Biography
Dr. Thomas Long is from Atlanta, Georgia, where he is Professor of Preaching at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. Tom is a Presbyterian minister and the author of several books on the art of preaching. He’s also a frequent guest speaker for audiences across the country. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

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          and 30 Good Minutes.

"Amazing and Uncomfortable Grace"
Several years ago, there was an absolutely fascinating study done of America’s favorite music and one of the discoveries was that for many Americans one of their favorite songs is actually an old hymn, Amazing Grace. Perhaps you know how it goes: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.” But what exactly is grace? And what makes it amazing?

You know, when we use the word grace in ordinary conversation, we tend to downsize the word. We’ll say things like, “She’s a very graceful young woman,” and we mean she dances well. Or, “He’s a very gracious host,” and we mean he says nice things at dinner parties. We tend to use the word grace in small ways. But when the New Testament uses the word grace, it uses it in a very big way. It’s a powerful word. It’s an amazing word. In fact, it’s so powerful that sometimes grace can be quite uncomfortable.

When the New Testament uses the English word grace, it’s actually the translation of a Greek word, charis, which means “gift.” And this is the New Testament’s way of saying that at the very center of life there is a God who is not a punitive judge or a scolding parent, but a God who gives gift after gift after gift. That’s grace.

I was reading an essay by the Roman Catholic short story writer, Andre Dubus, the other day and he said in the story that as a Catholic he participates in the sacraments of the Roman Catholic church—Eucharist, Baptism and the other sacraments—and he knows that they are signs of grace. But because he participates in the sacraments, he said, he has his eyes opened to the fact that life everyday actually has thousands of sacraments. The sunshine that comes in the window in the early morning is a sacrament, in a way. A gift from God. The wind that blows in the trees is a sacrament. When you touch the hand of someone you love, that’s a gift, a sacrament. Even a ham sandwich, he says, can be a sacrament.

Now, we often miss these gifts that come to us everyday because we are numb to them or we expect them as a part of our entitlement in life. And I think sometimes it takes running up against our limits in life, even our mortality in life, to know what a gift lies at the center of life. I spoke once with a man who had had a severe heart attack and he said, “It was not until after my heart attack that I began to realize what a precious gift everyday is.”

The New York Times columnist, Anatole Broyard, when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer did not turn bitter but he began to number his days and began to realize how everyday marvelous gifts would come to him. In his journal he said, “Yesterday my wife made a hamburger for me and it was the best hamburger in the history of the world.”

So when the New Testament talks about grace, it’s talking about the gifts that are from God at the heart of life, but it’s also talking about more. It’s talking about how our very relationship with God is a matter of grace, a matter of gift. If we had to stand before God on our own strength, our own moral character, our own merit, well none of us would be able to do it. We are human beings and we are flawed and broken. So we stand before God as a gift of God.

When I was in seminary and preparing to be a minister, in one of my courses one of the assignments was to spend some time in criminal court, simply observing what was happening there. I quickly discerned that real criminal court is not like Judge Judy or the People’s Court or Perry Mason. In a real criminal court, most of the defendants have been there a number of times and the real question for them is not will I be found innocent or guilty—most of them are expecting to be found guilty. The question for them is, who’s the judge in court today? Some judges are hard and tough and some are compassionate and kind, and they’re hoping for a judge with some mercy.

Well, the Apostle Paul once imagined that all of us were in court, God’s court, and we were standing there knowing that we’re guilty and wondering who’s the judge today. And then the door to the chambers opens and the judge is none other than Jesus Christ, who died for us and loved us to the end and loves us still and is our advocate. And the verdict that day was a surprise verdict. We know we’re guilty but the verdict was, “Innocent.”

I was once talking with a young mother who said that her eight-year-old daughter came to her one day and said, “Mommy, if you’ve done something bad and say you’re sorry and you really do mean it, can it be okay?”

Well, the mother, not knowing exactly what her daughter meant said to her, “Of course, if you really mean you’re sorry things can be okay.”

