What is Grace? It seems right to ask this on St Anselm’s day.
Interesting talk with Mother Sarah and Nathan… who is now Fr Nathan… but ok. Anyway, we were talking about Grace at Coffee Hour yesterday. And, while I don’t remember how the topic arose, at some point it dawned on me that “saved by Grace” must mean something completely different to someone who is just looking to Get Out of Hell Free.
If “saved” means being made whole and healed, reconciled to God, the world and everyone else, then “grace” can not be simply, as the Evangelicals put it, “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense” which carries with it all the Bloody Stump imagery of Anselm’s Substitutionary Atonement. If grace is simply all that’s left over of the carcass on the altar, I’m not sure any of us want to have anything to do with it. But as I pointed to the bloody stump, I said we need also to be aware of the teaching that it’s not simply 3 hours on the tree that bring us Grace, but the entire Christ Event: from eternity to eternity. God becoming man - and all that God did prior and after - are our salvation.
Grace is our participation in that action.
God spent more than a few days in dirty diapers and, knowing what little I know about the culture, the chances are that, rather than diapers, God spent a good few days running around the gutters of Palestine wearing no clothes and making a bit of a mess. And there is Grace in that, yes? Especially when you have a child who makes a lot of noise in Church - and in Orthodoxy where there are no pews - there is Grace in the image of God running around naked in the gutters of Palestine making a mess. But what are we to do with that Grace?
Beyond the blood and the substitution - which makes grace to mean, only, that some random millionaire paid off your credit card debt (Please, God!) - I think there are two other definitions/uses of the word that are more important, theologically.
One is the Eastern Orthodox idea that Grace is somehow the presence of God in our lives, the divine light present in our actions. The second is the idea of Dance: of the graceful movement of an artist. This last is closest to the dictionary’s meaning of the word, “that which affords joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, charm, loveliness: grace of speech” (eliminating all the strained, unnatural theological “meanings”). When you add them together, the Grace of the Dance with the Divine light present in our lives, I think we get the image of Tao, of how water flows downhill, filling the valleys with life. That is how Grace works - collecting in our lives as we do what is most natural to humans in communion with God rather than to sinners who can never find that communion.
Grace is exactly a child running around the gutters of Palestine, or a woman feeding that child at her breast because, restored in the incarnation, those are exactly the things that humans are to be doing. The Greek word, Charis (χαρις), translated “Grace” comes from a root meaning “happy” or “joyful”. With Bede Griffiths, we can tie it to the Hindu concept of Ananda. It is as Joseph Campbell said, “Follow your bliss”, meaning not what makes you selfishly happy, but like the water flowing down hill, do what is most you as God created you to be.
Bonhoffer’s division of “cheap grace” and “costly grace” assumes that Anslemian blood guilt. It assumes that the words of Scripture are not True: in Christ God was reconciling all things to Himself. We have to live up to that and it is hard, but it is also natural: as birthing a baby is naturally hard, but it is what you do if you are with child. If you’re “salvation” means not roasting in hell, the idea of a joyful life (and more abundant life) must seem cheap indeed. But when compared to the cost of living half a life, distorted beyond any recognition as human - most often in the name of religion, superstition and taboo - this is a very costly grace indeed for it can cause those who like long prayer shawls and to mark their face when they are fasting to spurn you.
This is not to say that everything is “natural” and that “natural” is always good: we have to acknowledge that there are parts internalised within each of us that do not function as they should. But if salvation can be envisioned as making us (all of us) into exactly what God wanted us to be, then Grace is present and active in those times when we are doing exactly that: manifesting Christ’s healing of the world in our lives daily.
Most importantly: be among those people who are like this. Their participation in the divine energies of wisdom, creativity, joy, harmony, peace, love… will bring you to that place as well. And they, if they are truly living in that light, can not but bring you to it as well.
