The word of the LORD came unto me again, saying,

What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge?

As I live, saith the Lord GOD, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel.

Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

But if a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right… Hath walked in my statutes, and hath kept my judgments, to deal truly; he is just, he shall surely live, saith the Lord GOD.

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"

He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

I come back from the belly of the whale

Bruised from the struggle with a living wall,

Drowned in a breathing dark, a huge heartbeat

That jolted helpless hands and useless feet,

Yet know it was not death, that vital warm,

Nor did the monster wish me any harm;

Only the prisoning was hard to bear

And three-weeks’ need to burst back into air …

Slowly the drowned self must be strangled free

And lifted whole out of that inmost sea,

To lie newborn under compassionate sky,

As fragile as a babe, with welling eye.

Do not be anxious, for now all is well,

The sojourn over in the fluid Hell,

My heart is nourished on no more than air,

Since very breath I draw is answered prayer.

In every place that we have lived there has been one special tree by which I have measured the passing splendor of autumn. Here it is a maple at the end of our street, and this year it is an explosion of color. It never ceases to amaze me. There is a fiery red bush across the street from the tree, and not only does it join the maple in welcoming in the season but both remind me of what a gift it is to be alive. The Invocation we use to begin worship is for me a spoken expression of and aspiration for that experience, a stretching of the spirit towards what is felt when one looks upon this season, especially when it arrives as it has this year. My heart is nourished on no more than air/Since very breath I draw is answered prayer. Everyday is a grace.

Grace. It is a word from the Latin gratia, meaning favor, charm, grateful, and pleasing, and although it is fraught with all kinds of distortions that religions have placed upon it, it is still a word that denotes a particular kind of relationship to the existence that bears and upholds us. The ancient Greeks identified the “Three Graces” as the three daughters of the god-king Zeus, who together symbolized all that was good and noble and true in existence. At divine banquets the first cup of wine was dedicated to the Graces, and it was they who bestowed upon mortals the allurements of music and perfume that encouraged noble sentiments and affections through which human life acquired meaning. Grace suggests that the attitude most appropriate when considering our lives, is gratitude.

Grace. Churches use it as a name, a local Christian organization calls itself by that word, a television show pits it against Will, even one of our celebrity princesses bore it as a name and it was a title given in past ages to bishops and royalty, but what is it about in terms of human experience? What does it signify in terms of who we are, and what might it mean in terms of all the various relationships that form our existence?

Put theologically, there is a question of grace. And the question can be put thus:

Do we get the good things of life because we somehow deserve them? Or, is life a gift that far outdistances the things we do or do not do to deserve it? The brilliant colors of autumn exist for us to experience. Whatever meanings there are, we derive from our experience of them. The leaf fades in its own existence and reflects light that impresses itself upon our sensitivities, and that sight experience moves us towards recollections and aspirations and fears and hopes. Leaves are burned and a unique fragrance invades the nostrils. For me the emotion, like a cup, runneth over, and for some inexplicable reason the heart asks what the head cannot comprehend, as to why this beauty has been bestowed upon humanity. So, what meanings do we and have we attached to such gifts as these autumn leaves, and a thousand other “graces”? The theological question of grace bears the practical question of existence: What do we earn and what is freely given to us?

Do we get the good things of life because we somehow deserve them? Does the kind of life we lead mean anything in terms of grace? Does it make any difference if we are honest or charitable or forgiving or loving, more than just what it does for the quality of life around us? In other words, is there any advantage or privilege extended to one who leads an upright life? “No good deed goes unpunished,” is often observed and experienced. Is being a human being, ultimately, about the growth of character such that existence responds? Theologically it can be asked this way: Is there any favor extended to the righteous one? Is grace dispensed to one in any way that is related to the deeds one does, how his or her life is lived, or what he or she believes? “No thing will [the Lord] withhold from them that walk uprightly.” [Psalm 84] Is grace related to living uprightly?

My cup runneth over with joy at the sight of that maple and at the smell of burning leaves, and I wonder what I have done to deserve such incomparable beauty. It is grace. Yet, I don’t know why that wondering is part of the experience, but it has been for as long as I can remember.