And her daughter said, “Well, you know that piece of furniture that you really love?”

Well, her mother did know that piece of furniture. It was family heirloom, a sofa she had inherited from her great-grandmother: “Yes?”

The little girl said, “Well, yesterday I was so angry at you, mommy, I took my crayons and I wrote, ‘Stupid mommy, stupid mommy,’ all over that sofa.”

The mother groaned inside. That was a family heirloom, but she loved her daughter and so she said, “Because you are very sorry about it, it can be okay.” And they went and they got a bucket of water and some rags and they gently scrubbed that sofa and restored it to the way that it ought to be.

The mother said to me, “You know, I think that’s a metaphor for how God treats us. In grace he cleans us so that we are made like new. It’s grace.” And when we have experienced this kind of grace it can be uncomfortable because it lets us know down at the depths of our being that we are not self-made people. Everything that we are, everything that we have comes as a gift as the grace of God.

It was in the news recently that there is a luxury apartment building in a very fancy housing district in my town and it was discovered that some of the residents of this apartment building were actually on public assistance. They were what we used to call welfare folks. Well, when that news came out, the homeowners in that very fashionable section of town were outraged. They didn’t want their property values coming down so they demanded and got a public hearing. I watched a little of it on the news and the first person to go to the microphone was a young mother with a baby on her hip. Her story was that when she got pregnant, her boyfriend took the car and left her. Left her with nothing. After the baby was born she managed to get a job as a maid in one of the local motels and if she didn’t have the apartment she couldn’t have the job, and if she didn’t have the job she couldn’t feed the baby. And she begged for the assistance to continue. The next person to the microphone was a homeowner who said that he and his wife had poured their life savings into their home and they wanted their investment protected. He turned and looked at the young mother with the baby and he said, “I understand how you fell, but I earned mine and you’re going to have to earn yours.”

Well, when you have experienced grace, you can never look another human being in the face again and say, “I earned mine, you’re going to have to earn yours,” because everything we have is a gift of God. Everything is grace. Everything.

Interview with Thomas Long

Lydia Talbot: Thank you, Tom, for your wonderful description of grace as gift, the personality of God. But that implies receptivity, doesn’t it?

Tom Long: Yes it does. When I think back on my days as a parent of young children, I know how often I made mistakes as a parent. For example, I cannot believe that I got on a plane to go give a speech one time instead of going to the Father-Daughter Banquet at the Campfire Girls. I can’t believe I did that! But now my daughter, who is in her 30s, sent me a birthday card saying you’re the best dad any daughter could ever have. That’s grace. I don’t merit that, but I receive it with gratitude.

Delle Chatman: Tom, your message really spoke to me having had a couple of brushes with mortality. You learn how fragile life is and you learn how it really is a gift moment by moment. How do you think someone can come to that kind of an understanding without having it all sort of put on the altar, jeopardized, and at risk? How does a person who’s perfectly healthy, sitting pretty comfortable, understand how delicate it all is?

Tom Long:  That’s right. When we do encounter something serious it knocks the props out from under us and we recognize that we have not been as self-sufficient as we thought. I think sometimes lesser experiences in life knock the props out one at a time. We have an upsetting day at work or we maybe lose a job or we have an argument in our marriage or some crisis happens that lets us know that if there were not forgiveness and kindness, mercy and grace, life wouldn’t be worth living. It exposes that vulnerable nerve, I think.

Delle Chatman:  And it’s also implied that even though it’s all fragile, it’s all hanging on God, we’re supposed to dare, we’re supposed to take risks, we’re supposed to spend it all!

Tom Long:  Grace does not create passivity. Not in the least. When you recognize that everything is a gift, you seize that gift and maximize it. And, as a matter of fact, you become a gift giving person yourself.

Lydia Talbot: And it’s a gift that comes at the least expected moment, isn’t it? There is a wonderful line out of A Passage to India with Peggy Ashcroft as Mrs. Moore, and she says, as everything is shattering around her: “Life rarely gives us what we think appropriate. Nevertheless, adventures do occur, though not punctually.” Isn’t that profoundly theological?

