Last Saturday, our Diocese hosted “Leadership Day.” The speakers were both excellent—entertaining and insightful and, as it happens, in agreement on the important issues. Both talked in different ways about what makes Churches flourish. And what I took from both is that Churches flourish when they help people come to know God better.
 
One of the speakers quoted at some length a 1930 letter from Evelyn Underhill to the Archbishop of Canterbury in which she reminds him that—this is close to a quote—the really interesting thing about religion is God. The speaker noted the irony that she felt the need to remind the Archbishop of this!
 
A second point on which the speakers agreed was that Churches can help people to know God better in part by promoting daily spiritual disciplines. We come to know God better if we are spending regular—ideally daily—time in prayer and Bible study. Regular attendance at worship helps.
 
I would add, and I am sure they would agree, that living lives of service helps. Practicing forgiveness in our relationships helps. But I am grateful for what I heard as a call to return to the classic spiritual disciplines. If our Churches can facilitate that return, they will flourish. More to the point, they will deserve to flourish because they will be doing what they were formed by God to do. May it be so.

Mostly my Lent disciplines this year build on what I was already doing. That includes my effort to practice Sabbath. I normally try to stay off the computer on Saturdays and Sundays, especially off e-mail and the internet. For Lent, I have expanded that slightly. But my main goal is to become more legalistic about observing my little Sabbaths.
 
That may seem ironic. After all, the Gospels are pretty clear that the Sabbath was a regular point of contention between Jesus and the Pharisees. They objected to the healings that he did on the Sabbath. He responded that the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath. That is to say, the Sabbath is a gift from God for our benefit, not something to obsess over.
 
But times have changed. Now the problem that I experience is the opposite from what Jesus experienced. We don’t have people enforcing Sabbath observance in uncharitable ways, at least not in my life. Instead, thanks to technology, artificial lights, and an obsession with productivity, I, and many others, find it difficult ever to stop working.
 
In our day, keeping a Sabbath seems like a necessity for our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. But keeping a Sabbath is also counter-cultural enough that it is hard to do. Obligations creep into my weekend, to the point that I find myself working much of Saturday and Sunday. Sunday is probably inevitable for a priest, but still.
 
So I aspire to a greater Sabbath legalism. I want to develop the habit of refusing to attend meetings on Saturdays, and going with whatever sermon I have as of Friday evenings, and of truly honoring my commitment not to get on my computer on weekends. And, at least until that habit is formed, I am going to have to be legalistic to make it happen.
 
I would like to think that Jesus approves. Indeed, I suspect that if Jesus were to come back, he would remind us that the Sabbath is a gift from God for our well-being and that we should use it. He would add that we need to remember always that we are not made simply for work, but rather that work is made for us. That is, he would want us to feel less obligated to work all the time when more work was not in our best interests. At least I hope so!!

In Holy Currencies, Eric Law describes what he calls the grace margin. He is talking primarily about how Churches can make proper decisions, but he is explicit that his points apply to any group of people, from families up to our nation.
 
The grace margin exists between the “safe zone” and the “fear zone.”
 
The safe zone is what is familiar. The people who are in the safe zone with us are the people who agree with us and reinforce the ideas that we already hold and the practices that we already do. We all need a safe zone.
 
The fear zone is where we go when we are pushed too far beyond our comfort level. In the fear zone, we tend to lash out and/or to respond to challenges in hostile and legalistic ways. Our (often unconscious) goal, when we are in the fear zone, is to get back to safety as quickly as possible.
 
Law argues that truly creative problem solving cannot happen in either the safe zone or the fear zone: the one reinforces our current habits and the other is so uncomfortable that we shut down. The “grace margin” is the area in between. In the grace margin we can perhaps let go of our entrenched ways of thinking long enough to consider genuinely different options without falling into what feels like chaos.
 
In our culture, it often seems as if there is virtually no grace margin at all. Many of us talk and act as if others are either with us, meaning they agree with us in full, or against us, meaning disagree with us in any way.
 
By contrast, Jesus seemed to live in the grace margin. He was a holy man who socialized with sinners and tax-collectors. He constantly offered people a new way of seeing their world, which his hearers experienced as a new way of teaching, with unprecedented authority and truth. Many responded in fear, of course. But in Jesus others could hear God’s truth and God’s way and God’s life.
 
As followers of Jesus, we are called to seek out grace margins. More, we are called to do everything we can to expand grace margins by developing relationships with those who differ from us, listening to the voices of those who are sometimes silenced or ignored, speaking truth with courage and love.
 
If we could expand the grace margins in our own lives even a little bit, and if we could join with others who are doing the same, we would be offering a powerful and much-needed witness in our world. May God give us the grace to do so!