Meditation:

What is your reaction to the term ‘vulgar grace?’ Does it seem true? Does it bother you?

In what way do you identify with the drunk, the prodigal, and the dying criminal?

Excerpt from All Is Grace, by Brennan Manning

My life is a witness to vulgar grace—a grace that amazes as it offends. A grace that pays the eager beaver who works all day long the same wages as the grinning drunk who shows up at ten till five. A grace that hikes up the robe and runs breakneck toward the prodigal reeking of sin and wraps him up and decides to throw a party no ifs, ands, or buts. A grace that raises bloodshot eyes to a dying thief's request—"Please, remember me" —and assures him, "You bet!" A grace that is the pleasure of the Father, fleshed out in the carpenter Messiah, Jesus the Christ, who left His Father's side not for heaven's sake but for our sakes, yours and mine.

This vulgar grace is indiscriminate compassion. It works without asking anything of us. It's not cheap. It's free, and as such will always be a banana peel for the orthodox foot and a fairy tale for the grown-up sensibility. Grace is sufficient even though we huff and puff with all our might to try to find something or someone it cannot cover.

Grace is enough. He is enough. Jesus is enough.”

Vulgar Grace

“In Jesus, God has put up a ‘Gone Fishing ‘ sign on the religious shop.  He has done the whole job in Jesus once and for all and simply invited us to believe it—to trust the bizarre, unprovable proposition that in him, every last person on earth is already home free without a single religious exertion…Yes, it's crazy. And yes, it's wild, and outrageous, and vulgar…But it is Good News—the only permanently good news there is—and therefore I find it absolutely captivating.

— Episcopalian Priest, Robert Farrar Capone