A Sermon: Good Grief

Grace can take away guilt, but it often leaves grief.

If you’re new around here: We Can Stay Human is a space for honest faith, honest grief, and the slow work of becoming whole. No bypassing, numbing, or rushing ourselves (or each other) past what is true.

But this week’s post is a little different. I used to be a pastor (sometimes I’ll introduce myself as a recovering Lutheran pastor). While I officially left that world in 2010, every once in a while The Sanctuary in Denver invites me back to preach. Last Sunday they did, and I shared a sermon on grief called “Good Grief.” It’s a reflection on the strange, holy terrain that often opens up after truth-telling, repentance, and repair.

Even if you don’t embrace a specific faith tradition, my hope is that it helps you stay human in the presence of relentless love.

Watch (audio available here)

The Whole Story

In November of 2018, I was sitting in this room, right here in The Sanctuary, just before a service. Without warning a wave of grief hit me. Not the kind of grief that comes when someone dies, though I’ve come to know that kind too.

This was a different grief. It was grief about the way I’d lived, grief about things I’d done, grief about the ways I’d hurt people, grief about the gap between who I was and who I wanted to be.

And I can trace that wave back to a sentence spoken to me a little earlier in that season, a sentence that, at the time, felt like an accusation, but in hindsight was also a kind of mercy.

My soon-to-be ex-wife looked at me and said, “You have all kinds of grace for perpetrators, but no mercy for victims.”

In other words: I could extend radical forgiveness toward myself, and even toward people who caused harm, but I didn’t know how to hold the reality of what harm does to the harmed. I didn’t know how to make room for accountability and repair.

I had a kind of grace that wanted to move quickly to “It’s fine,” “God forgives,” “Let’s not dwell,” “Let’s move on.” A grace that treated forgiveness like a delete button.

But that is not resurrection. That is not restorative justice. And it is not the Kingdom of God coming on earth as it is in heaven.

Rather, it’s what I would describe as an “incomplete grace,” which is a common side effect of shrinking a gospel about a renewed world into a personal ticket to eternity, a gospel that saves souls while leaving bodies, relationships, and communities to deal with the fallout alone. That kind of “salvation” is too small.

The Gospel that Jesus preached and the one that the Early Church carried forward was not about evacuation. Rather it is embodiment. It is liberation. It is new creation already unfolding in real lives, real systems, and real repair.

And like the effects of my hurtful actions didn’t just disappear, that grief didn’t pass quickly either. It became a kind of companion for the next year and a half.

And here’s something else I didn’t expect: as I stayed with grief over what I’d done, it opened me to an entire landscape of other griefs.

Grief for the harm done to others.

Grief for the harm done to me, and to the parts of me that had never known love.

Grief for the ways injustice bends a whole world out of shape.

Grief for what I never received.

Grief that didn’t start with me at all, but came down through family lines and cultural stories.

It was like repentance did not just expose a single wound, it returned me to the truth of being human in a broken world. And that widening was not a distraction from the Kingdom, it was part of my apprenticeship to it. Because you can’t move toward the reign of God without letting love teach you what to grieve.

At first, I didn’t know what to do with it. I tried to think my way out of it. I tried to outrun it. I tried to spiritualize it.

But it kept coming back. Not as punishment. Not as God’s anger. More like truth knocking on the door of my body.

Thesis: Grace can take away guilt, but it often leaves grief

And here’s what I learned in that year and a half. When grace takes away guilt, it often leaves grief. Because grace, when we receive it in fullness, allows us to see the world around us more clearly, more honestly, and less defensively.

So grace might cancel a debt, but it will leave you standing in the ruins.

Grace will forgive you, but it also invites you to wake up and see the world through divine eyes.

Grace says, “You are mine,” even as it leads you through the slow ache of becoming trustworthy again.

All that is to say that grace takes away guilt, but it often leaves grief. And that grief, tended in the presence of relentless love, becomes a path to a richer grace and personal transformation.

