Bitter Grace

Easter 4, Yr. B, April 29, 2012

Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18

Sermon preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church

                        A month or so ago I attended an Education for Ministry (EfM) mentor training near Canadaigua.  Everyone who attended was from our diocese, but we weren’t all well acquainted.  At our first gathering together, the facilitator had us do an exercise that asked us to write our names on a large piece of newsprint.  Beside our name, we were asked to write what it meant.  Now, I know what my name means because I’ve looked it up on occasion.  In particular, I remember doing that when we were thinking about what to name our daughter.  The name we chose mattered, and perhaps for the first time, I thought that the meaning of my name mattered too. 

            My name, Mary Ann, means bitter grace.  I thought about that fact a lot, when I was a chaplain at Strong.  I was the chaplain in the Neonatal ICU during the year I was a resident there.  In that unit, I often got to know patients and families well, because stays were typically long.  One mother I got to know had a little boy who had a particularly troubled start.  For several weeks, we didn’t know if he was going to live or die.  He’d be content in his little isolet, and then suddenly stop breathing, or have an erratic heartbeat … doctors would rush in, and nurses would move us out of the way.  We’d wait anxiously for long minutes as they worked. 

He always pulled through.  Finally, he seemed to reach a more stable status quo.  They removed his breathing tube.  He was moved out of the isolet.  His ups and downs weren’t as steep and terrifying.

            Then one morning while doing rounds on another unit, I heard my name being paged over the loud speaker throughout the hospital … calling me to the NICU.  When I got there, this mother was hysterically crying over her son as the medical team was trying to find space to work on him.  The boy’s grandfather was standing not far away holding a book in his hand.  He had been reading to his grandson when the event began, one of Hannah’s favorites at the time, entitled Guess How Much I Love You.  I bit my lip as I saw the title.  It hit a little too close to home.  What was happening here?  Did they know who they had called to be with this family?  Did they understand that they had called … bitter grace?  What could anyone do to help this woman and her child? 

            I walked over to the table, and called the mother’s name to get her attention.  Her terrified eyes locked on mine.  I said, “I don’t know how this is going to turn out … but we will get through this together.  We will be with you.  We will help you.  God has not abandoned your son, or you, or your husband.  God is with us … even now.”  I don’t know if I was speaking more to her or to myself.  Bitter grace for sure, but grace even so … grace enough to move her out of the way so that the doctors could work.  Names are powerful.   

            In the reading from Acts Peter is testifying before the Sanhedrin, the religious high court.  Peter received his name from Jesus … a name that means rock.  Remember also that this “rock” pledged to follow Jesus to the death … and then denied him three times while Jesus was being tortured and tried.  Then Jesus was crucified and buried, and his body disappeared from the tomb.  That wasn’t the end.  Jesus appeared to the disciples after his death when they were hiding in the upper room.  He offered his hands and feet, and the wound in his side, for them to touch.  In Jesus the disciples encountered the resurrection.  In his proclamation of peace they realized the power of redemption.  That experience became the foundation of Peter’s faith.  In that truth, Peter became the rock that Jesus knew him to be. 

We see it in today’s passage too.  Peter stands courageously before those who judge him.  Instead of denying Jesus, this time he proclaims Jesus.  He takes the accusations against him and refocuses the conversation.  The high priests are concerned about power, but Peter reminds them that a good deed has been done, a mitzvah.  Healing has happened here, and that healing has come through the name of Jesus.  Not by magic or trickery … but by God … through the name of the one who these same leaders had rejected. 

    Through baptism, we become adopted children of God.  We accept the truth of the resurrection … however we believe that to have occurred.  We are named Christians.  We seek to form our lives in such a way as to make a home for Jesus within us, so that others see Christ though our actions.  We begin a lifetime of living into that name … associating ourselves with the name of Jesus.  That’s not always easy to do.

On Friday, a woman stopped by our church.  She knocked on our door.  She asked me for $10 for gas money.  She said that her father had died and he was at a funeral home out in Sodus.  She didn’t have the gas to get out there and back.  Did I have any money I could give her.  She attends the AA meeting in our building and no one there could give her any money.  She took me to her car and showed me that her gas gage was near empty.  She knew she wouldn’t make it on what she had.  We talked a little about gas mileage and the price of a gallon of gas.  Was she telling me the truth?  Maybe, maybe not. 

I guess I could have asked for her father’s name and the name of the funeral home in Sodus.  I could have gone inside and called the funeral home and checked it out.  But it was only ten dollars, and it was going to be my ten dollars.  I told her I’d see what I had.  I came back with six dollars, what I had in my wallet.  She asked if anyone inside might have more.  “Six dollars … I won’t have enough gas to get home.”  She was probably right.  Bitter grace, what do you do?  I went back inside and asked those there if they had a buck or two to throw in the pot.  We came up with four more dollars, and I gave it to our visitor.  She gave me a BIG hug, and climbed in her car.

I went back inside.  As she drove away, someone looked out the window and saw her turn right down Thordale Terrace.  “The closest gas station is the other way.  Where is she going?”  Where was she going?  I didn’t know for sure, but wherever it was we were helping her to get there.  If Christ abides in us, we choose mercy over judgment.  We choose compassion over recrimination.  It’s easy for me to get jaded sometimes because I know people can take advantage of me, and of us.  People expect churches to give things away freely, and St. Stephen’s does.  We give a lot to the community through our building and through our ministries.  Last week at our Sunday supper, I had four different people thank me for all that St. Stephen’s does for this community.  People in this neighborhood may not flock to our church services on Sunday morning, but they know our name.  They know things happen here.  They know we care.  Our life here reveals Christ.  Jesus gave us one commandment, 1 John says, to believe in the name of Jesus and to love one another.

  We’re really all in this together, brothers and sisters in Christ.  Paul is very clear in his letter to the Romans that God has not abandoned the Jews, that all nations will be brought into the promise of resurrection and life everlasting.  The name of Jesus has power in it for any who believe in him.  Michael Hopkins told us that Verna Dozier, a wonderful lay leader, was once asked whether she believed in hell.  She said, “No.  I think everyone will go to heaven, and some people won’t like it there.  I may be one of them!”  God spreads a table before us in the presence of those who trouble us.  We’ll all be there looking at one another across that table.  We might as well get on with learning how to get along with one another while we’re here on earth, my friend Pastor Norm Roberts tells me.  I think he’s right.  Trusting in the name of Jesus, we can learn to trust some new names and learn how to live into our own.

That little boy in the NICU died that day.  I stayed with the family while they washed him and rubbed his skin with oil.  I watched as they dressed him for the first time without having to navigate around some tube or wire.  His life was short, a bitter pill to swallow, but it was filled with grace.  We called on God more times than I can remember.  His mother said she wouldn’t have given up those months for anything.  “He knew me”, she said.  “He knew he was loved.  That’s what really matters.”  

Amen.