Graceful Movement

I remember schoolmates giving each other heck, never missing an opportunity to joke and tease. If one stubbed a toe and nearly tripped, the other would say, “Have a nice trip? See you next fall” or “Your parents should have named you Grace.” Such compassion! One definition of “grace” is the gift of coordination and flowing agility. Amazingly, the most prominent usage of grace is within the church, among Christians.

To the general world, grace often means favor, freely shown, especially by a superior to an inferior. My reference book, A Dictionary of Christian Theology, clarifies that in the New Testament, grace denotes primarily the favor and kindness of God freely shown to humans in the incarnate life and atoning death of God’s Son. Look at how St. Paul describes this favor of God in 2 Corinthians 8:9 – “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” There are hundreds of places in scripture to which you could point to expand on the meaning of “grace.”

Central to its meaning, as the redemptive activity of God’s love, is the freedom of it. For though as God’s creatures we might expect to be shown some favor, we do regularly miss the mark even to the extent of being enemies of God. So, we sometimes feel that we deserve nothing but God’s utmost disfavor. St. Augustine of Hippo says it is not grace unless it is gratis, that is, God’s love is free in that it is unmerited. God is not moved to love us by our virtues, nor does God withhold love from us because of our vices. Augustine says along with innumerable others God loves us freely, regardless of our deserts. And that, my friends, is grace indeed.

Our Collect of the Day for this Sunday, (Proper 23, BCP, p. 234) is a particularly Augustinian prayer. It signals we need the grace of God, and even that the good occasion of our asking for it presumes grace has been at work within us before we asked. The prayer holds certain confidence grace comes before and follows after us at all times, and that we need this:

Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow us, that we may continually be given to good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It is very Augustinian to assert our good works are not because of vast reservoirs of good naturally within us, but that God grants us these inclinations. God, as it were, pulls us from the front toward good, and pushes us from behind whenever we experience the joy of good acts. You may feel you want to argue with Augustine on this point of human helplessness toward the good; many people do. The good bishop, Augustine, and his contemporary, Pelagius, a theologian from the British Isles, argued severely about the extent to which sin cancels our capacity for good, as God’s creatures. Pelagius was largely maligned for his views but was truly trying to uphold the importance of human responsibility, and our freedom, in ourselves, to choose the good.

There are strong points on both sides. We simply pray to be given to good works and thank God that through the Spirit or the goodness in creation it is possible. We do stumble, but by grace, we recover and move on toward the good.