That’s what I mean by “Good Grief.” Not pleasant grief. Not romantic grief. But grief that tells the truth, softens the heart, and opens a person into the life of God.

And if “Easter” means anything beyond a day on the calendar, if it means life under the reign of the risen Christ, which means life “after Easter” is not life without grief.

It’s life where love refuses to let us stay numb.

It’s life where the mercy of God is not only comfort, but also courage.

It’s life where grief becomes one of the ways love makes us real.

So today I want to take us into two ancient texts: one is a story and the other a prayer. Then I want to use a framework created by Francis Weller in his book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, to help us not only name and explore the kinds of grief we carry, but also to practice a different posture toward grief.

Not analysis. Not a lecture. An invitation.

An invitation to let grief do what it is trying to do, which is not to ruin your life, but to return you to it.

An invitation to stop treating grief as a problem to solve and start treating it as a truth to be tended.

An invitation to discover that sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is feel what love has been asking you to feel.

Practice: Clay (an embodied way to stay present)

Now before we go any farther, I want us to do something embodied, something simple enough for a child and honest enough for an adult. Because I realize that grief is uncomfortable, and I don’t want you to mentally or emotionally shut down as I invite you to dig in. So we’re going to put something in your hands. Not to fix anything, but to both help your body stay present and give your heart a constant reminder of how grief works.

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This is one of the practices that is part of my new online course:
Time Doesn’t Heal All Wounds, But Tending Does

In it, you’ll find this and other rituals, teaching, guided meditations,
and other tools to help you engage with grief.

---

Congregational practice: clay (a way to stay present)

So as you walked in today, you received a little baggy with a piece of clay in it. Go ahead and take it out.

Before you do anything with it, just notice what it feels like. It may feel cool. It may feel a little dry. It may feel stiff, like it doesn’t want to cooperate. The first feeling many of us have when it comes to grief is, “I don’t like this.”

And really, it doesn’t matter what kind of grief we carry. Whether the grief comes from what we’ve done or what’s been done to us, grief often shows up as the moment our bodies stop cooperating with denial. It’s the moment truth finally reaches the nervous system. It’s love refusing to let us stay numb. And whatever the source of the grief, the sensation is uncomfortable.

So we pick it up for a second. We don’t like the sensation. We don’t like what it brings up in us. We don’t like the way it interrupts the story we were trying to live. So we put it back down. We set it on a shelf. We tuck it in a drawer. We swallow it. We distract ourselves. We keep moving.

Then a week later, a month later, a year later, something happens that forces it back into our hands. And it feels exactly the same, cool, dry, stiff. And because it feels exactly the same, we assume nothing has changed.

And in a world that’s told us that time heals all wounds, we assume time isn’t working, or that we failed, or that grief is pointless.

So we put it back down again. This is the lie we live with. We think time heals all wounds. But time alone does not heal. Because if you never touch the clay, it never changes. Time is not magic. Time is a container.

What transforms grief is not time by itself, but time plus tending. Time plus tenderness. Time plus attention. Time plus a safe place to be honest. Time plus breath. Time plus a body that is allowed to tremble and soften. Time plus a community that does not rush you to be “over it.”

So here is the practice. Begin to work the clay, slowly. Warm it. Press it gently. Don’t force it. Don’t rush it. Stay with it long enough that it can respond to you.

If it resists at first, that’s okay. Grief resists at first. If it feels clumsy, that’s okay. Love is learned.

But as you work it, notice what begins to happen. The clay changes, not because you argued with it, not because you shamed it, not because you demanded that it become something else. It changes because it is being held. It changes because it is being tended. It changes because it is being warmed by your hands and given patient attention.

This is one of the truest things I know about grief. Grief that is ignored tends to harden. It can harden into cynicism. It can harden into blame. It can harden into numbness. It can harden into productivity that never rests and humor that never cries.

What tending does (from hardened to workable)

But grief that is tended becomes workable. Not erased. Not rushed. Workable.

