Isaiah 49:13-16a; John 13:31-35
“So,” I asked, “how many of you remember back when diapers were made of cloth and were held together with giant diaper pins?” Every single hand in the room shot up. I had picked my question well for the particular audience–the ladies at Countryside Nursing Home, where Cindy, Ellie, Jeannie and I lead a monthly worship service.
Encouraged by the response, I asked my next question: “How often, when you had to change a child’s diaper, did you end up pricking your hand with the pin?” One of the more vocal ladies spoke for the whole group: “All the time.” The quieter ones nodded with enthusiasm.
We talked about how, back then, for a mother or a father or anyone caring for a young child, their hands bore the marks of their caring–in the form of scars from lots of pinpricks.
I expanded the conversation beyond diaper pins to think about other ways our hands show the marks of our caring. I told them about my grandma’s hands, and how we would laugh together when they had turned green from food coloring as we made Christmas tree spritz cookies. I mentioned the callouses on my Dad’s hands from hitting buckets and buckets of tennis balls to my sister and me early on Saturday mornings. I recounted the dirt under my Mom’s fingernails when she helped us plant pansies and marigolds every spring.
The service at Countryside ended, and Cindy and Ellie and Jeannie and I headed back to the church for Lunch Bunch. For the rest of the day, though, I kept having visions of hands–hands that are shaped by their caring. I thought about hands with bandaids on a finger or two–the result of chopping carrot and celery sticks to go with the dip for a special graduate’s party. Hands with fingernails bitten down to the skin as a mom or dad struggles to let go of a child becoming an adult. Hands with callouses on the tips of the fingers from playing the violin. Hands that are chapped and raw from being out in the cold holding signs that say No to hate and Yes to welcome. Hands constrained by a splint worn to ease the symptoms of carpal tunnel, the result of too many hours at a keyboard writing letters to the editor. Hands with little patches of glitter glue from special Sunday School art projects.
Whether we are mothers or grandmothers, aunts or uncles, Sunday School teachers or just friends, our hands reveal how we live. The scars, the stains, the bruises, the dirt–they are testimonies, even inscriptions, of our love.
My nursing home conversation about pin-pricked hands gives me fresh insight into our Hebrew Bible passage. Isaiah begins by comparing God’s love to the love of a mother for her child. He takes the comparison a step further by using God’s hands as a metaphor for God’s care. “See,” Isaiah hears God say, “I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.”
What is this inscription Isaiah envisions? Is it our names somehow tattooed on God’s metaphorical hands, so God can never forget who we are? That might be what Isaiah means. For me, it is more helpful to claim a parallel to the ways our lives are inscribed on the human hands of those who love us. God’s hands, I imagine, bear the marks of God’s intimate involvement in our lives. God’s hands have diaper pin pricks, cuts and bruises and stains and dirt from meals served, projects shared, and comfort offered. God’s hands are not perfectly manicured; rather, they are perfect expressions of God’s choice to share in the struggles and joys of our lives. When we trip and catch ourselves with our hands, God’s palms are scraped as well. When our fingers ache from arthritis, God aches with us. When we get together to plant a pollinator garden, God ends up with dirt under her fingernails. I imagine laughing with God at our green hands as he joins Grandma and me baking Christmas cookies.
God can never forget us, for God’s hands bear the marks of the ways she has held us, picked us up, nurtured us, grieved with us, rejoiced with us, played and worked with us throughout out lives.
A few weeks ago, in choir practice, Rick introduced a new piece–Grace Alone, our anthem for today. I love the words. Grace is at the heart of my faith; it is so central that I struggle to explain it. The best I can do is use images to convey a glimpse of God’s unfathomable grace. As we sang through the anthem for the first time that Thursday evening, I found myself thinking of this reading from Isaiah, a favorite of mine–imagining God’s hands inscribed with the marks of our lives as an expression of God’s grace.
It is a departure from my usual experience of grace. I am more likely to envision grace as a waterfall–God’s love showered over us, a never-ending stream that fills our lives to overflowing. Grace is that God’s love is not dependent on our actions. Grace is not in spite of our human failings; instead it is an overwhelming expression of God’s love for us in all our glorious and complicated humanity. God’s love is a fountain of love poured out for us beyond the distinctions we make between right and wrong, good and bad, worthless and worthy.
Perhaps because I knew the anthem was scheduled for Mother’s Day, I found my imagery shifting as we sang. Not grace from above, but grace from below and beside. Grace that is made known in God’s hands beneath us, holding us up, in God’s hands beside us, joining with us in our work and play.
This passage from Isaiah points to two dimensions of God’s grace. The first is that God treasures us–in all our frailty and strength, with all our limitations and possibilities–so much that God chooses to work through our hands. God does not ask us to make our hands perfect before we can use them in God’s service. In fact, God does not want our hands to be perfect. God wants our hands to be stained and dirty, scarred and bandaid-laden, chapped and even misshapen by overuse. God wants our hands–God needs our hands–to be gloriously imperfect, as they bear the marks of our acts of love.
Take a moment and look at your hands. Perhaps today you can see the marks of an expression of your caring. Even if those marks have faded, your hands still bear the memory of other hands you have held, of flowers you have planted, meals you have cooked, projects you have undertaken, babies you have held. God treasures your hands. God needs your hands. God revels in their holy imperfection.
The first dimension of grace is that God works through our imperfect hands to make God’s love real in the world. The second dimension is that God understands our hands can’t do it all. Sometimes the people we love slip between our fingers. Other times we don’t understand what someone else needs, or we don’t have the skills to provide it. There are days when we are simply too tired, or our own needs get in the way, or we forget. Isaiah promises us that, always, God’s hands are beneath ours, holding us up, catching us when we fall through the cracks, helping us find strength to try again. We are not alone. God is with us, around us, beneath us.
God loves us so much that God chooses to work through our hands. God loves us so much that our lives are inscribed on the palms of God’s hands. This is grace. Amazing grace.
Amen.