MAY 2019

From the Pastor’s Desk

The Grace of God Has No Boundaries

Celebrate the Gifts of Women

That God is a boundary-crosser is not new. Nor is the thought that God’s grace flows through the world unhampered by human-made borders. These ideas were part of Jewish thought long before Peter had the boundary-busting vision recorded in Acts 10. Ancient Israel worshipped the stranger-loving “God of Gods” (Deut. 10:17–18) who “remove(d) boundaries” (Is. 10:13) and exemplified “impartiality” (2 Chr. 19:7). Certainly, by the time Peter came along, the idea that God might choose to cross divisions created by God’s own people—the kind William James (William James, Writings, 1902–1910 (New York: Library of America, 1987), 1264.) referred to as accidental fences we build against the stream of our connectedness1—was not new.

But transcending boundaries must have felt completely new to Peter. How do we know that? Because it feels that way to most every one of us when we see God’s grace transcending boundaries.

It is not difficult now to think of Peter’s Acts 10 sermon helping to break down the boundaries the early Christians had set around God’s grace. days we celebrate God’s grace blowing through the structures that once held back women’s leadership or opposed children’s rights or delayed justice for victims of domestic violence. We are happy about this grace. But when the time comes for us to see God’s grace extend across a boundary that has comforted or advantaged us, it can feel like a whole new thing, and it can feel risky enough that we might think twice about being part of it.

Crossing barriers made by Mildred Grady think twice and then some.  She was an earnest African American teacher and librarian who worked at a high school in Arkansas in the 1950s. One of her students was a truant, shoplifting senior named Olly Neal. He pushed back on her attempts to teach him—turning away, mocking her publicly and bringing her to tears. One day, he wandered into the school library and was drawn to a book with a slightly risqué cover—The Treasure of Pleasant Valley by Frank Yerby. Because Olly didn’t want to be thought of as someone who would ever check a book out of a library, he swiped it. As he read it at home under the covers that night, a new world opened.

Later, when he sneaked it back onto the shelf of the library, he discovered there was another Frank Yerby book he had not noticed before. He took that one, too. The pattern continued, with Olly swiping, reading, returning, discovering, swiping, reading, returning, discovering—through four cycles. Enough, of course, for a conversion to occur. A reader was born.

Lord our God, or partiality, or taking of bribes.”

Acts 10  ³⁴ Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, ³⁵ but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

Only many years later did Olly Neal—the first African American to be appointed district prosecuting attorney in Arkansas, then judge, then appellate court judge—find out the truth. Mrs. Grady had seen him take that first book. The next Saturday she had driven 70 miles to Memphis to see if she could find another book by that same author. She had no expense account, of course, as a teacher in a segregated black school. She paid for the books herself. It took her three tries to find a store with the book she was looking for and two more Saturday road trips to fill out the shelf. At the class reunion where Olly and Mrs. Grady finally compared notes, she told him how excited she had been to see him swipe that second book. Extending the hand of grace across all kinds of divides is what the people of God do. It is God’s own work so often done by his daughters and always blessed by God’s love.

From Horizons Magazine, Nov/Dec 2018

Deu 10:17-18 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

¹⁷ For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, ¹⁸ who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.

2 Chr 19:7 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

⁷ Now, let the fear of the Lord be upon you; take care what you do, for there is no perversion of justice with the Lord our God, or partiality, or taking of bribes.”

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Address by Lawrence N. DiCostanzo

Under sentence of death like me,
Jesus says “Eat my body!
Drink my blood!”
He’s crazy. Crazy!
And people start to leave.
Because in the face of
Crazy God, what do we say?
He asks “Are you leaving, too?”
And today I say to him,
“Lord, where shall I go?”

Robin by Jeanne Murray Walker

In their beaks they carry the chaos of the world,
odd strings, twigs and feathers, scrip-scraps,
the two of them all week weave together

on our front porch until, nimble and tough,
their architecture balances on our red shutter
and she tries it out for a day like a woman

nesting a hat on her head this way, then that,
flitting up, floating down, before she settles
wholly into it and sits, her shiny black eyes

unblinking, unperturbed as silence itself,
like God brooding over the face of the deep,
come night, still calmer, welcoming the dark,
which is his creature, as even chaos is.

Acts 10  ³⁴ Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, ³⁵ but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.