This sermon began as a message left on my answering machine.
A couple of weeks ago Nancy and I were enjoying our usual after dinner telephone chat that we have on the nights I'm out in Winchester and she is back in Fairfax.
Near the end of the conversation she added almost as a post script, "Oh, by the way, there's a message for you from someone asking if you are the Henry Ticknor who once lived at 40 Beech Road in Englewood, New Jersey."
As I thought about the name of the person who had called, I realized that the last name was the same as a family who had moved in next door to us back in the early fifties.
With no clue as to what she might want to talk to me about I dialed the number.
After a couple of rings a woman's voice answered and when I had introduced myself and told her who I was calling for she said she had made the call and did I remember that we had been neighbors for a few years back in the fifties and early sixties?
Well, without making too long a story out of the conversation, here is why she had called.
Back in 1953 her parents had purchased the property next to our house. The property they bought had once belonged to my paternal grandfather.
When my parents moved to New Jersey just before WWII, my grandfather had given them a piece of his land on which to build a house.
Now since this deal was, shall we say, all in the family, and it appears that there were certain unwritten understandings about where the property lines.
Even after my mother sold our house, the new owners seemed content to live with the fact that the neighbor's driveway cut through a corner of their property. After all, that's where the driveway had always been.
So fast-forward to today. It appears that the family that bought the house from my mother was moving on, and had sold the house and land to a developer. And here's the rub, as they say.
The new builder didn't want anything to do with any previous "understandings." Englewood, like many older suburbs, is undergoing McMansion expansion and our old house is scheduled to be demolished so that, as my caller described it, an immense Italian villa could be built in its place, and the new owner is adamant that the location of the drive is on his property and he wants it moved now.
"Well, fine," said the neighbors, "We knew this might happen one day, so we'll move it."
"Ah, not so fast," said the neighbors closest to where the new driveway was proposed to go, "We've never had to look at your driveway and with changes to zoning ordinances you can't move it next to our property line either."
So, it seems, the person who called me simply wanted me to verify that the driveway had always been where it is and that in reality it had been in its same location since my grandparents built their house in the early 1900s. End of story.... well, sort of.
During our conversation I found myself mentally walking over the old property.
I remembered the great sledding on what we called "the back hill" behind our houses.
I remembered the chestnuts from the old trees that my friends and I would hollow out and make pipes that we would smoke with tobacco purloined from our parents' cigarettes.
Yes, back then smoking, at least for adults, was still more or less ok.
I remembered that the house built by my grandparents had a pool where my siblings and I learned how to swim and how angry I was when the "new people" moved in and we lost access to that wonderful space.
I remembered the gardens my mother had meticulously maintained and where the big white tent had been set up for my older sister's wedding.
Gradually I began to think of some of the others who had lived on our street: the neighbor who had been the big game hunter in Africa and had this exotic trophy room; the man down the street who had his own golf cart and a putting green in his back yard.
I thought back to the days when I walked to school and where I learned to drive and so much more.
Even now I find other memories trying to creep in and wash over me.
So, after about 45 minutes of conversation and memory sharing we said our good bys. She thought that at some point lawyer A or Lawyer B might contact me for a statement but she wasn't sure and to date there have been no further conversations.
In the days that followed I often reflected on our conversation. The first thing I did was to call my sibs and say, "Guess what? The old house in Englewood is going to be demolished and there's a Hatfield and McCoy kind of feud going on about the location of the old driveway."
But as the time passed I found myself less and less engaged in the particulars of the story and more and more engaged with my memories of the old house.
Soon I came to see that this wasn't a story about a real estate deal gone sour; I realized that it was a story about grace.
Like other theological terms, grace, is not a word that I use very often. I don't know why because it is a perfectly good word that pops up in our language with some regularity.
We use the word graceful to describe the seemingly effortless beauty of physical movement.
In many homes we say "grace" before dinner.
In business we refer to the time between when a deal is made and the first payments are due as a "grace period."
We speak of being "in or out of grace" when we speak of certain relationships.
There are even individuals whose position of power or influence carries with it the title, "Your Grace."
In Christianity, grace is a word often used to convey God's divine love or protection.
The word grace itself comes from the Latin word Gratia, meaning favor, charm or thanks.
