What Can We Believe about God's Saving Grace?
Sermon
What Can We Believe?
Second Lesson Cycle A Proper 23 through Thanksgiving
Object:
The grace of God is the theme of some of our favorite hymns. "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound," "Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all of our sins." We know this is an important Christian doctrine. It is the primary thrust of the teaching of Paul. It was the pivotal doctrine of the Protestant Reformation. We know the words, "By grace you are saved through faith." But what does it mean? It is not enough to have heard of grace. We need to have experienced it. And in order to experience grace, we have to experience our need for grace. Today, we are going to dig into the meaning of the text that is the very center of Paul's theology. But to understand Paul's theology, we need to go behind it and remember Paul's experience -- and to think about its similarity to our own experience. Today we are going deep. What can we really believe about God's saving grace?
Some of us need grace because we feel that we are not acceptable. We feel that we have not measured up to expectations. Christianity is a religion of high expectations. So was the religion of the Pharisees, the strict form of Judaism in which Paul grew up. High expectations are good. They play an important role in our lives. But they are only part of what we need. If the high expectations are all that we have, they can be oppressive. Paul felt this very painfully. In Romans 7, he tells us that he knew he could never really live up to the expectations of his religion. He would never really be the person the Jewish religious laws wanted him to be, at least not alone.
Not many people today are that oppressed by the requirements of their religion. Frankly, most of us don't take it that seriously. There are other expectations that can become oppressive. The things that our parents expect of us and the success that our culture tells us we must achieve to be considered a person of worth. When we are young, it may be the expectations of the little league coach or the expectations of the teen peer group. What is it for you? What are the expectations that have made you feel like a failure?
Aman who grew up in Singapore once told his American pastor something very revealing. He said he admired the Christian church in Singapore for their success in suicide prevention. The pastor asked what he meant and the man explained that the educational system in Singapore is the old British system. Students in school have to pass certain examinations at crucial times in their education or they will be dropped out of the system. Their professional and social possibilities will then be limited for the rest of their lives. In Chinese families, the pressure to succeed is so great that, if a young person fails one of those examinations, he or she may feel that he or she has let the family down. After those examinations, there is always a wave of suicides among young people who feel disgraced and see no reason for going on. The Christian church in Singapore has developed effective ways of reaching out to those people and convincing them that God still loves them, that they do still have value as people, and that life still has possibilities for them.
It may be that your need for an experience of grace takes a shape like that. Do you feel that you have not measured up? Do you ever feel that life is a great party but you did not qualify for an invitation? That may be the need that makes you stand in need of an experience of God's grace.
For some of us, there is something bigger. The first time Paul appeared in the Bible's story, he was an ambitious young Pharisee named Saul who stood and watched a mob stone Stephen to death for witnessing to the saving grace of God in Christ. Stephen had been sentenced to death by stoning by the Jewish authorities. Paul stood and watched and cheered while Stephen prayed for those who were killing him. The stones finally crushed his skull and he died. For some people there is something attractive and contagious about hatred. Paul jumped on the bandwagon. He got himself deputized to search out and arrest all of the Christians he could find and take them to prison. He threw himself into that work with a vengeance, but apparently the memory of Stephen being stoned stayed with him. As he was on his way to Damascus to do his awful work, it all finally caught up with him. He heard the risen Christ saying, "Saul, what are you doing?" Then he was struck blind so he would have time to think about it.
Is there some memory of something you have done or participated in doing that really haunts you? Can you remember a time when you failed to give a loving response when it was needed and caused suffering for another? Is there something that your circumstances require of you that you know really is not right, maybe at work, maybe in the family? Is there something that happened during a war that you can't forget? Has there been an abortion -- or a divorce -- or a lie that haunts you? You have to fill in the blank here. What is that memory that just won't leave you alone?
There are two kinds of public enemies that I think we need to avoid as we think about this. One is the bombastic preacher who spends all of his time trying to make people feel guilty so he can sell you his little prepackaged plan of salvation. The other is the spokesman of our permissive culture who tells you there is no such thing as guilt. You can do whatever you want, whatever is profitable or pleasurable, and not worry about the consequences, either for yourself or for others. That sounds attractive, but it is like a friend who urges you not to get your cancer treated. You know the thing that haunts you is serious because it has let someone down or done some damage or at least subtracted something from the integrity of the human race. I am going to count on you to fill in the blank here. Each of you will know what we are talking about. If you don't, just remember what we are going to say in case you do eventually find that you need it.
