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Good Morning. Amazing Grace – a documentary about the recording of Aretha Franklin’s gospel album in a Baptist church in 1972 – is a rare example of something that lives up to even the most hyperbolic praise. I saw it in my local cinema last week and it is, I think, amazing, although I can’t fully explain what it is that makes it so. Perhaps you have to be there. The film-makers certainly make you feel you are there, in this badly lit, poorly ventilated church with its cheap seats and tacky mural. There is, of course, that voice. Voted by Rolling Stone Magazine the greatest of the 20th century. And then there’s Aretha’s dignified presence at the pulpit, the hum of her celebrity low in the mix as she gets down to the serious business of praising the God she believes in. The background noise of her troubled upbringing only adds to the authenticity. When she sings the title track, we believe her. She isn’t so much performing as testifying. It was like being invited to a religious experience, and it seemed that some in the cinema were having one. Half way through the film I realised the man next to me was weeping, shaking his head and saying ‘It’s too much. It’s too much.’ When Aretha’s pianist, the Reverend James Cleveland, asks: ‘Can I get a witness?’ a number of people in the cinema actually yelled out ‘Yes!’ So what is this grace? And what is so amazing about it? It’s a lovely word. How sweet the sound. It bleeds into the language: it’s there in gratitude for a gift; for work done gratis, in the grace before a meal; and in the grace notes supplied by a composer. And it’s rooted in a beautiful concept. That of God’s love coming amongst us, free of charge, no religious hoop-jumping, no proving your worth. It’s an invitation that even extends to a wretch like me. Receiving something we don’t deserve is hard. In a world based on merit we expect to earn it. Like the man said: it’s too much. I am not worthy. As if aware of this inbuilt resistance to receiving unmerited gifts, Jesus chose to describe grace rather than explain it; in parables full of topsy-turvy values, where prodigal children are generously welcomed home, the sun shines on good and bad alike, and the least limp over the line first. He never used the word, but his own words were so full of grace, their spirit lives on in words and song. The reaction in that cinema suggested to me there is a great hunger for grace. Especially now. This echo of a tune we have not heard, but recognise when we hear it. It is too much for some people. But that is the point. That is the amazing thing about grace.