Many spiritual traditions share a similar understanding of this word. In Sanskrit grace is similar to the word for praise. In Judaism, the concept of grace is expressed by the Hebrew word hesed meaning mercy, or loving-kindness.
To some Buddhists grace is seen as a creative force--an act of exceptional kindness and goodness.
The lama Surya Das, author of Awakening the Buddha Within calls grace the "is-ness" of life. It's the recognition that everything is sacred and connected.
I suppose my own definition of grace would be more like this. Grace comes to us as an unexpected and unsolicited gift. that we receive.
We can experience moments of grace in our relationships with others. Those deep moments of true understanding and profound love, are moments that are full of grace.
We can experience moments of grace when we witness the beauty life holds--sunrises and sunsets; the sun reflected on blue water, a crystal clear night sky, and the delicacy of a snowflake.
But grace is also about gratitude. You know, as in recognizing and saying thanking for all of the gifts in our lives.
Perhaps the writer G.K. Chesterton said it best when he wrote, "You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."
So if grace abounds why it is so hard sometimes to be grateful for the gifts we receive?
For instance, sometimes I frequently have a hard time hearing compliments for the gifts that they are.
I might shrug my shoulders and say, "It was nothing, really." Even if it was a job that had taken exceptional effort or days to complete.
So when a compliment is given I need to remind myself to take a moment, to let the compliment embrace both the giver and the receiver, to look into the other's eyes, and then genuinely says, "Thank you."
To live a grace-filled life all that is required is for each of us to pay greater attention to our gifts and blessings, no matter how small or how large.
With greater attention we can be mindful of the smallest gifts that often go unnoticed:
The times when the water from the fountain is really fresh and cold; when someone fixes a meal just as you like it; when a co-worker upholds their end of the job; and when the heat of the sun melts the snow on the driveway.
Each of these, in its own way, are gifts that come to us without our asking for them. They are gifts for which we are grateful. These are the moments of grace that bring us closer to our true selves.
One of the great stories of grace, it seems to me, is the story of the prodigal son. What makes it such a wonderful story is its universality and its timelessness.
There are traces of this story in most of the world's great epics where the hero goes off to adventures far and wind only to return home changed in many ways and grateful for a new appreciation of what had been left behind.
Perhaps even in the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is playing the part of the prodigal daughter.
One of my favorite versions of the Prodigal son was written by the poet James Weldon Johnson.
This is a slightly updated version of the classic story and is written very much in the style of a sermon that might be given in a black church on a Sunday morning. Let me share this jazz poem with you.
"Young Man--
Young man--
your arm's too short to box with God.
But Jesus spake in a parable and he said:
A certain man had two sons.
Jesus didn't give this man a name,
But his name is God Almighty.
And Jesus didn't call these sons by name,
But every young man,
Ev'rywhere,
Is one of these two sons.
And the younger son said to his father,
He said: Father, divide up the property,
And give me my portion now.
And the father with tears in his eyes said: son,
Don't leave your father's house.
But the boy was stubborn in his head,
and haughty in his heart,
And he took his share of his father's goods,
And went into a far off country.
And the young man journeyed on his way,
And he said to himself as he traveled along:
This sure is an easy road,
Nothing like the rough furrows behind my father's plow."
As the Weldon's young man travels he comes to a city where the nights are as bright as day and where:
"The streets all crowded with people...
And everywhere the young man turned
There was singing and laughing and dancing."
"And the young man went off with his new found friend(s)
and bought himself some brand new clothes
And he spent his days in the drinking dens...
And he spent his nights in the gambling dens,
Throwing dice with the devil for his soul."
"And he met up with the women of (the city)
and they stripped him of his money, and they stripped him of his clothes,
and they left him broke and ragged in the city of Babylon."
But in time the young man sees the errors of his ways, and just as in scripture, he returns home where his father "put clean clothes upon his back, And a golden chain around his neck, He made a feast and killed the fatted calf, And invited the neighbors in."
It is interesting that Weldon's version of the story omits the relationship between the younger son and his brother as well as the older son's relationship with the father.
Weldon chooses instead to focus just on the here and now of the reunion between father and son.
To my way of thinking, what makes this story so accessible is my understanding of the grace given by the parent and the grace demonstrated by the son of the son in receiving his father's gift of love.
It is particularly poignant for me, as I too have felt a bit like the younger son.
