Graceland

Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley until his death in 1977, annually attracts over 600,000 visitors. Graceland was originally owned by S. E. Toof, who was the publisher of “The Memphis Daily Appeal.” He named the estate after his daughter, Grace. Presley bought the estate in 1957 and retained the name “Graceland.”

The name has always appealed to me, especially since Paul Simon wrote and recorded the song “Graceland” in 1986. In the song, Simon carries his son and others with him on a journey that has the aura of a kind of religious pilgrimage. As Simon and his group make their way toward Graceland, several times he uses this line: “I have reason to believe that we will all be received at Graceland.” I like that line because it sounds to me a lot like the gospel of grace.

In his book Return to Wonder, Arthur Gordon told a story from his boyhood. Each year in the days before Easter, his parents would give his sister and him a little cardboard box that was called the “mite box.” In the days leading up to Easter, the children would put money into the little offering boxes to be taken to church on Easter Sunday and given as their Easter offering.

Gordon wrote, “The trouble in my case was that sometimes in moments of acute financial need, I would pry some of the coins out of my box. I always intended to put the money for God back before Easter, but I was chronically short and never did.

“The fateful morning would always come. With Easter morning’s dawn, Aunt Daisy would come over, eat breakfast with us, and then would always go to church with us. After breakfast my sister and I were to bring in our mite boxes for inspection by our patents. My sister, a saint at an early age, always had a clean box that was filled with nickels and dimes. It had never been opened. Mine was dog-eared and dirty. I would look inside at a few surviving pennies rattling about forlornly. My father always gave me a lecture. Why was I so selfish? Why couldn’t I think more about others?

“Finally, Aunt Daisy grew tired of it. She fished in her purse, drew out a 50-cent piece, and said, ‘Here, put this in your mite box.’ ‘Not fair,’ my sister howled. ‘It’s not right, Daisy,’ said my angry father. ‘The boy shouldn’t be rewarded for poor performance.’ Aunt Daisy just smiled, turned to my sister and said, ‘You’re right dear. It’s not fair. But never you mind. God will remember how faithful you’ve been.’ Then she turned to my father and said, ‘Haven’t you ever had a gift that you didn’t deserve? I should think that the cross and Easter might remind you of that.’”

That is called grace. It is what we get that we don’t deserve. If we were looking for a new name for our church, I have an idea about what we could call it. We could call it “Graceland.” That’s what it ought to be—a place where people could say, “I have reason to believe that we will all be received at Graceland.”