So take a few breaths. Feel the clay in your hands. If you want to, let it represent grief you feel right now, be it loss, the parts of you that have not known love, injustice, the things you never received, or ancestral grief. And let this small practice be a gentle word to your body: you don’t have to force yourself to be okay. You don’t have to drop what is tender. You can stay with it. Love can hold it.

The story: 2 Samuel 11-12 (David’s collapse and God’s confrontation)

So with that, we turn to 2 Samuel.

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab,and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

So instead of sitting in the truth, David tries to manage the consequences.

He calls Uriah home from the battle, hoping Uriah will sleep with Bathsheba so the pregnancy will look like Uriah’s child.

But Uriah, out of solidarity with the soldiers and the ark, refuses. He won’t go home for comfort while others are sleeping in the open field.

So David escalates. He sends Uriah back to the front lines carrying his own death warrant: instructions to place Uriah where the fighting is fiercest and then pull back so he will be killed.

Uriah dies. The report comes back. David responds with chilling detachment, treating the death as an unfortunate but acceptable cost of war.

After Bathsheba’s mourning, David brings her into his house as his wife, and she bears a son. And then the narrator delivers the verdict: what David did displeased the Lord.

Not temptation, but power (a king sees, sends, takes)

Here’s what I want you to notice about 2 Samuel 11. It’s written almost without commentary. It’s spare. It’s blunt, like the writer refuses to soften what happens.

“In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle… David remained at Jerusalem.”

Right away, the text is telling us something is off. David is a king, but he’s not where he’s supposed to be. He’s disengaged. He’s drifting.

And then he sees Bathsheba. And this is where we have to be honest. The story is not mainly about sexual temptation. It’s about power.

A king sees. A king sends. A king takes.

Bathsheba is not presented as a seductress. She is presented as someone acted upon. The text names her identity through relationships that, in the ancient world, should have protected her: “the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah.”

And then once David has used her, he tries to manage the consequences. He tries to cover. He tries to control. And when control fails, he arranges Uriah’s death.

This is what sin does when it is mixed with power. It turns people into problems. It turns image into something to protect at any cost. It turns love into collateral damage.

And the narrator ends the chapter with a line that should stop us: “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.”

Not “David felt bad.” Not “David apologized.” Not “David posted a statement.” The text says: God saw. God cared. God did not look away.

Confrontation as mercy (Nathan: “You are the man”)

Then comes Nathan.

And the LORD sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”

Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. And I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.

Nathan doesn’t start with accusation. He starts with a story. A rich man steals a poor man’s beloved lamb.

And David burns with righteous anger.

Which is fascinating, isn’t it? David can feel outrage until the story is about him.

Then Nathan says the words that crack the whole thing open: “You are the man.” I read that and I hear my ex saying, “You have all kinds of grace for the perpetrators, and no mercy for the victims.”

This is not God humiliating David. This is God rescuing David from his delusion.

Because here’s the truth. God’s relentless love does not only comfort us. God’s relentless love confronts us, not to crush us with shame, but to restore what has been fractured and to bring us back to love.

David responds with a sentence that feels too small for what he’s done: “I have sinned against the Lord.”

No defense. No spin. No blaming. No “but she… but I… but if you knew what I’d been through…” Just truth.

And, ultimately, Nathan says something that is the heart of grace: “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.”

Grace can take away guilt. But the story also makes clear: consequences still ripple. And that is where grief enters. Grace can take away guilt, but it often leaves grief. Because forgiveness doesn’t mean “nothing happened.” Forgiveness means love refuses to let what happened be the end of the story.

And I want you to feel the strange, holy tension in that moment. David is forgiven, and David is not spared. The guilt is addressed, and the grief is not bypassed. Grace has spoken, and the world is still real.

This is the shape of love in scripture. Love does not pretend. Love does not flatter. Love does not collude with denial. Love tells the truth and then stays.