During my twenties and thirties, before Nancy and I were married, I was somewhat estranged from my mother. My dad had died while I was in high school and over the years we had drifted apart.
But eventually I began to grow up a tad and our relationship improved.
In her last couple of years she struggled with several health issues and eventually I got the call from my sister to come home as mom was not expected to live more than a couple of days.
I remember clearly that when I arrived at her house outside Boston is was already dark.
My mother was receiving around the clock nursing care and a hospital bed had been set up for her in a room on the main floor of the house.
When I walked in to see her, the room itself was quite dark with the only light coming from a small reading lamp on the table beside her bed.
Beside the nurse there were my two sisters in the small space. My older brothers had not yet arrived.
As I bent down to kiss her and whisper hello she reached up and taking my arm she smiled and said, "Welcome home, dear."
In that single moment I, who had felt lost and alone on so many occasions, suddenly felt that indeed I was home.
I felt that I had finally come to know my true self, and that I had experienced one of the greatest moments of grace in my life.
Consciously or not my mother had reached out and have given me the gift of a homecoming and for once I was open to receiving her gift.
Grace given and grace received. At that moment there was a spark of the divine between us. The grace of unconditional love was offered and received.
The grace that comes from an understanding that in spite of all our imperfections love and grace abound.
Living a life of grace is being open to the possibility that love's acceptance is always available to us should we want it or need it.
But Grace doesn't happen in isolation.
It only happens when we are aware of the love, the joy, the peace, kindness, goodness and faithfulness that our lives matter to us and they matter to others.
Life and grace are gifts. Your life. My life. Your understanding of grace and mine.
Our lives at times include great suffering, but also they include joy and peace and love.
And it is in our embrace of the life that surrounds us all that we come into the presence of grace and know it for the gift it is.
So, to get back to the phone call that was the start of this sermon.
Although I haven't been back to the home where I had grew up for many, many years, at some level, I knew that if I really wanted to it was still there.
Now, it is gone. I can't go back to visit even if I wanted to more than anything else in the world.
But in ways that will never be known by the caller, our conversation gave me permission to visit all the memories--good and bad--and to grieve the loss of an important place in my life.
She gave and I gladly received the gift of grace.
Amen and Blessed be.
Honest Grace
This sermon began as a message left on my answering machine.
A couple of weeks ago Nancy and I were enjoying our usual after dinner telephone chat that we have on the nights I'm out in Winchester and she is back in Fairfax.
Near the end of the conversation she added almost as a post script, "Oh, by the way, there's a message for you from someone asking if you are the Henry Ticknor who once lived at 40 Beech Road in Englewood, New Jersey."
As I thought about the name of the person who had called, I realized that the last name was the same as a family who had moved in next door to us back in the early fifties.
With no clue as to what she might want to talk to me about I dialed the number.
After a couple of rings a woman's voice answered and when I had introduced myself and told her who I was calling for she said she had made the call and did I remember that we had been neighbors for a few years back in the fifties and early sixties?
Well, without making too long a story out of the conversation, here is why she had called.
Back in 1953 her parents had purchased the property next to our house. The property they bought had once belonged to my paternal grandfather.
When my parents moved to New Jersey just before WWII, my grandfather had given them a piece of his land on which to build a house.
Now since this deal was, shall we say, all in the family, and it appears that there were certain unwritten understandings about where the property lines.
Even after my mother sold our house, the new owners seemed content to live with the fact that the neighbor's driveway cut through a corner of their property. After all, that's where the driveway had always been.
So fast-forward to today. It appears that the family that bought the house from my mother was moving on, and had sold the house and land to a developer. And here's the rub, as they say.
The new builder didn't want anything to do with any previous "understandings." Englewood, like many older suburbs, is undergoing McMansion expansion and our old house is scheduled to be demolished so that, as my caller described it, an immense Italian villa could be built in its place, and the new owner is adamant that the location of the drive is on his property and he wants it moved now.
"Well, fine," said the neighbors, "We knew this might happen one day, so we'll move it."
"Ah, not so fast," said the neighbors closest to where the new driveway was proposed to go, "We've never had to look at your driveway and with changes to zoning ordinances you can't move it next to our property line either."
So, it seems, the person who called me simply wanted me to verify that the driveway had always been where it is and that in reality it had been in its same location since my grandparents built their house in the early 1900s. End of story.... well, sort of.
