Prop 10b.06                                                           July 16, 2006

One of my wisdom teachers
        is a Waffle House waitress.
Her life is a challenge – hard work , low pay,
        no life partner.

She has one son serving in Iraq.
I don’t know what became of her other son & his wife,
        but our waitress is raising their child.

She lives in a rough neighborhood,
        in a bad house, and drives a rattle-y old car.
But when I ask her how she is each morning,
        she says things like,

        “I’m blessed.” or

        “Oh the Lord blessed me this morning.
                 I woke up.” or

        “Well, I’m on the right side of the dirt,
                 so there’s hope.”

She could be saying those things with a bitter irony.
But she isn’t. She means it.
And she isn’t just saying what she thinks
        she’s supposed to say.
She really does mean it.

She is completely aware that things are hard,
        but in the middle of life’s hardness,
                 she’s still aware of being blessed;
        and she is determined to live
                 into the blessing.

She’s about 40% happy
        and 60% determined to pay attention
                 to whatever there is to be happy about.
If it weren’t for the 60% determination,
        she wouldn’t have the 40% happiness.

Our Epistle lesson is a poem
        celebrating the blessings God has already given us
        and the blessings God has planned for us.
The author writes about God who has,

        “blessed us with every spiritual blessing . . . .
        He chose us in Christ,” Ephesians says, “to be holy . . . .
        He destined us for adoption as his children . . . .
        In him we have redemption . . .
                according to the riches of his grace
                that he lavished on us. . . .”

The core of the Christian message is this gospel, this good news,
        this message is about our relationship with God.
The good news is that God has taken decisive action
        for our good.
That we are, at the deepest level, blessed.
At the deepest level, we are alright.
Our happiness is already secured.
And our destiny is joy.

The basic posture of the Christian faith
         isn’t groveling in fear
         or pouring ashes on our heads
                 about how unworthy we are.

The basic posture of the Christian faith
         is lifting our heads and our hands
         in praise and thanksgiving to God

                 – the heart of the universe and source of our being –
                 for having, as Ephesians puts it,

                 “lavished on us the riches of his grace.”

We don’t come to this attitude of praise and thanksgiving
         by moral and existential accounting.
We don’t discover deep joy by counting our blessings.

Moral and existential accounting is an attempt
        to pull ourselves up from despair with a balance sheet

        – to remember all the good things going on
                  in hopes they will outweigh the bad things
                  and prove life is, on the whole, good

        – or that our virtues outweigh our vices
                  by some slight measure,
                  so that we are, on the whole, good.

Moral and existential accounting isn’t wrong.
It is helpful to remember the good things
        so we can appreciate them.
It is a helpful to remember our positive qualities
        so we can enjoy being who we are.

But the deep, basic blessedness,
        the ultimate joy of the gospel
        isn’t found on a balance sheet.
It is seeing ourselves in the eyes of God.

Ephesians says God has lavished on us the riches of his grace,
        that we have been adopted as children of this God,
        and that we are, in God, made whole.
That we are loved, and valued, forgiven and redeemed,
        by this God who is the very heart of reality,
        the very life of the universe,
        the Alpha and the Omega, the suchness of all things.

Under all the up and downs,
        the shifts and drifts of daily life,
                 we are ok.
We are flourishing.
Our destiny is in the hands of God
        who cherishes us as his own.

Life is decidedly hard.
And one of the ways of bracing ourselves
        for the rough patches
        is an attitude of grim despair.
Expecting the worst protects us from disappointment.
So discovering grace comes as a bit of a shock.
C. S. Lewis had been writing Christian essays
        for years and was England’s leading voice
                   proclaiming the Christian faith.
But it was later in life when he discovered
        how happy grace can be.
That’s when he wrote his book, Surprised By Joy.

It is a surprise.
We lay out life plans for ourselves

          – maybe consciously and explicitly

          – maybe unconsciously and implicitly.

Worldly life plans have one of two basic tenors

          – gloom and anxiety.
Gloom if we think it’s hopeless.
Anxiety if we have a fantasy that if everything goes
          according to plan, we might be happy.

But God surprises us with joy
         when the plans totally fall apart
         and we discover that the sun still comes up,
         the birds still sing, that life is still liveable.
Our situation is still workable.
And at the basis of it all,
         we are still loved and valued
                   by the heart of the universe.

Ancient Christianity was a celebration of that grace.
It was a commitment to live into the that grace
         and out of that grace.
In the Middle Ages, Christianity got grim.
And the Protestant Reformation
         didn’t do much to cheer it up
         with all its talk about “the total depravity of man”
                 and the “wrath of God.”

Christianity has been so grim
         that people have turned to New Age cults
                 to hear a little good news.
And they are right.
If we aren’t going to proclaim the gospel
        that God has made us children of the divine nature
                and destined us for joy,
                          then somebody has to do it.

Jesus said, if the people didn’t shout “hosanna”
        the rocks would have to do it.
So if the Christians aren’t going to celebrate the love of God,
        the secularist will change God’s name
                and do it for us.

But if we are to be true to our faith,
        if we are to continue the Ancient Christian tradition,
        we need to remember what the earliest Christians believed.

One of the first Christian images of God
       was a dance – like the folk dances
                 of Israel, Greece, or Africa.
God, they said, is a dance.
And we join with God by getting in step.

We don’t march through life in a straight line
       insisting that it go our way.
We dance with God through life, holding on
       loosely enough to allow for some freedom
                of movement on both sides

                         – and we let God lead.
Following along in a dance keeps us on our toes,
      ready to move with the surprises.

And, if we are to be true to our faith
       then we have to pay attention to our own Scriptures.
God has, “blessed us with every spiritual blessing . . . .
       He chose us in Christ to be holy . . . .
       He destined us for adoption as his children . . . .
       In him we have redemption . . .
                according to the riches of his grace
                         that he lavished on us. . . .”

Maybe we could inscribe that on stone tablets
       and put them up somewhere.
Or, better yet, maybe we could inscribe them on our hearts.
Maybe we could celebrate the Eucharist each Sunday
       as an act of thanksgiving for grace,
       as a moment of letting the grace into us,
       as a moment of simple happiness.

Maybe we could make a spiritual discipline of joy.
We could practice smiling.
We might look at the future as a book that hasn’t been written yet,
    a story which could take utterly unforeseen and unforeseeable turns

    – some of which just might be gracious.
There may be kinds of happiness we don’t even know about.
There may be good we can do that we have not yet imagined.

The gospel is God breaking into history
         in an utterly unexpected way

         – not as a conquering hero
                  but as a poor child born in a barn.
If God had swept in on Good Friday
         to take Jesus off the cross and wipe out the Romans,
         that would have actually fit some people’s expectations.
It didn’t happen.
We got the Resurrection instead.
Jesus didn’t conquer Rome; he conquered death.
That’s better.

Christian hope isn’t naive optimism
         that things will go according
                   to our present definition of ok.

Christian hope is determination
         to keep our eyes and our hearts open
                   to the possibility of wonder,
                   the surprise of joy wherever and however
                             it may leap out at us.

And it is a clinging to nothing
         except the assurance of God’s grace and favor,
         the confidence that God has chosen us in Christ
                   for every spiritual blessing.

                                                             Amen.