Before I went into the ministry, Pat and I lived in Nashville, Tennessee, where I worked in business and eventually found my calling. I volunteered with a community agency that was trying to bring to Nashville a new concept of care for the terminally ill, called hospice care, then only in existence in this country in New Haven, Connecticut. We volunteers provided companionship to dying men and women, sometimes when their own families could not or would not. The one man I worked with, Mr. Putt, had an unusual situation. He was a convicted felon, in prison for a life term, for repeated offenses, including armed robbery, and was a man being considered for a pardon so as to spend the rest of his numbered days free.

I testified before the state parole board in favor of releasing Mr. Putt to live out his last days outside the confinement of prison because I was convinced there was something redeemable in him that warranted this last chance.

I was with Mr. Putt when, following the Governor’s granting the pardon, he met his mother, whom he hadn’t seen for years, in a dingy apartment in Nashville’s poorest section. It was a grace for this convict, who had flaunted the laws and the order necessary for human beings to live in peace, to be swallowed up in his mother’s embrace. I wondered whether Mr. Putt had followed in the wayward ways of his father, and his father’s father. Mr. Putt was not a nice man. He was not a good man. He conned people, stole from them, threatened to kill them with a gun, and did these things repeatedly, although there was some suspicion that his last offense, which put him in the slammer for life, was performed in order for him to return to the only form of society with which he could cope. I saw him again a few weeks later, but he abandoned his home and his mother’s embrace, and apparently jumped parole and died somewhere further south, in Louisanna I was told. I never knew for certain. His mother told me she didn’t know. “He just kinda disappeared,” was her assessment, shaking her head and sniffing at the same time.

Is grace related in any way to living uprightly? The problem with this prospect is that we end up declaring certain persons worthy and others not based upon a measurement that we determine, and then ascribe to God. Make no mistake about it the man was a felon, and he was a danger to others and to ordered liberty. And that cannot be tolerated in human society; otherwise we would destroy ourselves. But, we take human criteria, based in culture and history, and ascribe to them infinite and eternal qualities, from which we judge others. In the Ezekiel passage an old measurement of God’s grace by human criteria is being dissolved. In this time God’s favor was seen to be granted based upon family honor. If your father had eaten bad grapes, it was presumed God would make your teeth suffer. Ezekiel is pronouncing a certain human measurement to be ultimately insufficient and incomplete. Individuality trumps heredity, so the “sins of the father can no longer be used to judge the son.” Because of this new understanding he is articulating, the author of Ezekiel has the Lord saith that “all souls are mine.” Human measurements of worth are not worthless, but are different than ultimate ones. We cannot comprehend the width of grace that existence contains because we bottle it up in cultural and historical “oughts” and “shoulds.” “There is a wideness to God’s mercy,” we sing in an old hymn, a breadth our measurements do not hold. We continue to declare who is worthy of it and who isn’t, based upon criteria of our day: what area of town one lives in, whether one has a job, whether one has broken laws and which ones, who one is going to vote for, what church one attends if at all, and what faith one holds as true.

So, is life a gift that far outdistances the things we do or do not do? When we are at our worst as individuals, is there still a worth to us that runs counter to what our thoughts and actions betray? When we are selfish with our affections, does the ultimate worth of human beings run deeper than that? When we are belligerent, or rancorous, or deceitful, or malicious, or vicious or terrible or evil towards others, does the ultimate worth of human beings run deeper than that? When human beings cause others great mental and physical suffering, does the ultimate worth of those who cause the suffering run deeper than the pain and after affect of their evil deeds? Is there a clemency, exemption, favor, privilege, is there grace extended to human beings that no act can remove or undo? Theologically it can be asked this way: Does God dispense grace freely, unrelated to righteousness or character, what we do or leave undone? Is there universal salvation?

The origin of our Universalist branch of our faith tradition was in this declaration of Ezekiel that “all souls are mine,” which was in the first century after Jesus’ death and into the late 1700’s expanded by some to the declaration that God loves all souls such that upon death all souls are reconciled to God. It’s a long way from the Ezekiel passage to the declaration that everyone is reconciled to God. But it is no longer a stretch than to say that the Bible contains declarations of grace only to those who believe rightly that Jesus was the Savior and Son of God, a theological doctrine that became definitive of Christianity three centuries after Jesus the Jew had been executed.

The question of whether universalism is right belief, or whether it is right to hold that only those with certain beliefs are grace filled, is not of concern to us because it is only an important question in orthodox circles, of which this is not one. But there is a deeper question that holds us. How are we accountable for the life we lead? Is it one thing to say that God loves all souls, when one is really thinking only about those some souls who make mistakes, but do not initiate intentionally vicious horrors? If grace is not related to how one lives, then is upright living only a personal, internal decision with personal, internal affects? Do we end up declaring anything as acceptable because existence upholds everything?

