answers.
Hope is nurtured by prayer and community. Prayer is our greatest tool for holding onto hope. Conversing with God about our hopes, lamenting before God about those that are shattered, confessing impatience and moments of hopelessness, petitioning for what seems impossible, and meditating on God’s faithfulness are Spirit-led moments that nurture hope. Whether our prayers are part of our rituals or whether they are spontaneous, whether they are uttered in solitary silence or among a group of believers, they ground our hopes and strengthen our faith in the God who made us. My hope is also sustained and shared within the community of faith. It is nurtured in communal relationships and our common faith in God who acts in history.
God is the ground of our hope. I know in whom I vest my hope. I trust in the God whose truth is found in the man on the borrowed donkey. Eagleton affirms the role of trust: “The virtue of hope for Christianity equally involves a kind of certainty: it is a matter of an assured trust, not of keeping one’s fingers crossed.” My trust is not in some abstract God in the heavens pulling strings on which we dangle as puppets, or some judge doling out favours to the faithful, but a living God who is present in human history and whose divine energy continues to woo us into the fullness of life, now and beyond. Our story with God has no end because it is a story of unending grace.
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I have been surprised by the paradox of grace in the life of faith – it is both ordinary and extraordinary. The word “ordinary” here means “in the order of things”; it does not mean something mundane or unimportant. The Oxford Shorter Dictionary uses the words “regular and usual” to qualify what is ordinary. These words accurately describe what is meant by “ordinary grace” – it is in the order of things, because it is a commonplace reality, flooding the world, there for all, from the beginning of time. But, because paradox runs throughout every attempt to speak about God’s presence and care for this world, grace is also extraordinary. It is extraordinary because it cannot be earned, it is unmerited and utterly abundant, and while it permeates the world, we may also ask for it. However, the very fact that it is all-pervasive also makes it “in the order of things” – ordained by God for all, thus commonplace. To say: “Blessed are those” is to acknowledge the working of God’s grace in our lives.
Tagging grace as “ordinary” will, I anticipate, raise immediate objections. Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) in his acclaimed work, The Cost of Discipleship, writes: “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.” He continues in scathing fashion:
Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like a cheapjack’s wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sins and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury […] Grace without price; grace without cost! […] Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system […] Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything remains as it was before.
In contrast, costly grace, according to Bonhoeffer is “[…] a treasure hidden in a field […] [that] must be sought again and again […] asked for.” He continues:
Costly grace is the sanctuary of God; it has to be protected from the world, and not thrown to the dogs. It is therefore, the living word, the Word of God, which he speaks as it pleases him. Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart.
Where does this leave “ordinary” grace? Is it cheap? Bonhoeffer is right. We can cheapen grace. If we trade on God’s goodness and generosity, we cheapen the notion of grace. If we claim the fruits of grace without being willing to acknowledge their source with gratitude, we cheapen grace. If we refuse grace’s call to discipleship, says Bonhoeffer, we cheapen it. Why would we cheapen grace? The simple answer is that we are alienated creatures who choose to reject any dependence on Ultimate Reality. We deny our finitude and alienate ourselves from one another, from nature, from history and, in the end, from ourselves, as American Catholic theologian David Tracy warns. Grace is both a gift and a painful revelation of who we are. The story is familiar – we are made from and for God. We are also made to be in relationship with God and one another. The truth is we have become estranged from each other, endangering our existence together. Despite this, God sustains us because, although we are faithless, God is faithful. God speaks a word of forgiveness in Christ that is free, pure, fresh, unmerited, and is effective grace.
But cheap grace is not what I mean by grace being “in the order of things”. I have described grace as ordinary because I have been overwhelmed with surprise at just how prevalent it is, pervading my reality. It is as ordinary as the air I breathe. And I have also been surprised by my inability to have known this truth sooner. But as I said, what is ordinary is also extraordinary. Christians can speak of God’s relationship with human beings only through a constant awareness of the free grace of God, given once and for all in Jesus Christ. What could be more ordinary and extraordinary than a man borrowing a donkey, a man who is Emmanuel – God with us?
Do I recognise the working of grace in my life? At times I do, and at others I am oblivious to its presence, for grace is both simple to see and not obvious. We recognise a grace-filled life when we see it, and we will know moments when grace overwhelms us. However, the very ordinariness of grace defies explanation and tends to cause us to overlook its presence. Trying to describe a plume of smoke drifting through the air to a blind person is as difficult as seeking to encapsulate grace in words. Tracy describes the nature of grace:
Grace is a word Christians use to name this extraordinary process: a power erupting in one’s life as a gift revealing that Ultimate Reality can be trusted as the God who is Pure, Unbounded Love; a power interrupting our constant temptations to delude ourselves at a level more fundamental than any conscious error; a power gradually but really transforming old habits.
In my attempts at making sense of this “extraordinary” process I have found that:
God’s grace is unfathomable and unmerited. Being a recipient of grace does not require perfection or high ethical standards. Grace takes no regard of who and how we are: the schemers, the thieves, the liars, the charitable, those who bargain with God, those who stumble and try again, believers and non-believers are all within the contours of God’s grace. American essayist and poet Kathleen Norris in her book, Amazing Grace, reminds us of the indiscriminate nature of God’s grace. Jacob is a man who has “just deceived his father and cheated his brother out of an inheritance”. God does not punish him. Jacob is dealt with (through his even more scheming father-in-law) so that God can use him for grace-filled purposes. After wrestling through the night with the unknown man, he can say: “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved” (Gen 32:30). God saw the potential in Jacob beyond his scheming ways and made of him a nation. David is both a murderer and an adulterer, yet he is blessed by God. In the story of Jonah the prophet, God calls Jonah to proclaim judgment on Nineveh. This political allegory tells how Jonah absconds – as one of my children’s books said, by “taking a ship that went the other way”. Yet ultimately the story confirms his efficacy in the conversion of all who lived in Nineveh.
Peter’s record as a follower of Jesus is one of continuous ups and downs. Matthew 16:18 recounts how Jesus names Peter’s calling: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” Jesus has barely uttered these words when Peter rebukes him for disclosing his suffering, to the extent that Jesus says: “Get behind me Satan! You are a stumbling block to me …” (Mt 16:23). Later we know that Peter denies Jesus three times in a courtyard during Jesus’ hearing before the high priest: “I do not know this man” (Mt 26:74). Yet, according to the Book of Acts, Peter sets about accomplishing the task assigned to him by Jesus with devotion. Saul persecutes Christians with unseemly zeal. He does not seem a likely candidate for establishing
