Singing grace, not humming disaster.

September 27, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

Tonight I was fixing and tuning a couple of handbells for the bell choir at church. On Sunday, we will be playing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” which sounds really joyous when rung out by handbells.

Yet the problems of the world press close. In our parish, my older member is still on a ventilator in the hospital. Our friends down the street are still homeless and spending every night on the sidewalk, rain or not. The globe is still warming. Senator Larry Craig has reneged on his promise to step down from public office for being a pervert. (Yes, I think it is a perversion to hold up high moral and family values and then position oneself as a bathroom solicitor for anonymous sensual encounters.) The war in Iraq still drags on, and George Bush wants another $200 billion just for next year to stay a course which cannot make for peace or democracy in that shredded land.  Every week more people die horrible deaths.

And by order of the Vatican, three nuns in Arkansas have been excommunicated because they subscribe to an order which is apparently led by a strange cult based in Canada, the founder of which believes she is the Virgin Mary reincarnate.  People continue to lose sleep and lose faith as the Catholic Church loses huge sums of money over priests who did things a lot worse than acting like the Queen of Heaven.  But really!

What is the matter with us? Us, the human race? Why are we so distracted, so torn, so full of conflict? Why can’t we rise about our meaner, selfish emotional needs to live nobly?

But who am I to talk? In my own congregation, we have many problems, and occasional conflicts or misunderstandings. With the world the way it is, and our own failures and pettiness, how can we ring out an “Ode to Joy” when a “Prelude to Disaster”might be more appropriate?

Perhaps this is what is truly meant when we speak about “Living by Grace.” We must live as if the grace of God is filling the world, controlling the world, re-directing the world away from its own destruction toward a higher purpose. We must live as if we are evidence of God’s grace in action. We must sing our odes to joy, however difficult to perform, knowing that cynicism is far too easy to hum along with. We must live our way into the world which grace will make if all of us keep faith with God.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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