Me? A Wretch?

The Second Sunday of Easter (RCL, Year B)
April 19, 2009

The Reverend Paul Abernathy

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.^[1]

Some years ago, at a previous parish where I served as rector, at the close of the service on Sunday during the Easter season, we sang Amazing Grace. As I stood at the door greeting the departing members, a woman – a matriarch of the parish, who worshiped faithfully every Sunday, who knew the Book of Common Prayer so well that she didn’t need it, who could recite every word of the liturgy from start to finish by heart, who could sing all the hymns from memory – approached me, walking slowly with the aid of her cane. Sarah, usually of cheerful countenance, that morning was of a decidedly dour disposition. I barely got a “Good morning, sister,” out of my mouth when Sarah held up her cane to me and proclaimed, “Paul, I will never sing that hymn because I am not a wretch!”

It wasn’t hard for me to understand Sarah’s distaste for Amazing Grace. After all, the hymn was written by the Englishman, John Newton, whose life story, in part, contained a chapter as a slave ship captain, who, during a storm that threatened to scuttle his ship, heard the voice of God. Once the storm had subsided, Newton, delivered from the angry sea and, convinced of his wretchedness, his unworthiness, confessed his faith in God and God’s amazing unconditional grace. However, Newton’s conversion did not compel him to abandon the slave trade until later, although he did treat his human cargo more charitably while ferrying them, at least, those who survived to their lives of captivity and servitude. Sarah, whose grandparents were born into and saw the end of slavery, had little reaction, other than bitterly painful, to the author’s life story, little personal relation to the words of the hymn, and, thus, little reason to sing it. Amazing grace, indeed.

I recalled this encounter with Sarah as I reflected on our passage from the Acts of the Apostles,^[2] recounting the earliest days in the life of the followers of Jesus, in which they practiced what we might call Christian communism: “No one claimed private ownership…everything was held in common.” But that peculiar characteristic of communal life aside, what caught my attention and brought Sarah to mind are these words: “With great power, the apostles testified to the resurrection of Jesus and great grace was upon them all and there was not a needy person among them.”

Sarah’s proclamation notwithstanding, there is a sense, I believe, in which each of us lives in a state of wretchedness. The wretchedness of our sinfulness. The sinfulness, which is not about our badness, but rather, about our beingness. The beingness chiefly manifested in our self-interest. We humans are inherently, individually self-interested. We humans intrinsically and, certainly, as Americans culturally are not given instinctively to function corporately. Life for us, much of the time, really is all about each of us. Given a choice between your way and my way, I will want my way.

The wretched excess of our self-interest shines a bright light on one of the greatest tensions of human life – the simultaneous pulls between the individual and the group, the concurrent calls to be one’s self and to belong with others. All struggle, wrestle with this reality.

Yet, there is something, I think, that can make possible our holding in tension, verily, bearing in our bodies the tension of these opposites without always being torn apart. That something is the grace of unconditional love, both received and given.

How do we get this grace? Does it only come to us, as for Newton, only from on high in the midst of the storms of life? No, I don’t believe so. For grace, as Acts would teach us, comes through practice. “The apostles testified to the resurrection of Jesus.” To testify is to witness, both words derived from the Greek, martus, from which we also derive the word, martyr. The apostles, in testifying, in witnessing, acted. They didn’t just talk about the resurrection (which required the crucifixion), they did it. They didn’t simply proclaim it, they performed it – being as Jesus is and doing what Jesus does. It was in their daily acts of giving, sharing, loving self-sacrificially that grace grew, thereby allowing all to give, to share, to love all the more so that there was no one among them in need.

That’s why we, as individuals, are here in community this morning. That’s why later in this service there are those individuals among us who are committing themselves to the life of our community.^[3] That’s why later today we, as individuals, will hold our annual parish – community – meeting. It’s all about keeping us in the tension of being ourselves and belonging with others. It’s all about giving us opportunities to practice receiving and giving. It’s all about helping us live faithfully, gracefully with our inherent wretchedness of self-interest. Amazing grace, indeed.

[1] Words by John Newton (1725-1807).

[2] The appointed reading for the day is Acts 4.32-35.

[3] The Rite of Commitment and Welcome was conducted with the members of the fall 2008 Life, Community, and Faith class (a St. Mark’s gateway, adult small group formation course).