In high school, I had this particular pair of jeans that I loved, because they were covered over with all these different paint stains. Turquoise from painting my bedroom. Glitter gold from the sets for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Gesso from preparing canvases in art class. Brown speckles around the fraying cuffs from painting a floor on a mission trip. Some stuff washed out, of course, but not everything. Those jeans told some of the best stories of my time in high school. It was a harsh blow when I finally had to retire them in college.

Stains, like scars, tell stories. Sometimes those stories are not particularly exciting—hey, here’s that time I knocked my Coke over—but stories nonetheless.

Two years ago I helped lead the Maundy Thursday service at my internship church in North Carolina. We told the story of Jesus’ final meal with his disciples, when he took a loaf of bread and a cup of wine and told them that these simple things were signs of his forgiveness, a forgiveness not just of words but of total sacrifice. The bread was his body, broken for us. The wine was his blood, shed for us. Broken and shed so that we would believe he meant it when he said “Father, forgive them.”

It was a beautiful service, but there was a problem. In our eagerness to join with Jesus in his meal, we had been a little messy. Our communion table was littered with crumbs, and our cloth was stained all over with little drops of grape juice.

And I loved it.

Now granted, I was not the one that did laundry for the church. But I loved that table, stained with the cup of grace. I loved each little droplet, God’s love spilling out, our cup overflowing. I loved each sticky spot, telling the story of Jesus’ forgiveness.

We often talk about stains like they’re a bad thing. The Bible talks about us being stained with sin. And I know that in life, as messy as it is, not one of us is getting through unstained.

But the miracle of Holy Week is that just as we can be stained by sin, we can also be stained by grace. God’s grace can seep so deep into the fabric of our lives that nothing we do can wash it out.

I look back on my life and I find it is stained through with grace—times when I was forgiven, or brave, or at peace, or challenged, or strong in ways I know I never could be without God’s help. I wear those stains with pride—signs that I belong to God.

That’s the most important story I could ever tell about myself: that I belong to God. It’s the most important story I could tell about you, too. I hope you can see the stains of God’s love all over your life. I promise they’re there.

May God’s cup of grace overflow on you this week. May God’s sticky love leave stains all over your life. May God’s forgiveness seep over all your sins.

And may you look at the mess and say Amen.

 

Crescent Springs Presbyterian Church will have its Maundy Thursday Service on April 13 at 7PM. You are welcome to come share in the feast of grace.