When I was a
kid lying in bed at night, from time to time, I would get miffed, imagining a scenario
where I, who had given my life to Jesus at the ripe old age of 4, did what I
could to live faithful to God all my many decades and then passed away (surely
a near saint by my old age), and Josephine Schmoe, born my same year, did
whatever she wanted her whole life – partied, broke all the rules, ignored God,
I mean, really lived it up, and then,
gasping her last breath and timed just perfectly, gave her life to Jesus – and
we would both be standing side by side before God’s throne in glory. Oh, it made me mad. So unfair!
Today we are
going to talk about grace.
Grace is God’s stance toward us – God’s side of the
relationship, Grace is God’s Yes, and it is so big that no matter how big your
No is, God’s Yes is always bigger. In fact, Paul says in the verses just before
this – God’s Yes is so big that the biggest No you can give can’t ever trump
God’s Yes. And he explains it this way – through one person – Adam – came all
our separation from God, humanity’s No, sin, that leads to death, then much
more so through one person – Jesus Christ, comes all of our righteousness, or
completeness, fully living in connection to God. The free gift is not like the trespass, he
explains, Where sin increases, grace abounds all the more, Paul says.
In other
words, There is nothing you can do to push God away forever, nothing you can do
to make God give up on you, nothing in this world that is so big and terrible
that God’s love is not greater and cannot come through – leading all toward the
end when all will be righteousness – right relationship with God and each
other.
And grace
comes first and last- even before sin, even before the relationship is broken,
God has already decided that nothing can stop God’s Yes to us, it will always
be bigger. So it wasn’t a quick reaction to our severing of the relationship;
it is what defines the relationship to begin with. God says, I will always love you, I will
always choose you, I will always have life and joy and hope and love in store
for you –that is what I made you for and I will never stop holding you into
that promise. Regardless of what you do or don’t do.
This sounds
highly suspicious. Not at all logical.
So,
naturally, some of us then ask, How far can I push? What can I get away with? And we want to test the limits. Others of us
get worried about those of you who want to test the limits because we think we
can impress God and keep this thing going pretty well on our own. Both of us are wrong- by the way, neither of
us has grasped the concept of grace in the least.
Paul asks,
Shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound? And then the phrase we more
delicately translate, May it never be! Or By no means! But the literal Greek translation is perhaps
an even stronger version of, “Hell, No!”
Even the
question itself- to sin that grace may abound, shows that we are still trapped
in sin’s transactional way of being – where I do things in order to get you to
do things- I earn my value, I hedge my
bets, I protect my heart and I guard my assets, I am wheeling and dealing to
get the most out of this because it is up to me to advance me, or I will be
overlooked. That is the way of fear, the way of sin and death.
But here’s the
thing, Paul says, we are actually dead
to this way of living. It is as though we were corpses, absent of all breath,
not even present in the room – that’s how much control sin has over us. We
don’t have to live in the way of sin, we have been made free to walk in
newnewss of life.
But it’s hard
to hear that- because I found myself living out of sin many times in the past
few days. Forgetting that I am free, that I am not actually bound to whatever
form sin takes in the moment – jealousy, rage, comparing myself to others or to
some false ideal, believing I am worse or better than someone else, gossip,
even choosing to avoid talking about something that matters because I wanted to
avoid conflict – as though conflict could destroy me, or fear gets to be in
charge of who I am, as though we don’t really belong to each other, as though I
am not free to be for my neighbor and
instead must try to be free from
them, on my own.
We are meant
to live into the Kingdom of God, the reality that is coming in from the future
and will last beyond time, which is even now breaking in and claiming the world. Paul talks about Jesus’s life and death in
the past tense, it has happened, and our newness of life as the future reality
breaking in now, it is happening and will happen – we live toward the day when
God’s big picture will be all in all. And remember, it is not by what we do, but by the
faith of Christ – by what Jesus has done, what God has done in and through
Jesus – we are drawn into the righteousness of Christ, the wholeness and
connection to God that Jesus has, that is where we now
live as well, Paul says. Imagine trusting in that!
So while I laid in my bed as
a teenager, wondering what real living I was missing out on by following Jesus,
and what kind of scam someone else was planning to run with their deathbed
conversion that might one up me, I was still believing the lie from the serpent
in the garden, that what God wants is to restrict me and limit my fun and what
the world wants is to satisfy me with pleasure and happiness. Even in my so-called faith I was still living
as a slave to sin’s lies. When the truth
is, what God wants is fullness and joy for everyone and all the earth. God
wants human beings living as they are meant to live – in wholeness and
connection to God and each other, not bound by sin or hate or anger or jealousy.
But free to be fully alive, now and always.
A while back we had a
service at St. Joe’s, and we asked the kids to describe the best life they
could imagine – life as it was meant to be lived, what would it look like? What
would the world be like if you could make it however you wanted it to be?
