PASTOR’S NOTE

Rev. Skitch Matson

The tune of Amazing Grace can be picked up by just about everyone, can’t it? Even those of us who wouldn’t expect ourselves to be part of a choir (or, run from the thought of singing in one) can pick it up. When those first few notes hit the organ, or the piano, or the guitar, (Buh bah! Ba-bo-ba!) every one of us—the regular churchgoers, the doubters, the happy, the sad, you and me—we are transformed into a choir of saints and sinners who sing to God those hope-filled words. We sing for faith, we sing to cry out, we sing for healing, we sing for hope. We sing for God’s grace to transform this mess of a world that we find ourselves in, and to transform us, who often feel like we’re a mess ourselves.

Throughout the verses we are naming God’s Grace coming to us before we can believe it to be true (Methodists like to call this Prevenient Grace); we name the ways we’ve messed up this gift of God’s love, and how, even still, God forgives us (this is Justifying Grace); and we name how God’s grace, over time, is transforming us from the inside out to be more like Jesus in all that we do (this is Sanctifying Grace). And just like that, whether we knew it or not, we’ve been gifted a theology lesson wrapped up in a song.

We Methodists like to do that. Rather than having shelves of books to read on our theology, the old adage for Methodist theology is: take a look at our hymns. While Charles Wesley may not have written this one, it was still common throughout America in the 18th and 19th centuries by Methodists trying to live faithful lives in the midst of the mess the world was in at that time. From enslaved people singing the final verse (When we’ve been there ten thousand years…) to bring hope amidst the sinful injustices perpetuated against them, to Native Cherokee peoples doing the same thing while walking the Trail of Tears, this song has been a balm for so many during their lowest of lows, a steady anchor when things are out of our control.

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