steadfast love. He was and remains one of us.

I really do believe the whole of the universe is born out of Love, ‘the force that through the green fuse drives the flower’, and how we name that creative power does not really matter. If there is only one Divine Source, God doesn’t particularly care how we name it.”

As we remember our friend and minister, mother and grandmother and wife, Fran, I picked a hymn with the text of Psalm 42 – As the Deer Pants for the Water  - as our response. My hope is that when we sing this song, we can participate not just with our voices and hearts, but with the deepest part of our souls, offering up our spirits to worship our God. Fran had the heartfelt desire to worship our God in community, and with the family of God forever - and so do we. The tune is very familiar but the words are new and so beautiful. Please sing from your heart, loving and tasting the words for your own soul. As today’s reading tells us, may Christ shine upon Fran and every one of us here and upon everyone we remember. Amen.