Some of us were handed a version of faith where grace is a loophole. A spiritual escape hatch. Say the right words, feel the right feeling, and you never have to touch the sorrow.

But the grace of God is not an exit from humanity. It is an entrance into it.

Grace can take away guilt, but it often leaves grief. Because grief is what love feels when it refuses to let you stay asleep. Because grief is what a conscience feels when it comes back online. Because grief is what a body feels when it finally believes it is safe enough to soften.

So if you are listening to this story and something in you wants to shrink back, or rush ahead, or make it tidy, I want you to notice that. And if you can, let yourself stay with the tension.

The prayer: Psalm 51 (repentance as re-creation)

That’s exactly what David did. He stayed with the tension. He let the reality of what he’d done sink in. And then he wrote a poem.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

What’s striking is that the Psalm is not primarily self-hatred. It’s not performative shame. It’s not spiritual theater. It’s an honest prayer for cleansing and re-creation.

Listen to the verbs. “Blot out.” “Wash me.” “Cleanse me.” That’s not someone trying to minimize. That’s someone acknowledging the stain is real.

That said, we should address one key line: “Against you only have I sinned.” This should not be read as a spiritual loophole that erases the humans harmed.

In this story, Bathsheba bears the image of God. So when David takes her, when he rapes her, he is assaulting the image of God. He is assaulting God.

That is the higher court. The sin is not smaller than the harm. It is bigger. It is cosmic. It is a violation of love itself.

So this verse is not permission to keep repentance private. It is a recognition of the true depth of the crime. Repentance that never turns toward repair is how harm stays in the dark.

Then David says something deeply psychologically wise: “You desire truth in the inward being.” Not just behavior management. Not just “I’ll try harder.” Truth in the inward being.

As the poem continues he pens the line: “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” The word “create” here is not “help me improve.” It’s closer to “make something new.”

This is what grace does. Grace is not God saying, “It’s fine.” Grace is God saying, “Come back to life.”

David continues with: “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.” Which means guilt is gone, but grief remains. David has been forgiven and still needs restoration. Still needs joy rebuilt. Still needs the work of repair.

Grace isn’t a delete button (guilt vs grief)

Grace can take away guilt, but it often leaves grief.

Guilt tries to end the story quickly. Grief refuses to hurry because grief is trying to tell the truth, not only about what was done, but about what it did.

And sometimes the proof that grace has actually reached you is not that you feel instantly fine, but that you are finally able to feel.

So I want to name something gently but clearly. If you have never felt grief after forgiveness, if you have never felt sorrow after being loved, if you have never felt that ache of waking up to what you did, or what was done to you, then love has a deeper invitation for you.

Because love makes us feel. Love makes us honest. Love makes us real.

And this is where “Good Grief” begins. Not with shame, but with tenderness. Not with self-destruction, but with a heart that is finally awake.

So what do we do when we finally wake up and “Good Grief” appears on our doorstep?

Framework: Weller’s five gates (learning to carry grief with skill)

Francis Weller says grief is not something we “get over.” It is something we learn to carry with skill. He names five gates, five doorways through which grief comes into our lives. And I want to use those gates today because they help us do something our culture almost never teaches us to do: tell the truth about sorrow without letting it harden us.

In a grief-phobic world, we often treat grief like a threat, like an intruder, like a sign that something has gone wrong. But what if grief is not the enemy of faith. What if grief is one of faith’s most honest companions. Not because grief is good in itself, but because love is good, and love always carries sorrow. The deeper you love, the more capacity you need. The more tenderness you need. The more truth you need. The more God you need.

So I want to walk through these gates by driving us back into the story of David and Bathsheba. Not to make David the hero. Not to make Bathsheba a footnote. But to name the grief that the text itself refuses to bypass. Because the refrain holds true here: grace can take away guilt, but it often leaves grief. And that grief, tended in the presence of relentless love, becomes a path to a richer grace.

