414 - Geometry and Grace

Geometry and Grace
By Donald R. Purkey

GRACE is the most constant salutation in Paul's epistles. "Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ." Again and again this quality of the divine action is bestowed upon both individuals and churches in Paul's greetings. Then in the final benedictions of his letters he again reiterates this bestowal.

The Christian man has some appreciation of the possibility of grace coming to him directly from God. Yet, for most of us, there is a lack of appreciation of grace's being mediated other than privately. We are at a loss to comprehend the fact of grace being given to groups of men, to churches. But Paul sets an even larger stumbling block in our path to understanding grace by presuming him-

415 - Geometry and Grace

self to be a channel of this grace. Grace would seem to come to the recipients of his letter from God through him. This offends the spiritual sensibility of most of us. Grace is something that comes directly or not at all. Somehow, we feel that grace flows to the individual in an unbroken circuit from God. No mediation is necessary because we have so frequently assumed that the isolated Christian has his own private channel to God.

Grace is very much like light. The sun's rays may hit us directly but more often than not they come to us bent and reflected. Sometimes the reflected light, because of the mirrorlike quality of its object, can intensify the direct rays and the result is amazing light. Does not "amazing grace" work similarly? Because of the mirrorlike quality of another man, God's grace comes to us with a power and intensity we might never experience alone.

God uses men as his reflectors of grace to other men. God employs finite beings as channels of his infinite care and concern for each other. This is a basis for our inter-dependence. But God also employs congregations as reflectors to other congregations. His grace may be mirrored from rural parish to suburban congregation to city church and back again. Reflected grace is the power which invigorates and enables individual congregations to come into the fullness of relatedness which is theirs in the body of Christ.

This possibility of inter-dependence was a way of life for the early church's existence. Though separated by language and distance they shared an inter-relatedness founded in God's graciousness in Jesus Christ that afforded both mutual support, care, and dependence. Having grace in common they had all in common. Grace was the coefficient of their corporate life.

When we begin to take the reality of the reflective possibility of grace seriously, no longer need we view grace as a special gift bestowed upon the man who isolates himself from others in his attempts both to be purer and closer to God. The same applies to congregations and denominations. Grace now may become a quality present in the marketplace, in the agora of man's existence. Grace is an operative force in the meeting and encounter of man with man, of group with group, and it is reflected in man's relatedness to his brother creature. It is reflected in the affirmation of our interdependence.

Just as the light is enhanced by its reflection, so is grace enhanced

416 - Geometry and Grace

in its mediation. There exists a certain kind of dialogical movement in the mediation of grace between persons. In a real way this phenomenon is best illustrated in the relationships of children. They have little of the fear, egotism, or pride that would tarnish their responses and dim the possibilities of reflection. Theirs is a freedom which permits a total and committed response. One of the most captivating examples of this can be seen in an episode of J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. This particular incident occurs near the end of the book and involves the hero, Holden Caulfield, a troubled adolescent, and his younger sister, Phoebe. Holden gives Phoebe a ride on a carrousel. Phoebe truly enjoys her ride. Holden catching her enjoyment appreciates her enjoyment. In turn, Phoebe enjoys Holden's enjoyment of her enjoyment. The pleasure and thanksgiving experienced by the two of them are reflected, moving back and forth between them, enhanced with every movement.

A further clue to the mediation of grace is offered in this fictional parable. Grace is not only reflected inter-personally but it builds with each response. And the rate of progression is more than arithmetic. It is geometric. Instead of grace merely being added to grace, it is multiplied by each renewed experience of it until one is bound to proclaim at last that grace is everywhere.

Perhaps man's potential for reception and reflection is the most generous "means of grace." That potential was realized in the Incarnation when the "light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ" entered our darkness. Through grace we were made lights, and through grace we share that light. So as any of us in Christ's body do his will, we become reflectors to all others in the body, lights by which we may see ourselves and our brother and ultimately the face of our common Christ.