Tom Long:  Absolutely. There is an intrinsic ingredient of surprise in grace. It comes at a time we didn’t expect it, through people we didn’t expect and in ways we never counted on.

Lydia Talbot: I have to ask you, Tom, what is your own personal encounter—you told us about the wonderful note from your daughter—along your journey spiritually?

Tom Long:  I think I’m in the ministry because of grace. I was pre-med in college and was headed to medical school. And there was in the town where my college was a minister who was standing tall for civil rights, as this was during the civil rights movement. It was an all white congregation, a white pastor, and with great gentleness he was giving his congregation the gift of courage and standing tall for this. And they were beating him up about it and rejecting him. He never paid them back. I thought, there is a life marked by grace and I would like to be like that. And so an imitation of that kind of gracefulness in him has become a guiding light for me in my own ministry.

Delle Chatman:  So you’re saying it’s contagious?

Tom Long:  It is contagious.

Delle Chatman: As a matter of fact, we’d be better off if it were sort of an epidemic of grace. And if Christians, if people of faith everywhere, allowed themselves to let that gift flow through them to their brothers and sisters.

Tom Long: I think we underestimate the power of one grace-filled person in a sea of people who need grace, having the capacity to model that and allow it become contagious for others. It’s a light on a hill.

Delle Chatman:  Truly.

Lydia Talbot: The reality of divine mystery transcends time and space. I mean grace as sacrament and it comes to us, as you referred to us in your talk, in ways that are not always connected with our understanding of sacredness or faith or even sacrament. Looking at a film or reading a poem or saying the “Hail, Mary” together.

Tom Long:  That’s right. Grace is not confined inside the walls of a church. What happens in a church or a synagogue or a community of faith is that there are these paradigmatic experiences that operate like lenses that allow us to see grace everywhere, happening everywhere.

Delle Chatman:  And do you thing there is a way that ministers can sort of enlighten their congregations to see grace as the fuel that can ignite their congregation, ignite the faith within people? I mean it’s sort of an ephemeral concept. It doesn’t get preached about much.

Tom Long:  That’s right. I think in good preaching this can happen. But I think good ministry also recognizes that grace is popping out there in the community and it just points at it and says, look, look everywhere.

Lydia Talbot: It’s a sensitizing role, isn’t it, for communicators of the faith? And, of course, you at Candler School of Theology at Emory University are doing this everyday in your classroom teaching preaching, aren’t you?

Tom Long:  I hope that we are. And the best ministry recognizes we are floating in a sea of God’s grace. Look, look, look. That’s the first word of ministry.

Lydia Talbot: How are you communicating this to your students? I mean, I know that you said to us earlier that most of your students are young, young people.

Tom Long:  They are young. What we know—I teach preaching—is that people learn how to preach like they learn how to parent: by watching other people do it. And so in addition to doing the scales in class, I mean we are teaching some techniques and things in class, modeling it. My students sometimes say they can’t tell the difference between a lecture and a sermon in my class and I’m flattered when they say that.

Lydia Talbot: As a son of the South, do you think you learned about grace differently in that little country church that you grew up in?

Tom Long:  I don’t think grace is different in the South than it is anywhere else, but I think the culture mediates it. And I have lived through the recent struggles of the South and I think that anyone who has lived through that in the South has seen powerful examples of grace. I live in a town where Martin Luther King, Jr. was from. We’ve seen it embodied.

Delle Chatman:  And you know the origin of Amazing Grace, the hymn? Having been written by a captain of slave traders who, once he saw the light, said I can’t do this anymore. “I once was blind, but now I see.”

Tom Long:  That’s right. Once you have the experience of grace you can’t take advantage of other human beings.

Delle Chatman:  Things change. Everything changes for love.

Tom Long:  Absolutely.

Delle Chatman:  Thank you so much, Tom. This has been so enlightening and so inspiring.

Tom Long:  It’s good to be here.