As we name these gates, you do not have to fix anything in yourself. You do not have to perform insight. Just notice what stirs. Notice where your body tightens. Notice where you want to move away. And if you need to go slow, go slow. The God of steadfast love does not rush.

Gate 1: Loss

The first gate is loss. Loss is grief for what is gone, for what cannot be unbroken, for what cannot be undone. In this story, loss is not only the loss that comes after the death of a child. Loss begins the moment David uses his power to take what is not his. Something is lost immediately: integrity, safety, trust, innocence. The world gets smaller and harder. A person becomes collateral.

And here is the truth we have to tell. Even when God forgives, you may still be standing in the ruins. Some losses can be repaired. Some cannot. “After Easter” life does not require you to pretend you didn’t lose anything. Resurrection is not denial. It is love making room for reality.

Gate 2: The parts of us that have not known love

The second gate is grief for the parts of us that have not known love. This gate asks a hard question: what unloved place in David made him reach for domination. What starving place made him treat a human being as an object. Again, that does not excuse harm. But it does point to something that Psalm 51 names when it says, “You desire truth in the inward being.” David is not only confessing what he did. David is naming what he needs: “Create in me a clean heart… renew a right spirit within me.”

In other words, “I cannot heal myself by willpower. I need love to reach the places in me that formed under fear.” Good grief here is not self-pity. It is the grief that tells the truth about the inner fracture so it does not keep spilling outward into other bodies.

Gate 3: Injustice

The third gate is grief for injustice. If we say the word sin and do not name injustice, we are not reading this story honestly. David’s sin is power. A king sees, sends, takes. A king uses a woman. A king kills a man. A king tries to manage the consequences with more violence.

Notice how God responds. God does not look away. God sends Nathan. Love confronts. Not to crush David with shame, but to refuse collusion, to name what happened, to bring the harmed back into view. And if you want to live “after Easter,” part of discipleship is learning to grieve injustice without becoming injustice. Learning to feel anger without letting it hollow you out. Learning to seek repair rather than revenge.

Gate 4: The things we never received

The fourth gate is grief for the things we never received. This is the grief of missing nourishment: protection, attunement, tenderness, guidance, a steady sense of belovedness. This gate matters because unmet needs do not disappear. They shape the ways we cope. They shape the ways we grasp. They shape the ways we control.

When David prays for cleansing and re-creation, part of what he is asking for is what he does not have in himself. A clean heart. A right spirit. A joy that can be restored. A steady presence. Good grief here is letting yourself mourn what you never got, so you stop demanding that your coping strategies, or your power, or your image management fill the hole.

Gate 5: Ancestral

The fifth gate is ancestral grief. David is not only an individual with a private failure. David is a king inside a lineage and a system. His choices do not come out of nowhere. They are downstream from stories of patriarchy, conquest, entitlement, and violence. In other words, this story is not only about one man. It is about what power does when it is cut loose from love.

The invitation here is not to blame your ancestors as a way of dodging responsibility. It is to tell the truth about what was handed to you, grieve what got passed down, and then become the one who interrupts the pattern. Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is grieve what your family never grieved so your children do not have to carry it as fate.

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This is one of the practices that is part of my new online course:
Time Doesn’t Heal All Wounds, But Tending Does

In it, you’ll find this and other rituals, teaching, guided meditations,
and other tools to help you engage with grief.

---

Integration: Titration + containment (how to touch grief without flooding)

So let’s go back to the clay that’s been living with it in your hands while we moved through the story and the Psalm.

If you still have it, bring your attention to it for a moment. Notice what it feels like now compared to when we started. For many of you, it is warmer. Softer. More responsive. It is pliable. It is workable. In fact, I’m guessing many of you have been quietly playing with it throughout this message.

That change is the point. It is a small parable your nervous system can understand. Time by itself does not transform grief. But time plus tending does. Attention does. Breath does. A safe place does. The presence of relentless love does.

