Second Sunday after Epiphany, Year B
Reverend Gregg D. Wood
One of the best-loved hymns, for many American Christians, is the hymn by the ship captain and reformed slave-trader John Newton: Amazing Grace. This hymn was even included in the 1982 revision of our own Episcopal hymnal. (Hymn #671)
Its popularity seems to increase every year. One of the staples at the funerals of many of the firefighters and police who perished on September 11, 2001, was a lone bagpiper in the distance playing Amazing Grace.
The hymn expresses a certain way of coming to God; it is a certain kind of spiritual narrative. Let’s look at the words:
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.
The words tell a story, the story of s person’s life with God. And notice, it is a before and after story. I had one kind of life before, says the narrator; then amazing grace came along, and changed me. And my life has been different ever since.
How does he describe his life before grace? He says he was a wretch in his first life. That’s pretty strong; but he goes on: “I once was lost, but now am found.” These words recall the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke’s Gospel. The son who went off to a far country and squandered his inheritance in “dissolute living.” Finally, he runs out of money and is reduced to taking care of pigs. He has nothing to eat; he even looks enviously at the food that the pigs eat. He repents, and decides to return to his home and his father. He asks to be taken back, not as a son, but as a lowly hired servant. His father welcomes him back with open arms, and, at the end, his father says to the young man’s older brother, “This your brother was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
You couldn’t use any stronger language to describe a change in life. Before, DEAD; after, ALIVE. Before, LOST; after, FOUND. Before, BLIND; after, I SEE. The hymn is telling a story about a dramatic conversion from a life of wretchedness to a life of grace and moral and spiritual beauty.
Not only is it dramatic, it is also sudden. “How precious did that grace appear / the hour I first believed.” The narrator refers to the hour he first believed. No doubt he knows and remembers well that day, and that hour, and the place where it happened. His conversion was sudden and instantaneous, like the onset of a hurricane. A hurricane of grace. And it changed his life forever.
So this is one kind of spiritual story. The story of the sudden and dramatic conversion. It reflects the experience of many people, including
· St. Paul, who saw a blinding light while he was on the road to Damascus, and heard a voice saying, Saul, why do you persecute me?
· St Augustine, who had a dramatic conversion at age 30;
· John Wesley, the founder of Methodism; and
· John Newton.
For many American Christians, especially those we would call evangelicals, this is the standard story. The only real Christian is one who has had a sudden and dramatic conversion; or, to use the term that is frequently used, the only real Christian is one who has been “born again.”
For evangelical Christians, one’s conversion is the all-important experience. Everyone should have a conversion story, and it’s better if it is sudden and dramatic. Everyone should be able to state “the day and the hour I first believed,” and what led to that experience, and what followed from it.
A Southern Baptist minister once told me that every sermon in every Southern Baptist Church is supposed to end with an altar call, that is, an opportunity for the unconverted and the sinners to come forward and publicly repent of their sins and accept Christ as their Savior, and thereby receive the saving grace of the Holy Spirit.
In other words, everyone should be able to tell a story of a sudden and dramatic conversion. Everyone should be “born again.”
Former President Bush described himself as a born-again Christian. In his story of his own conversion, he was increasingly an alcoholic until 1986, when, at the age of 40, he was led to repentance and amendment of life by the influence of evangelical religious leaders.
Now there is no question that many Christians in history have had sudden and dramatic conversion experiences. And some people continue to have them to this day. There is no limit to the way in which God comes in to people’s lives, and this is certainly one way.
But it’s not the only way. And, I suspect, it’s not the most common way. That is why the popularity of “Amazing Grace” surprises me, because I don’t think it reflects the spiritual experience of most people.
Is there another way? Yes there is, and we can turn to the Scriptures themselves to see another way.
Timothy was a companion, a protégé, and a trusted associate of St. Paul in his missionary work. And in the 2nd Letter to Timothy, Paul says, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. (ch. 1 vs. 5)”
Timothy received his faith from his grandmother and his mother. That means he must have been raised as a Christian from his infancy. No doubt these pious women sang hymns to him and told the stories of Jesus as they dandled him on their knees.
And that is the way many people receive their faith. They grow up surrounded by it in their families and their church. There is no need in such people for sudden and dramatic conversion, because there never was a time when they did not know Jesus and his love. For many people, amazing grace does not have to come crashing into their lives, because it was there from the beginning.
The story of sudden and dramatic conversion is not the only story; it is not the only way in which people come to Christian truth and life.
For some people this is a big issue, whether we come to God only as the result of a conversion experience as adults, or whether we can come to God gradually and before we are fully mature, perhaps even as infants. This is a controversy of long standing among Christians.
The psalm which we read today, Psalm 139, puts this whole subject in a different perspective. The psalm begins by affirming that God knows us long before we know him:
Lord, you have searched me out and known me;
You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You discern my thoughts from afar.
And he goes on:
Indeed, there is not a word on my lips,
But you, O Lord, know it altogether.
What is important, says the psalmist, is not how we came to know God. What is important is that God knows us. He searches us out. He discerns our thoughts from afar.
God knows us from the beginning. He initiates his relationship with each one of us.
Think about that.
· From the beginning God knew you and foresaw your life and your destiny;
· from the beginning your name was written, you might say, on the palm of his hand;
· from the beginning you were the apple of his eye.
When I was in ninth grade, we had a standardized test in our math class. And the class as a whole did moderately well. When Mr. Burns, our teacher, told us this, everybody cheered. But then he said, “You didn’t do all that well, so don’t break your arms patting yourselves on the back.”
I think that is the message for those who talk about their conversion and insist that everyone must be “born again”, according to their interpretation of those words: Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back. Whether you came to God by a dramatic conversion experience, or in another way, it wasn’t your doing, it was God’s doing, and you were destined for it from the beginning. And for each of those who have a hurricane of grace (that is, a sudden and dramatic conversion), like St. Paul, there are probably a hundred who receive the grace of God as a gentle breeze throughout their lives, like Timothy. What matters is not how we got there, but that we are where we are. May we persevere in our walk with God and increasingly bring forth the fruits of the Spirit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
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