Grateful for Grace

2 Corinthians 12: 9 - 10

Ephesians 2: 1 - 10

November 24, 2024

One of the things that happens as one gets older is that age can bring perspective. I say “can bring” because we are all captives of the moment, of the immediate, of whatever is going on right now. But if we are intentional about it - intentional, reflective, and honest - many times the crisis of the moment is resolved by a little reflection, a little honesty, a good conversation with a wise friend, and maybe a little more reflection.

I can’t tell you how many hours I have sat with youth during the winter and spring of their senior years lamenting or celebrating the news surrounding colleges applications. I remember sitting with one extremely talented, gifted, and faithful young man and listened as he sobbed over the news of not getting into the Ivy League college that he – and more importantly, his parents – always assumed.

He was devastated. His parents had provided every opportunity for him to excel. They had driven him miles, each way, to one of the premier private schools in our area. Tutors were hired. Extracurricular activities were provided to pad his college applications. He had started taking SAT and ACT preparation courses in the ninth grade. He took every imaginable AP class. He had straight As, he seemed to have all of the prerequisites, including a massive amount of pressure to live up to expectations. He had been invested in….. and he was expected to provide an adequate return on those investments.

But he didn’t. Or at least it seemed that way. He never went to the Ivy League school. He only got into one of the finest schools in the country located in the South.

Sadly, this young man was not an exception. He was, in many of the communities where I have served, much more the norm than an aberration. He might have received straight As, but he was flunking life.

Out on his own at college he struggled for a few years. But he finally found his groove. He graduated, went to grad school, has married and is living a wonderful, faithful life, with his wife and family. He laughs now about that conversation we had. Laughs, and vows not to put that kind of transactional pressure on his children.

It took his parents more than a few years to adjust. Age has given them some perspective and one time they told me that they had never really appreciated how transactional their life had become. They have great regrets, but are appreciative of the grace and forgiveness their son has given to them. They are, today, a very close family.

As Pastor Alexandra Rodgers from Decatur, Georgia puts it, “Whether we realize it or not we all live in a business community….a community of transactions, a community of consumers. We do business all day every day. We interact with others. We are patrons in the actual businesses around us.…in local owned shops and big box stores, in restaurants and cafes, in banks and other institutions.

We shop, browse, and borrow online, too. We hope to work to earn money so that we might have enough to support ourselves and our loved ones. We work in small businesses and large, in non-profits and for-profits, in governmental institutions and the private sector, in schools and service industries.

We hope to work to make our homes a place of safety, of nurture and health, rest and well-being. Just about everything is commodified. We buy. We borrow. We sell. We trade. And we make choices about where we will spend our time, our energy, and our money. We choose with whom we will deal and how we will deal.

Ours is a consumer culture which we know all too well. And it’s a system in which we all participate whether we like it or not. It is the way of our world.”

It is the way of the world. Sad, but true. Transactional living, being a community of consumers – of investors in a desired result. That seems to characterize much of what passes for life today. But does it have to…. for the believer? Is it possible that part of what it means to be salt and light in the world is to be a people who offer a different way of being in the world?

For the last few months, we have been talking about alternatives to the self-centered, power driven, investment and transaction delivered consumerism that afflicts much of the world. It is strange to name these things. My guess is that just like a fish can’t identify water – it is just the world they live in; so also we struggle when we pause, reflect, discuss, and then begin to name the investment, the transactional nature of what passes for our culture and the church’s place in it.

I don’t want to diminish or dilute the difficulty, even the pain that comes from being aware of these realities. But as a church that has been set free; as a church that no longer labors under the pressure to bless and be the faith façade of our culture; we now have the freedom and joy that comes from proclaiming, not just what will sell, not just proclaiming what will bring us attendance and cash but now we have the freedom and responsibility to speak faith – FAITH - to our culture and then let the chips fall where they may.

We are a church about kingdom work. NOT, institutional success.

We have the joy of proclaiming a connection to God and to one another that transcends the weak idols in our lives today. We connect, not because of what the connection brings us, but simply because we find our highest understanding of who we were created to be in a relationship with God and God’s people.

That connection – that relationship transforms how we view ourselves and how we view God’s world. Determined to not flunk life, we commit ourselves to growing into the likeness of Jesus and in doing so our world is transformed.

We have been called to love – not for what we get in return – but simply as a faithful attempt to replicate God’s love for us.

We have been called to connection, to transformation, and to loving as God has first loved us. That leads us inevitably to service as an unavoidable expression of the grace that has been bestowed upon us.

We serve – yes, as an expression of obedience. We are commanded to feed the hungry, house the homeless, advocate for the oppressed, and to campaign against injustice in the world. We have been commanded to be about these things. But it is more than just obedience. It’s about grace.

In our transactional world we want to know what we will get out of it. We want to know if the return is worth the effort. In darker moments, we want to be sure that we are offering our service to those who “deserve” our service, or at least show an adequate level of appreciation for what we have done.

But grace calls us to a greater and much more meaningful understanding of service. Just as God has loved us even when we have chosen to not love him; just as God has redeemed us – not through our own efforts that earn our redemption – but instead through the free gift of Jesus Christ; so God’s empowering grace is bestowed upon us – not because we have earned or deserve it, but simply as an expression of God’s love.

It is this grace that, in many ways, sets us apart from the other great world religions. Phillip Yancey, in his book What’s So Amazing About Grace?, tells a story about C.S. Lewis – that brilliant thinker from the last century – and his participation in a British conference on comparative religions.

It seems that 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.

Friends, we will serve as an expression of grace. Not because we expect anything in return. We will not expect recipients of our service to necessarily join us – although if they do, we will lovingly fold them into our community. Thinking like this, determined to serve as both a reflection and an expression of the grace we have received, people will wonder what our angle is. People will wonder what the catch is, what the bill is, what the expected rate of return on our investment will be. What’s expected, and hidden, in the fine print?

There will be no angle, no expected return, no prerequisite for our grace inspired service.

Friends, we live in a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. We have been saved through faith – and even that saving faith is a gift from God, not something we generated on our own. We then are free – FREE – to offer our service to others as an expression of the same grace that we have received. We are free to be about kingdom work, not institutional transactions.

In a world conditioned to investments and transactions. In a world used to some desired return on every good effort. In a world used to the idea that it most somehow merit, purchase, or earn every good thing. We will offer service – along with connections, transformation, and love – just because we can. Just because we should. That’s what we were created for. THAT is how we will be salt and light in the world. Amen.