During our conversation I found myself mentally walking over the old property.
I remembered the great sledding on what we called "the back hill" behind our houses.
I remembered the chestnuts from the old trees that my friends and I would hollow out and make pipes that we would smoke with tobacco purloined from our parents' cigarettes.
Yes, back then smoking, at least for adults, was still more or less ok.
I remembered that the house built by my grandparents had a pool where my siblings and I learned how to swim and how angry I was when the "new people" moved in and we lost access to that wonderful space.
I remembered the gardens my mother had meticulously maintained and where the big white tent had been set up for my older sister's wedding.
Gradually I began to think of some of the others who had lived on our street: the neighbor who had been the big game hunter in Africa and had this exotic trophy room; the man down the street who had his own golf cart and a putting green in his back yard.
I thought back to the days when I walked to school and where I learned to drive and so much more.
Even now I find other memories trying to creep in and wash over me.
So, after about 45 minutes of conversation and memory sharing we said our good bys. She thought that at some point lawyer A or Lawyer B might contact me for a statement but she wasn't sure and to date there have been no further conversations.
In the days that followed I often reflected on our conversation. The first thing I did was to call my sibs and say, "Guess what? The old house in Englewood is going to be demolished and there's a Hatfield and McCoy kind of feud going on about the location of the old driveway."
But as the time passed I found myself less and less engaged in the particulars of the story and more and more engaged with my memories of the old house.
Soon I came to see that this wasn't a story about a real estate deal gone sour; I realized that it was a story about grace.
Like other theological terms, grace, is not a word that I use very often. I don't know why because it is a perfectly good word that pops up in our language with some regularity.
We use the word graceful to describe the seemingly effortless beauty of physical movement.
In many homes we say "grace" before dinner.
In business we refer to the time between when a deal is made and the first payments are due as a "grace period."
We speak of being "in or out of grace" when we speak of certain relationships.
There are even individuals whose position of power or influence carries with it the title, "Your Grace."
In Christianity, grace is a word often used to convey God's divine love or protection.
The word grace itself comes from the Latin word Gratia, meaning favor, charm or thanks.
Many spiritual traditions share a similar understanding of this word. In Sanskrit grace is similar to the word for praise. In Judaism, the concept of grace is expressed by the Hebrew word hesed meaning mercy, or loving-kindness.
To some Buddhists grace is seen as a creative force--an act of exceptional kindness and goodness.
The lama Surya Das, author of Awakening the Buddha Within calls grace the "is-ness" of life. It's the recognition that everything is sacred and connected.
I suppose my own definition of grace would be more like this. Grace comes to us as an unexpected and unsolicited gift. that we receive.
We can experience moments of grace in our relationships with others. Those deep moments of true understanding and profound love, are moments that are full of grace.
We can experience moments of grace when we witness the beauty life holds--sunrises and sunsets; the sun reflected on blue water, a crystal clear night sky, and the delicacy of a snowflake.
But grace is also about gratitude. You know, as in recognizing and saying thanking for all of the gifts in our lives.
Perhaps the writer G.K. Chesterton said it best when he wrote, "You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."
So if grace abounds why it is so hard sometimes to be grateful for the gifts we receive?
For instance, sometimes I frequently have a hard time hearing compliments for the gifts that they are.
I might shrug my shoulders and say, "It was nothing, really." Even if it was a job that had taken exceptional effort or days to complete.
So when a compliment is given I need to remind myself to take a moment, to let the compliment embrace both the giver and the receiver, to look into the other's eyes, and then genuinely says, "Thank you."
To live a grace-filled life all that is required is for each of us to pay greater attention to our gifts and blessings, no matter how small or how large.
With greater attention we can be mindful of the smallest gifts that often go unnoticed:
The times when the water from the fountain is really fresh and cold; when someone fixes a meal just as you like it; when a co-worker upholds their end of the job; and when the heat of the sun melts the snow on the driveway.
Each of these, in its own way, are gifts that come to us without our asking for them. They are gifts for which we are grateful. These are the moments of grace that bring us closer to our true selves.
One of the great stories of grace, it seems to me, is the story of the prodigal son. What makes it such a wonderful story is its universality and its timelessness.
There are traces of this story in most of the world's great epics where the hero goes off to adventures far and wind only to return home changed in many ways and grateful for a new appreciation of what had been left behind.
