Delivered on August 7, 2005, Melana

speaks on God's Grace.  This is the sixth in a series

dealing with topics requested by the congregation.

 

The Joy of God's Grace                    John 1:1-17 & Romans 5:12-16

      Last week I announced that I would be preaching on grace this week and someone shared with me an acrostic she had learned from a pastor  years ago that continues to stick with her.

Grace is God's riches at Christ's expense -

      You might want to write that down to keep you thinking about grace –

            God's riches at Christ's expense.

In a short phrase that gets at the crux of the theology of God's grace.  Grace is a freely given, undeserved gift - that makes it difficult for us to accept sometimes.

We want to deserve what we receive, want to earn our rewards - but that is the whole reason Christ came, because people couldn't deserve God's grace, couldn't follow God's law, couldn't earn the reward.  In the words of Frederick Buechner: "There's nothing you have to do.  There's nothing you have to do.  There's nothing you have to do."   Buechner goes on to say this about grace:

"Grace is something you can never get but only be given.   The grace of God means something like: Here is your life.  You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.  Here is the world.  Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you.   Nothing can ever separate us.  It's for you I created the universe. I love you.  There's only one catch.   Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too."1

      Those stories are what teach us about grace - a free gift given to those who will accept it.  It is not about what we deserve - it is not about what we earn - it is about love, freely given, no strings attached. 

Grace - God's riches at Christ's expense - freely given for you - for me.

      Ten years ago our Session received a couple into the membership of our church.  They were both recovering alcoholics.  They had each been married and divorced several times before marrying each other.  Because of their behavior under the influence of alcohol, they had alienated several of their children and had not seen some of their grandchildren ever. 

      Soon after they joined the church, they both discovered they had cancer.  We had some long conversations about whether God could forgive them.  The question was really whether they could forgive themselves - because God had already forgiven them - that's grace.

      As the cancer ran it's course and they wrestled with such issues, they reconciled with most of their children and saw their grandchildren.  Not long before the husband died, he asked me again if I thought God could possibly forgive him for his past life.  It finally seemed to sink in when I asked him if he could ever give up on loving any of his children, despite whatever they might do.  He said no - and I told him that God was able to love much more than we are, so he was already forgiven.  I told him what God sees is a beloved child, nothing else.  He finally seemed to accept that God could still love him. 

      "St. Vincent de Paul ran an orphanage in Paris during the first half of the seventeenth century.   One winter day he opened the front gate to find an abandoned infant lying in the snow.   He brought the bundled baby back into the warmth of the room where he was meeting with a number of wealthy women who helped support the orphanage.  Naturally, St. Vincent asked them what he should do with the tiny, frail creature. One of the women suggested that perhaps God intended for the baby to die, as a punishment for the sins of the mother.   Appalled at this attitude, St. Vincent angrily retorted, 'When God wants dying done for sin, he sends his own Son to do it!'  This is grace, mysterious, inexplicable, but touching and overwhelming.   It is worth devoting the whole of our lives to a response to this grace."

      -Taken from Richard P. C. Hanson, The Attractiveness of God: Essays in Christian Doctrine (Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1973), 146.

      When we gather at the Table, as we will in a few minutes, we gather to celebrate the grace of God shown to us in Christ Jesus.  In sharing the bread and the cup we recognize in our own lives that we have received God's riches at Christ's expense.

      It is grace that brings us here each week - a desire to experience that grace anew.

      A businessman was asked to tell what his personal faith meant to him.   He reached back to his boyhood experience.  He recalled walking with his father one day, having to reach up to hold on to his hand.   After a while he said, "I can't hold on any longer, and you'll have to hold on to me for a while."   And he remembered the moment when he felt his father's hand take over.   That, he said, was the way it felt to him to have faith in God.  And that was precisely an act of grace.  We want to think that we are in control of our lives, that we are sufficient for ourselves, but in truth we know that we aren't.  And in truth, we want the experience of God at work in our lives.  We want to know that God is holding our hand - that is grace - freely given. 

      In May I went to a conference for continuing education.  As part of our work, we had to say what was the central theological tenet for our work in ministry.  I didn't really even think about it, I immediately said grace - then as I had to explain my reasoning, I realized that grace is what defines us.  Shirley Guthrie was my theology professor in seminary - he taught me a lot about the doctrines of the church - but he showed me what grace is.  He lived his life experiencing God's free gift of grace for himself and sharing grace with all those around him.  Grace is what defines us as Christians. 

      During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world  debated what, if any, belief was unique to the Christian faith.   They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of gods' appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of return from death. The debate went on for some time until C.S. Lewis wandered into the room. What's the rumpus about? he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity's unique contribution among world religions.  Lewis responded, Oh, that's easy. It's grace.  After some discussion, the conferees had to agree.  

 

      The notion of God's love coming to us free of charge, no strings attached, seems to go against every instinct of humanity.  The Buddhist eight-fold path, the Hindu doctrine of karma, the Jewish covenant, and the Muslim code of law -- each of these offers a way to earn approval.  Only Christianity dares to make God's love unconditional.  Aware of our inbuilt resistance to grace, Jesus talked about it often.  He described a world suffused with God's grace: where the sun shines on people good and bad; where birds gather seeds gratis, neither  plowing nor harvesting to earn them; where untended wildflowers burst into bloom on the rocky hillsides.   Like a visitor from a foreign country who notices what the natives overlook, Jesus saw grace everywhere.  Yet he never analyzed or defined grace, and almost never used the word. Instead, he communicated grace through stories we know as parables. 

      -Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace?  (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), 45. 

 

1.  -Frederick Buechner,

Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC

(New York: Harper&Row, 1973), 33-34.

© Melana Scruggs 2005

 

 

  

     

    

 

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