This Sunday Christians celebrate “Christ, The King” Sunday, the final Sunday of the liturgical year. Luke 23:33-43 references Christ on the cross between the two thieves, one of whom recognizes the injustice of Christ’s death and asks to be remembered by Christ when he comes into his kingdom. Westminster Presbyterian Church welcomes bagpipers on this Sunday in recognition of their Scottish heritage. One of the highlights of worship is the traditional and beloved hymn “Amazing Grace.”
Several years ago I received the gift of a sterling silver bracelet with the first verse of “Amazing Grace” inscribed on it. What makes the bracelet especially interesting is that it is a Mobius strip. Discovered independently by the German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing in 1858, the Möbius strip is a surface with only one side, one boundary, and the mathematical property of being non-orientable, with unique and mysterious perspectives. An example of a Möbius strip is a circle with a half-twist, creating a continuous loop, like the bracelet I received.
The endless, continuous loop, with only one side and one edge creates a perspective reminiscent of M.C. Escher’s illustrations in which figures seem to walk endlessly along paths and up and down stairs. The Mobius strip is the ultimate metaphor for something simple, yet profound; something mysterious, yet scientific. Non-orientable, the Mobius strip takes us to an unexpected place, again and again, connecting our beginning and ending. Ultimately, we return from whence we came.
Dr. Parker Palmer, educator and Quaker, refers to the Mobius strip in his book A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey toward an Undivided Life. He contends that the choices we make and the way we live our lives reflect the core of who we are. Because the outside and inside surface is the same on a Mobius strip, there is no place to hide our true self!
Palmer encourages people of faith to honor their spiritual lives and to nourish the core of their being, their inner light, their soul, the true self, or whatever one wants to call this dimension of our being. We do this within community through prayer, self-reflection, accountability, attentiveness, mission and service, acts of generosity.
My husband Peter, the scientist and mathematician in the family, was the first to point out the Mobius strip design within the bracelet and what a powerful metaphor this is for the beloved hymn “Amazing Grace.” While reading the lyrics along the bracelet, mysteriously and profoundly you are brought back, time and time again, to the opening words “amazing grace.”
Some of us know the story of John Newton, who wrote “Amazing Grace” probably in the year 1772. Following the death of his mother, he worked on slave ships with his father for several years. After experiencing a Christian conversion Newton would eventually renounce this trade and became a prominent supporter of abolitionism. Newton lived to see Britain’s abolition of the African slave trade through the passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. He had come full circle on the Mobius strip of his spiritual journey and found forgiveness and grace:
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see.
This Sunday Christians end a liturgical year and begin a new one. We return from whence we came in the celebration of amazing grace. We come to an unexpected place again and again, and in the unending circle of praise we find our home in the One who created us:
When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun.
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun.
The Rev. Dr. Blythe Denham Kieffer served as pastor and head of staff at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Springfield from Oct. 1, 2013, to Oct. 1, 2025.