Perhaps even in the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is playing the part of the prodigal daughter.
One of my favorite versions of the Prodigal son was written by the poet James Weldon Johnson.
This is a slightly updated version of the classic story and is written very much in the style of a sermon that might be given in a black church on a Sunday morning. Let me share this jazz poem with you.
"Young Man--
Young man--
your arm's too short to box with God.
But Jesus spake in a parable and he said:
A certain man had two sons.
Jesus didn't give this man a name,
But his name is God Almighty.
And Jesus didn't call these sons by name,
But every young man,
Ev'rywhere,
Is one of these two sons.
And the younger son said to his father,
He said: Father, divide up the property,
And give me my portion now.
And the father with tears in his eyes said: son,
Don't leave your father's house.
But the boy was stubborn in his head,
and haughty in his heart,
And he took his share of his father's goods,
And went into a far off country.
And the young man journeyed on his way,
And he said to himself as he traveled along:
This sure is an easy road,
Nothing like the rough furrows behind my father's plow."
As the Weldon's young man travels he comes to a city where the nights are as bright as day and where:
"The streets all crowded with people...
And everywhere the young man turned
There was singing and laughing and dancing."
"And the young man went off with his new found friend(s)
and bought himself some brand new clothes
And he spent his days in the drinking dens...
And he spent his nights in the gambling dens,
Throwing dice with the devil for his soul."
"And he met up with the women of (the city)
and they stripped him of his money, and they stripped him of his clothes,
and they left him broke and ragged in the city of Babylon."
But in time the young man sees the errors of his ways, and just as in scripture, he returns home where his father "put clean clothes upon his back, And a golden chain around his neck, He made a feast and killed the fatted calf, And invited the neighbors in."
It is interesting that Weldon's version of the story omits the relationship between the younger son and his brother as well as the older son's relationship with the father.
Weldon chooses instead to focus just on the here and now of the reunion between father and son.
To my way of thinking, what makes this story so accessible is my understanding of the grace given by the parent and the grace demonstrated by the son of the son in receiving his father's gift of love.
It is particularly poignant for me, as I too have felt a bit like the younger son.
During my twenties and thirties, before Nancy and I were married, I was somewhat estranged from my mother. My dad had died while I was in high school and over the years we had drifted apart.
But eventually I began to grow up a tad and our relationship improved.
In her last couple of years she struggled with several health issues and eventually I got the call from my sister to come home as mom was not expected to live more than a couple of days.
I remember clearly that when I arrived at her house outside Boston is was already dark.
My mother was receiving around the clock nursing care and a hospital bed had been set up for her in a room on the main floor of the house.
When I walked in to see her, the room itself was quite dark with the only light coming from a small reading lamp on the table beside her bed.
Beside the nurse there were my two sisters in the small space. My older brothers had not yet arrived.
As I bent down to kiss her and whisper hello she reached up and taking my arm she smiled and said, "Welcome home, dear."
In that single moment I, who had felt lost and alone on so many occasions, suddenly felt that indeed I was home.
I felt that I had finally come to know my true self, and that I had experienced one of the greatest moments of grace in my life.
Consciously or not my mother had reached out and have given me the gift of a homecoming and for once I was open to receiving her gift.
Grace given and grace received. At that moment there was a spark of the divine between us. The grace of unconditional love was offered and received.
The grace that comes from an understanding that in spite of all our imperfections love and grace abound.
Living a life of grace is being open to the possibility that love's acceptance is always available to us should we want it or need it.
But Grace doesn't happen in isolation.
It only happens when we are aware of the love, the joy, the peace, kindness, goodness and faithfulness that our lives matter to us and they matter to others.
Life and grace are gifts. Your life. My life. Your understanding of grace and mine.
Our lives at times include great suffering, but also they include joy and peace and love.
And it is in our embrace of the life that surrounds us all that we come into the presence of grace and know it for the gift it is.
So, to get back to the phone call that was the start of this sermon.
Although I haven't been back to the home where I had grew up for many, many years, at some level, I knew that if I really wanted to it was still there.
Now, it is gone. I can't go back to visit even if I wanted to more than anything else in the world.
But in ways that will never be known by the caller, our conversation gave me permission to visit all the memories--good and bad--and to grieve the loss of an important place in my life.
She gave and I gladly received the gift of grace.
Amen and Blessed be.