It's All Grace

Every Tuesday morning the staff of St. John’s gathers up for a meeting, to spend a couple hours together in the same room, to plan for the upcoming week’s and month’s events, to assess how we’re doing as a staff and a church. To open things up Jimmy (or one of us, in his absence) always brings a short reading for us to reflect on. This is what he brought last week:

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. — Attributed to either Yogi Berra or Albert Einstein”

A quick Google search brought up lots of conflicting opinion (surprise!) on who actually said this. Turns out Albert didn’t say it. Yogi didn’t either, though it delights me to think that he might have.

We come up with lots of theories and plans and strategies for how to bring our theories into practice. Sometimes they work, things turn out just the way we had hoped. And sometimes, the best laid plans must be modified or abandoned. Theory and practice sometimes don’t match up, and holding too tightly to our theories can be counterproductive. This applies to church work and life work.

I participated in a lively conversation the other day with a group of very sincere Episcopalians. We were talking about God’s grace. As you can probably imagine, there was plenty of theorizing going on. Grace—is it available to everyone? Is it earned or unearned? What does the Bible say about it? Where? When was that written? Who wrote it? What do theologians say? I’m the first to admit, I love these conversations that verge on debates, and I love parsing out the questions that our faith poses. In other words, I love theorizing. And I’m fully aware that it doesn’t get me anywhere.

I was left with the feeling that there’s not much I can say about God’s grace, other than this: I have received in my life more love and joy than I could ever explain. I live and breathe and have my being in a creation that is so full of beauty and so interconnected that at moments it literally takes my breath away. The people I am in relationship with are each, in their own unique ways, living miracles. They never cease to amaze me. None of this is theory. It’s all practice, and it’s all grace, all the way down.

Peace,

Brian