As we said, Paul's guilt finally caught up with him on the road to Damascus, and he was left for a time to reckon with it. Then a courageous little man by the name of Ananias came to him and said, "Brother Saul, God sent me to tell you that God loves you and that he has something good for you to do." The story goes on from there.
In our scripture lesson for today, we have heard a piece of the theology that Paul finally developed to try to explain what God is doing to save us. He talks about the atonement. Now I know that some people think this is the whole story of the saving work of God. It is not. The biblical witness to the saving work of God talks about different ways in which God reaches out to people in need and works to save them. But this is one of the important witnesses to the saving work of God, the one that has to do with guilt, and that is what we are talking about right now. So let's try to hear the message. Paul talks about the atonement, the idea that Christ died to pay the cost of our sins. Now lots of people have trouble with some of the things that seems to imply, such as the idea that God insists someone has to suffer for any sinfulness. I have some trouble with that idea too. But it is really not important. It is part of the stage settings for the real drama. It is best to forget that and move directly to the bottom line. What is this biblical witness to the saving work of God trying to tell us?
Here it is. Our sins are serious. They are serious because they are destructive. But God has absorbed the costs that result from our wrongness and God sets those things aside and forgives us. God loves you. God loves you right now, just as you are. God is reaching out to you in love, in many different ways, to work with you and to help you get your life together and make it something beautiful and genuinely good. That's it in a nutshell. Now let's look at it part by part.
There is a cost to our wrongness. Deep down inside, we know that. It is costly not just because we have broken some moral law. It is costly because it has done damage to some other person or to the very structure of life in human society or to ourselves. It is the destructiveness that gets something on God's list of "Thou shalt nots" and not just someone's puritanical uptightness. God and the whole of human society has absorbed that cost. It hurt but it was done. The image of Christ suffering on the cross to pay the price for our sins is a meaningful one. Our wrongness is costly -- but it is forgiven.
When the people of South Africa decided that they had to move out of the era of oppression called apartheid into a new era of democracy, they knew they had to reckon with the enormous amount of harm that had been done by people on all sides of the conflict. People had been arrested and held in prison for years. People had been evicted from their homes. People had been tortured and killed. People had been necklaced with old tires and burned to death. It just would not be possible to act as if those things hadn't happened. But then, neither was it possible to punish all for the crime. There was too much of it. Too many people had been dragged into it. They would have to forgive in order to move on. First they had to call their sin what it was and admit it and repent of it. They actually found a way of doing that as a nation. They called it the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The nation absorbed the painful things that had happened in the past so they could move on. God has made the same decision about our sins. God absorbs them so we can move on.
Can you take that in? God has absorbed the cost of whatever it is that is haunting you so you can leave it behind and move on.
Now we have come to the starting place. Lots of people think that having your sins forgiven is the end of the process of salvation, but it is not. It is the starting place. Having been set free from what was, you are ready to move on toward what can be.
The first part of what comes next is the news that God loves you. Do you know what that means? Lots of people have never really experienced love. To be loved is to be valued by another, not for what you can do, but for yourself. When someone loves you, that someone makes a commitment to your life, wants what is best for you, and is willing to do whatever is necessary to help you reach what is best for you, even if doing it is costly. Do you know that kind of love? I hope you do. The good news is that God, that great other who is ultimately the most important other in the world, loves you with that kind of love.
God is ready to enter into a lifelong, life-shaping relationship with you to help you become all that you can become. One person who is active in Alcoholics Anonymous is fond of saying, "God loves us just as we are. But he loves us too much to leave us just as we are." When you take God as your partner in living, life will become an adventure in becoming and it will be full of exciting possibilities.
It is not pleasant to talk about our need for salvation. It makes it necessary to remember things we have been trying to forget. But there is something better than just forgetting. I hope this hasn't been too painful for you. I just want to be for you an Ananias who comes to say, Brother Saul, Sister Jane, Brother Bill, God loves you and God has something better in store for you. Amen.