They said things like,
everybody has enough to eat, nobody is teased, all people have homes, you get
to be creative, everyone belongs – and we put all of them up on a board in
shapes of cars and houses and flowers, so that we had created a life scene, a
little world parading across our canvas announcing this world they longed for,
and then above it we wrote, “God wants a world where….”
And then we broke down the Ten Commandments and showed how they were meant to describe this kind of life,
and to preserve freedom for people to live whole, connected, productive lives
where all people matter and contribute and everyone is cared for and nobody is
overlooked.
This is the life God is
calling us all to be living in, right now, alongside each other, and yet over
and over again, we choose sin and destruction, and we’ve set up systems that
glorify sin and structures that reinforce the way of fear so it seems like the
real reality.
We are so afraid of getting
hurt that we hurt others first, or we close ourselves off to being known. We
are so worried what other people will think of us- as though our whole self
were determined by their opinion – that we hide who we really are, or try to
make ourselves somehow better, shinier, cleaner, more interesting.
We so buy into the lie that we need to have
it all together that we hide the broken parts and bury the pain, or the
addiction, or the anger, and find ourselves just surviving instead of trusting
that showing those parts to other people will actually allow God to make us
stronger and more whole.
In fact, we swallow the lie
of sin and death so completely, that even when shown the enormity of grace, we
try to figure out how to harness it and use it to trick God, to get away with
something, to prove ourselves worthy or better than someone else, to have our
cake and eat it to. We almost can’t even grasp with our imaginations that God
chooses us so fully and completely that we can’t mess that up. Surely it will be lost if we don’t do
something to secure or earn or maintain it!
Paul is calling the bluff.
He is exposing the illusion for what it is.
And he is saying we are freed – totally set free – from living like
this. We don’t have to – we can live in newness of life. You’ve already died, Paul
says, you’re so drawn into Christ’s relationship with God, so completely united
with him that his death is your death and his resurrection will be your
resurrection, so nothing, nothing, can separate you from the love of God in
Christ Jesus, not in this life or the next.
But even when we hear it, or
know it, we’re going to forget it.
A thousand times a day we will forget.
And I will tell you, the
lazy way is to forget; it’s easier to succumb to the urges than to exercise self-control.
To judge and dismiss others is simpler than confessing
your own weakness and being willing to be changed.
To shut people out is simpler than opening up
and risking being known – for a while.
To
forgive is harder than keeping a grudge– up to a point.
To indulge in what feels good in the moment
feels better than having to think about the future or your responsibility to
yourself and those around you – until it doesn’t.
All these things feel good or
easy for a while, and then they feel crushing. They feel like shackles and
chains. They feel like death, and they lead to more death, loneliness,
isolation, shame, hatred, and despair.
But when we trust in God’s
love, in the grace in which we already stand, we find ourselves empowered by
God’s Yes to do the hard thing despite our fear – to be brave, to be open, to step out, to
speak up, to confess, to forgive, to live free from the baggage and the
corrosion.
And grace leads to more
grace; it multiplies and spreads. So
when we forget, the grace is there to meet us and pull us into life once again.
When we forget – even if we forget so far we feel stuck, we are never beyond
the grace of God, that invites us to live the truth, the real reality – that in
Christ Jesus we have been set free.
When we experience grace,
when we really taste forgiveness and freedom and life in the way God made life
to be, it makes us want to respond out of that fullness, to keep living in its
freedom. It makes us want to walk in
newness of life.
Grace, real grace, makes us want to have chosen Jesus when we
were four years old and keep on trusting God every single day, because we
discover that living that way brings joy.
And it sparks the
imagination!
What if we lived in God’s
yes every day, as often as possible, like we really are free? What if we were
guided by love instead of fear?
Free to forgive someone who hasn’t earned it?
Free
to help a stranger just because?
Free to say no more when we need rest?
What if we lived like we were really
free to share our true self, even if it might be rejected?
Free to admit weakness and help each other
stand?
Free to breathe through the
defensive anger bubbling up inside and give ourselves a time out?
Free to see others
and ourselves through the eyes of God’s love and act out of that place? What if we believed there was enough for
everyone and so we shared generously and freely?
What if we trusted that God loved
us all so we respected and honored
every single person?
What if, each day, we presented ourselves to
God as instruments of righteousness, that is, we said, Dear God, use me to bring your healing, peace, love and hope, to a sin-sick
and weary world?
So, then, sisters and
brothers, if nothing can stop God’s Yes to us, should we continue in sin that
grace may abound? Hell no! We are dead
to that game. Let’s walk in newness of
life! Let’s live in God’s Yes, in the joy and freedom that grace empowers, and
see what happens next!
Amen.
