Luke 1:57-66; Last night of Simbanggabi

“Goodness gracious, great balls of fire” is a song sung by rock and roll singer Jerry Lee Lewis in 1957. “Great balls of fire” is an old American southern exclamation of surprise (or dismay). The modern equivalent is OMG. Or SMY (SusMarYosep). I don’t know how the expression “great balls of fire” (let’s call it GBF) came about. The only GBF’s I know are stars, including our sun.

“Goodness gracious” comes to mind because, well, today the name John, given to the child of Elizabeth and Zechariah, means “God is gracious”. In Hebrew, “Jehohanan”. So tonight, we will ponder what goodness gracious or God’s graciousness is all about. I suggest we consider where grace happens, when it happens, and what happens after.

Three points then. First, grace works in “surprisable” people. Second, grace comes before, not after. And third, grace begets gratitude.

The first point. Grace works in surprisable people. This is only because grace is gift and a gift is something we do not expect. The opposite of gift is payment, some token or reward we are entitled to for whatever we’ve done or become. There is always an element of GDG (golpe de gulat or stroke of surprise) in grace.

Even as we prepare to celebrate the birth of our Lord (already a surprise in itself), there are already these pre-Christmas trailer GDG’s: the virgin is with child; a senior citizen couple begets a child; a priest is muted upon an angel’s annunciation; a woman’s voice holds sway over a man’s; tradition is defied when the name John not Zechariah junior is given.

Chesterton once lamented how an eclipse seems to always surprise us, and even frighten us. We are no longer startled by the fact that there is even a sun at all, this great ball of fire. The risk is real that Christmas becomes an old toy to which we’ve grown accustomed or entitled. Let us pray we never grow too old to be unsurprisable.

The second point. Grace comes “before” not “after”. This is to say that grace does not wait. Grace takes the initiative. Grace makes the first move. It is not conditioned on reciprocity or some prospect of return. That sukli (“change”) may come later or not at all, and it really does not matter.

Before we could even love back, God loved us first (1 Jn 4:19). This is the wonderful and liberating sequence of grace: love comes first, not later. Forgiveness is given before, not after.

If grace comes before, not after, we wonder then what we ever did or did not do to deserve it. Grace is like the indescribable joy we once gave our parents when we were born to them. We did not really do much, we only had to be the fruit of their love to be loved by them. Even before we could fold our little hands around their finger, their hearts were already wrapped around ours.

If love comes first, not later, it is because of who the parent is, not the child; it is because of who the Lover is, not the beloved. If grace comes before, not after, it is because of who God is, and not so much who we are or what we can ever become.

Third point. Grace begets gratitude. Can there be any other response? Let us pray to be thankful always. We can never be thankful for things that are not gifts, so-called entitlements we suppose we deserve. An entitled heart is a proud heart. An entitled person is never a grateful one. Let us pray to be small enough again to see the utter bigness and graciousness of life.

Sa totoo lang, there is no way to reciprocate or equalize grace. We say utang na loob to describe a debt or favor or gift that goes so deep into our loob it is “unrepayable” or “unrequitable”. Debts on the surface can always be collateralized. Grace, on the other hand, can never be repaid. We see this when we turn to our “loob” to realize what we are made of, and to confess how dependent we have always been on the goodness of others and the graciousness of God.

All this is not to say that reciprocating grace is futile or that gratitude is just an emotion to warm the heart. When we realize the gracious goodness we have received, we offer the grace back, forward, sideways, freely and every which way possible. We know the gift is not ours to hoard. Grace is given to be shared with others. Gratitude is expressed in generosity, however unequal that will always be to the goodness gracious we have received.

In closing then, the gracious goodness of God is about grace working in surprisable people; grace coming before, not after; and grace upon grace, begetting gratitude.

The ultimate GDG of Christmas is this: the gift is the Giver. Let us please not miss the Giver for all the gifts on offer. The grace is the Giver. And this grace is greater, surely much greater than any great ball of fire.