These are not philosophical questions of whether God exists or not, and they are not academic theological questions, but very pragmatic and personal ones. The rules, customs, and laws we live within are relative to our historical time and the culture we reside in. But, as the author of Ezekiel did before him, the author of Luke, in remembering this saying of Jesus, is declaring that an old measurement of God’s grace by human criteria is being dissolved. In Luke’s time God’s favor was seen to be granted based upon adherence to law, deemed religious law because the culture’s law was the laws of the Romans and not the Jews. If you did not adhere or fulfill the precise requirements of the law, it was presumed God would not grant grace unto you. Luke has Jesus pronouncing something new like Ezekiel before him, but something radically new: all human measurements are ultimately insufficient and incomplete. Human measurements of worth are not worthless. Laws are not worthless. But ultimately existence upholds a larger law, one that when adhered to and fulfilled, fulfills all human ones. And that law is love.

We hold each other accountable in our culture and time by laws. And human legal measurements protect society’s peace and prosperity. But at no time should we mistake these human legal measurements for divine and ultimate ones. God’s grace is not extended only to those whom our laws and our measurements, legal or religious, deem worthy. The Almighty has his own ways. We govern our relationships with one another through covenants, through our agreements in society as to how we will treat one another; as well as our agreements in all communities, religious and otherwise, as to how our relations are to be governed. And that is good, that we seek order and peace, and some measure of justice. But, again, do not be fooled. Love God and your neighbor as yourself, but the law of love wherein lies the beauty of autumn’s leaves and the fragrances that fill the autumn air, is also wherein there is received and returned a grace beyond measure.

Someone asked me why I am preaching on grace this fall, when there is so much more in our political life that is at stake. It is true that there is much at stake in our political life this year. There is a Proposal on our state ballot, Proposal 2 that will, I think, ensconce debilitating discrimination in our state’s constitution. Whomever is elected President will lead our nation in vastly different ways than if another is elected. And this preacher, who always preaches on matters that have social and political applications, who calls himself a “Public Theologian” because he things theology always possesses a wider, practical and public ramification, is preaching on grace. And God’s grace at that, even though he will readily say that most of what passes for God-talk amongst human beings is really talk about the mysterious. Yet, this preacher would declare it is God’s grace that needs be understood. That existence upholds and enfolds human beings in larger and wider ways than what human culture and history, custom and law declare.

With so much at stake politically today human beings will disregard and discard spiritual law. God’s grace is freely given declares the faith tradition we have chosen to stand in to understand human nature and existence. Always. The beauty of autumn leaves and their color and fragrance are a symbol of this wider law. Existence upholds all souls and God loves all souls. We human beings, however, do not. We do not love all souls, and our laws, necessary for order and survival, do not either. Our laws reflect hidden hatreds and implicit tyrannies, as well as what is necessary to maintain ordered liberty. We cannot conceive of a grace that is always available to all and our laws reflect that. Sometimes the glory of autumn moves us to pity, to charity, to a dedication to make this life for others a reflection of the divine beauty we see all around us. Other times, the glory of autumn goes by unnoticed, and does nothing to move the hardened heart to share affection with others, save maybe those whom we determine deserve our favor. So in this season where so much is at stake politically, herein doth dwell good news: Regardless of what is passed or rejected, of whomever is elected, we are enfolded in a grace that survives our mistakes and failures as well as our triumphs, our bad deeds and our good ones, because it is larger and ultimate and embraces what we cannot fathom. We struggle to set ourselves free towards something more. It is the nature of the spiritual life, to be born into a liberation and a love; to discover grace.

I come back from the belly of the whale

Bruised from the struggle with a living wall,

Drowned in a breathing dark, a huge heartbeat

That jolted helpless hands and useless feet,

Yet know it was not death, that vital warm,

Nor did the monster wish me any harm;

Only the prisoning was hard to bear

And three-weeks’ need to burst back into air …

Slowly the drowned self must be strangled free

And lifted whole out of that inmost sea,

To lie newborn under compassionate sky,

As fragile as a babe, with welling eye.

Do not be anxious, for now all is well,

The sojourn over in the fluid Hell,

My heart is nourished on no more than air,

Since very breath I draw is answered prayer.

AMEN.