John Newton had one ambition – from an early age he wanted to be a sailor and follow his father who was a sea captain. At the age of eleven he joined his father’s ship and so began a naval career lasting over 20 years.  It was not an easy life and young John soon fell into bad ways. He fought with his father, argued with his employers, was flogged for desertion and found himself thrown into jail.  This did not change him and he led as debauched a life as ever.  His naval career continued but he turned to slavery, transporting unfortunate wretches across the seas in the most miserable of conditions.

Then in 1748 Newton reached a crisis in his life – a turning point. It was brought about by a great storm which threatened to destroy the ship and Newton with it.  Like many in deep trouble Newton turned to prayer, addressing a God he had all but ignored all his life.  He prayed that the Lord would have mercy on him and at the age of 23 that is what he experienced. The storm was calmed and Newton was saved.  In more ways than one for it was on that day, March 21^st 1748 that he gave his life to God. Not for Newton a temporary faith to carry him through a crisis and then be abandoned.

Giving up the sea at the age of 30 he was appointed tide surveyor at Liverpool where he came across John Wesley. Soon he was studying Greek and Hebrew and he applied to the Archbishop of York for ordination. His request was refused but in 1764 the Bishop of Lincoln offered him the curacy of Olney in Buckinghamshire.

It was at Olney that Newton met William Cowper and together they wrote a collection of hymns – the Olney Hymns – which included ‘How Sweet the name of Jesus sounds and, not surprisingly, Amazing Grace.  This hymn, more than any other put into words the experience of conversion John Newton had during that storm of 1748.  For Newton recognised that He had been saved by Grace – by the free outpouring of God’s love through which his life had been claimed by Jesus – an unpromising life had been turned to good.

Newton’s experience can be mirrored in the lives of many men and women who have found their lives overturned through a significant meeting with God – and, of course, one of the most spectacular of these was the writer of our New Testament reading this morning,- St. Paul.  In the reading, Paul speaks of the thorn in his flesh – the thing that prevented him from self-centredness and kept him constantly looking to God.  What precisely that ‘thorn’ was has exercised the minds of biblical scholars for centuries. Whatever it was,  it was such a burden to Paul that he sought freedom from it. His request was met with the response from God My grace is sufficient for you  and that was something Paul already knew. It had been God’s grace that saved him and it was through God’s grace that he could continue to proclaim the Gospel – often against all odds.  Often, in fact, when he felt weakest to do so.

Like many involved in the frontline ministry of Jesus, Paul suffered at the hands of the ignorant, the self-seeking, those who lived by oppressing others. Those whose views are so entrenched that they are always right. Sometimes he felt a loss of strength because he was constantly engaged in battle with those who would thwart his ministry and judging by what he says at the end of today’s reading – repeated more strongly in some of his other writings – he was the victim of insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for the sake of Christ.  That he could continue in the face of this was not because he had some inner strength to fend off his critics but rather because he was receiving God’s grace.  Using one of those paradoxes of our faith he can therefore claim that when he is weak, then he is strong.

Christianity has a way of turning things on their head as the Crucifixion shows most vividly. When Christ is at his most vulnerable and suffering at the hands of his aggressors he claims victory over the human soul.  Those on the outside of faith may well be perplexed and confused at the ingenuity of Christians to make bad things seem good but what is not perceived by them is the claim we make to have God’s grace.  This grace is not just God’s way of converting people once and for all. We don’t receive grace and turn to Christ and that’s it. It is a continuous process of salvation.

Father Raymond Raynes, a former Superior of the Community of the Resurrection was once questioned by an earnest beach evangelist who asked him whether he had been saved. The monk was in his swimming trunks heading towards the sea. “Saved!” he said, “I haven’t even been in the water yet!” but when the young man persisted, Fr. Raynes gave a very different and more accurate response.

– I have been saved, I am being saved and I will be saved.

The continuous action of grace is the action of God’s love constantly being poured into our lives. We cannot always perceive it or even be aware of it. The French religious philosopher, Simone Weil, once said that the action of God’s grace in our hearts is secret and silent  but it is nevertheless constant.  And this is very important for us to hold on to – not least in the hostile religious environment of the 21^st century. An environment which in England is mainly one of indifference though there is always that lurking sense of doing down Christianity and writing us off as a failing movement which is leaking members as fast as the Three Valleys Water Authority is losing water.

Sadly, all too often, we collude with this by giving the General public and the media fodder for their perception.  There are, as the Archbishop of Canterbury pointed out in his opening address to this weekend’s General Synod, mischievous forces at work within the Church who are using the current conflict in Anglicanism as an alibi for divisive action whose roots are in other conflicts. All of which diminishes the Church.

Can we continue to claim that God’s grace is active in the Church of England and in the Anglican Communion when there is so much conflict?  Well, actually, yes we can.  The Church of England is no stranger to conflict – indeed we were born out of a conflict between a Pope and a King – and there have been many dark days ever since but we seem to muddle through them and even emerge a little wiser and perhaps occasionally a little stronger in the end.  As some of you know, I am rather fond of quoting the words of the great Dr. Thomas Arnold who said in 1832, 'The Church of England as it now stands, no human power can save'.

People who are constantly at worship, at prayer, and who seek to fashion their lives on the Gospel may be ordinary people but they (we) are capable of extraordinary things. We are capable of extraordinary acts of love, care, kindness, friendship and faith.

When I think of the Church of England, I try not to think of all the conflicts and arguments that have embroiled us, even in the 48 years that I have been a member of it, nor do I want to dwell on those negative people who show little of the joy of the Gospel.  What I try to concentrate on is the extraordinary people I have met whose faith has shone through their lives. Some have been leaders of local Churches, some its spiritual powerhouses, some have even been bishops – but the majority have been people who simply try to love God and accepting His love for them want to share it with others. People who are graceful because they are full of God’s grace.

Such people embody the Spirit of our Church because they are generous, open-hearted, inclusive, and persistent in their living out of the Gospel come what may and against all odds. They are also people who are prepared to absorb the pain and hurt inflicted by others and somehow hold it up to God’s grace for His redemption and healing. Not always easy to do especially if it is, sometimes, hurt inflicted by fellow-Christians who seem to believe that only they know God’s mind on any particular matter.

I am reading a little book of thoughts by the late Mother Jane of the Sisters of the Love of God – a nun I was privileged to know a little. The book’s title is itself an encouragement – Loving God Whatever ­ but the real encouragement is in her words, reflections over a long period of time.  I have a little personal knowledge of some of the conflicts within her own community that she had, as Mother, to absorb and deflect and transform with the Love of God. She could do this because she was a woman who was deeply full of God’s Grace.  In one passage, which could be a reflection on today’s Epistle, she says:

Really to listen to the situation we are in means silencing the clamour which is perpetually going on in most of us, protesting that things ought not to be as they are, nor should I be the sort of person I am, and all in all, ‘it’s not fair’. When we come to the point of recognizing and accepting the facts, we can look at them objectively and make a response that is courageous because it depends on God’s strength making use of our weakness…

And she concludes:

If by listening we can discover the reality of the circumstances we are coping with – be they permanent or temporary –we can move on to the next step; to hold things without being deflected by our own or other people’s desires – in other words, to ‘stay with it’ and to find in it the joy of our hearts desiring.

Staying with it means staying with God, come what may and ‘the joy of our hearts desire’ is the joy of knowing that, whatever, God holds us and saves us by His Grace – and that should be enough.