Reformation: The Posture of Grace

 An Elder tells a story of four frogs. Frog, Frog, Frog, and Frog sit side by side on a log. Before them is an expanse of water. One frog makes a decision to jump off the log. How many frogs are on the log? … Four.

Three green frogs and one orange frog. The orange frog has not yet jumped off the log, Frog has only made the decision to jump off. The frog changed from green to orange when deciding to be open to change. This is being open to Creator. The decision to change spots changed everything. That orange frog can not go back to being green. Even if a few days down the road the orange frog wakes up cranky and wants to go back to being a green frog on a log, it can not return to that version of itself.

 

Martin Luther’s story mirrors that of the orange frog. Monk, Monk, Monk, and Monk sit side by side on a pew. Before them is the book of Romans. Luther makes a decision to ask a question.

In that decision Luther is changed, open to hearing the Word. Luther can not go back to the monk he was before asking the question. The decision changed him. Once pondering Romans and hearing the perspective of grace, being justified by God’s grace, how does one return to not seeing it on the printed page; they don’t.

 

Reformation is a re-forming. Although an historic movement of the 1500s, reformation has been and is continual. For over 500 years, Lutheran Christians have continued to emphasize and ponder God’s grace; and each time the church does, or we do, there is change.

 

This morning when we decided to come to church, we changed, we opened ourselves to hear the Word.

During your time in this space, you hear the Word, you participate in a community experience, you have thoughts, you decide to come for communion, you choose to sing and pray… every decision changes you because it opens you to something bigger than yourself, to more options, to a new experience, to meeting God, hearing Creator. When you leave this space, you are different than when you arrived. You can not go back to the person you were before you decided to come to church.

 

How many of you had a grandmother, or teacher, maybe a parent, who repeatedly told you to stop slouching, sit up straight, shoulders back, head up? When I was young, I was often reminded to correct my posture. I can still hear the words when I catch myself not standing up straight. Paul wrote the words, they are now justified by his grace as a gift. Justified by grace as a gift, were words that repeatedly rang in Luther’s ears. The words changed him. The words changed his posture.

 

On this Reformation Sunday you are invited to ponder the posture of grace.

An American theologian, Cindy S. Lee, writes about de-Westernizing spiritual formation. Traditionally spiritual formation included spiritual practices, disciplines like prayer, fasting, reading the Bible, activities designed to draw an individual closer to God. Lee suggests that spiritual practices are ‘Western’ in orientation, as they are development focused, getting better at something, achievement based, seen as a direct path to a pre-set goal. Her writing offers a different perspective. She orients spiritual formation through the lens of postures. Postures are experience based. Postures do not have an end point or final goal. Postures are a way of being. Postures are integrated learnings and wisdom. Postures are attitudes and ways of facing the world.

 

Have you had the experience of ‘setting your shoulders?’ A breathing in, shoulders up back and down, a breathing out  - a collecting of yourself, before facing a task at hand? Perhaps a job interview, a public speaking engagement, walking into a hospital room of a dying friend. That experience is setting a posture to help you face and live through what is before you.

 

On this Reformation Sunday you are invited to ponder the posture of grace.

We are the orange frog from the Elder’s story with a decision to embrace a posture of grace – this attitude opens us to the expectation of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting; finding and experiencing grace throughout our day; in the people we meet, the places we go, encounters of every kind. We open ourselves to God’s grace.

Lutheran theologian, Joseph Sittler wrote about the occasions of grace, pointing readers to the plethora of phrases in the Gospels: and suddenly…along the way…now it happened… immediately. The Gospels express and proclaim an understanding of surprise, the might-not-have-seen, the indeterminable quality of God’s grace. Rather than a state or attribute of God, “grace is understood as the energy of love, having its origin in the freedom of God who finds “occasions” for the bestowal of that love, not in the regularities of law, but in and by the instant and uncalculated response to man in the matrix of the historical madness of human cussedness and glory, that is according to the dynamics of gospel, then the “occasion” of grace must be thought of in fresh ways. The common life is the “happening-place” of it, and man as man in nature and in history supplies its normal occasions.”pg155-6 (Evocations of Grace)

When we parse Sittler’s words, the surprise is that Grace requires us. Occasions for God’s love to be given happen in human life. Humans are the receivers. God’s unconditional love – the birth of Jesus, the death of Jesus – is Grace Incarnate. Among us. For us.

 

The Posture of grace is one that is grace upon grace, an ever-deeper dwelling of God’s presence. The more we experience grace our posture changes. When we feel forgiven, we raise our heads. When we feel like we belong, we stand taller. When we experience compassion and mercy, we no longer slouch. When we feel God’s love, our posture shows confidence.

And this posture of grace, leads to a Posture of grace that sets our shoulders towards the world; a posture that pours the same grace -forgiveness, belonging, compassion, mercy, love- back into the world.

 

My posture of grace is gifted out as it is preached and taught; prayed; painted and written; crafted and gardened; smiled and hugged. I have been told that I have a positive attitude, optimistic, wear rose coloured glasses, but no I do not; today I set my shoulders to boldly share the truth – it is not positivity or optimism that is overflowing. I continually receive and give something that is far more profound and mysterious  - I’ve chosen a posture of grace.

Not only when I decide to come to church on Sunday morning, but every step from the first one getting out of bed I set my posture - Grace. I decide to be open to grace. I expect grace everywhere. I experience grace everywhere. I share grace everywhere.

 

I like the words of American author and activist Anne Lamott, words that draw us back to the story of the orange frog: I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. Amen to that.

 

And as we begin each worship service, with a blessing to adjust our posture, to a posture of grace upon grace – so we end the sermon:

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.