And this is where it gets practical. When you and I talk about grief, it is easy to either avoid it entirely or to plunge into it so fast we get overwhelmed. Either way, we stop being human.

In the coaching work I do, one of the ways I help people stay with grief without getting flooded is by practicing something called titration. It is a small dose of the truth, on purpose, for a brief moment. Not your whole story. Not everything at once. Just a thread.

And then, you don’t just stay raw. You need somewhere for that truth to land. Today, I want the Table to be that landing place. I want communion to be our containment.

First, titration. Choose a point of grief that has brushed up against you today. Maybe it is loss. Maybe it is injustice. Maybe it is the parts of you that have not known love. Choose just one. Not your whole life. Just one thread.

Now bring it to mind for a moment. Notice what happens in your body. Tightness, heat, heaviness, numbness, tears, a desire to run, a desire to shut down. No judging. Just noticing.

And as you feel it, I want you to take a deep breath in, and then take a longer breath out.

As you feel that grief, I want you to imagine it sitting next to you, and now ask it, what do you need from me?

Maybe it just needs to be recognized and honored because it’s the kind of grief that flows from love with nowhere to land.

Then again, it might embody a part of you that you’ve always rejected, an inner outcast that needs to know it is loved too.

Perhaps, like me when I started my grief journey, it’s a recognition of harm you’ve done and acts of injustice you’ve committed. Here the grief might invite you to explore repair and how to live a life of amends.

Then again it could be an ache that birthed from love, care, or safety that you were denied, and the grief is asking you to show up today to give yourself the care you never received.

Or it could be something your family has carried for generations, and you are now invited to be the one who breaks the pattern.

So do not rush to solve it. Just notice it. Hold it gently. And as we come to the Table, let Jesus hold it with you.

Communion: The Table as a place for guilt and grief

I want to close simply, because we are not going to close with an idea. We are going to close with a meal.

If you are carrying guilt today, there is grace. Grace that tells the truth without crushing you, grace that puts away sin without putting you away.

And if you are carrying grief today, you are not behind, and you are not failing. Grief is often the evidence that love is still alive in you, still refusing to let you live numb.

We just practiced coming back to the clay, and we practiced titration, a small honest touch of grief without drowning in it. Now we come to the Table as our containment.

In a moment, we will come to the Lord’s Table. And I want you to notice what God gives us there. Not a lecture, not a slogan, not a spiritual workaround. God gives us something received: bread that you do not bake, a cup you do not fill, a body broken, blood poured out.

This is how grace comes to us, not as an escape from our humanity, but as God entering it.

So if guilt has been telling you, “You are not worthy to come,” hear the gospel. The Table is not a reward for the clean. It is mercy for the truthful. You do not come because you have made yourself safe. You come because Jesus is safe, and Jesus is making you new.

And if grief has been telling you, “This ache means something is wrong with you,” hear the gospel. The Table is where sorrow is not rejected. The crucified Christ knows grief from the inside. The risen Christ does not shame your tears. The risen Christ feeds you in them.

Grace can take away guilt, but it often leaves grief. And at this Table, God does not ask you to bypass that grief. God gives you strength to tend it.

So as you come, you can carry your clay with you, if you want. Let it be your reminder that grief changes over time when it is held with tenderness.

And when you hold the bread in your hands, let it speak to the parts of you that have not known love: you are being fed. When you drink from the cup, let it speak to injustice: God sees, God confronts, God heals, God will not collude. Let it speak to the things you never received: here is nourishment given without condition. Let it speak to ancestral grief: here is a new story being given to you, one you can pass on.

We do not come to this Table to prove anything. We come to receive. We come with truth. We come with tenderness. We come with whatever grief is still shaping us. We come with whatever guilt grace has put away. And we come because God’s relentless love has made a place for us.

Grace can take away guilt, but it often leaves grief. And that grief, tended in the presence of relentless love, becomes a path to a richer grace.

So, church, let’s come to the Table. Dark cups are wine, light cups are juice. All of it is the gifts of God for you.