Some of us need grace because we feel that we are not acceptable. We feel that we have not measured up to expectations. Christianity is a religion of high expectations. So was the religion of the Pharisees, the strict form of Judaism in which Paul grew up. High expectations are good. They play an important role in our lives. But they are only part of what we need. If the high expectations are all that we have, they can be oppressive. Paul felt this very painfully. In Romans 7, he tells us that he knew he could never really live up to the expectations of his religion. He would never really be the person the Jewish religious laws wanted him to be, at least not alone.
Not many people today are that oppressed by the requirements of their religion. Frankly, most of us don't take it that seriously. There are other expectations that can become oppressive. The things that our parents expect of us and the success that our culture tells us we must achieve to be considered a person of worth. When we are young, it may be the expectations of the little league coach or the expectations of the teen peer group. What is it for you? What are the expectations that have made you feel like a failure?
Aman who grew up in Singapore once told his American pastor something very revealing. He said he admired the Christian church in Singapore for their success in suicide prevention. The pastor asked what he meant and the man explained that the educational system in Singapore is the old British system. Students in school have to pass certain examinations at crucial times in their education or they will be dropped out of the system. Their professional and social possibilities will then be limited for the rest of their lives. In Chinese families, the pressure to succeed is so great that, if a young person fails one of those examinations, he or she may feel that he or she has let the family down. After those examinations, there is always a wave of suicides among young people who feel disgraced and see no reason for going on. The Christian church in Singapore has developed effective ways of reaching out to those people and convincing them that God still loves them, that they do still have value as people, and that life still has possibilities for them.
It may be that your need for an experience of grace takes a shape like that. Do you feel that you have not measured up? Do you ever feel that life is a great party but you did not qualify for an invitation? That may be the need that makes you stand in need of an experience of God's grace.
For some of us, there is something bigger. The first time Paul appeared in the Bible's story, he was an ambitious young Pharisee named Saul who stood and watched a mob stone Stephen to death for witnessing to the saving grace of God in Christ. Stephen had been sentenced to death by stoning by the Jewish authorities. Paul stood and watched and cheered while Stephen prayed for those who were killing him. The stones finally crushed his skull and he died. For some people there is something attractive and contagious about hatred. Paul jumped on the bandwagon. He got himself deputized to search out and arrest all of the Christians he could find and take them to prison. He threw himself into that work with a vengeance, but apparently the memory of Stephen being stoned stayed with him. As he was on his way to Damascus to do his awful work, it all finally caught up with him. He heard the risen Christ saying, "Saul, what are you doing?" Then he was struck blind so he would have time to think about it.
Is there some memory of something you have done or participated in doing that really haunts you? Can you remember a time when you failed to give a loving response when it was needed and caused suffering for another? Is there something that your circumstances require of you that you know really is not right, maybe at work, maybe in the family? Is there something that happened during a war that you can't forget? Has there been an abortion -- or a divorce -- or a lie that haunts you? You have to fill in the blank here. What is that memory that just won't leave you alone?
There are two kinds of public enemies that I think we need to avoid as we think about this. One is the bombastic preacher who spends all of his time trying to make people feel guilty so he can sell you his little prepackaged plan of salvation. The other is the spokesman of our permissive culture who tells you there is no such thing as guilt. You can do whatever you want, whatever is profitable or pleasurable, and not worry about the consequences, either for yourself or for others. That sounds attractive, but it is like a friend who urges you not to get your cancer treated. You know the thing that haunts you is serious because it has let someone down or done some damage or at least subtracted something from the integrity of the human race. I am going to count on you to fill in the blank here. Each of you will know what we are talking about. If you don't, just remember what we are going to say in case you do eventually find that you need it.
As we said, Paul's guilt finally caught up with him on the road to Damascus, and he was left for a time to reckon with it. Then a courageous little man by the name of Ananias came to him and said, "Brother Saul, God sent me to tell you that God loves you and that he has something good for you to do." The story goes on from there.
In our scripture lesson for today, we have heard a piece of the theology that Paul finally developed to try to explain what God is doing to save us. He talks about the atonement. Now I know that some people think this is the whole story of the saving work of God. It is not. The biblical witness to the saving work of God talks about different ways in which God reaches out to people in need and works to save them. But this is one of the important witnesses to the saving work of God, the one that has to do with guilt, and that is what we are talking about right now. So let's try to hear the message. Paul talks about the atonement, the idea that Christ died to pay the cost of our sins. Now lots of people have trouble with some of the things that seems to imply, such as the idea that God insists someone has to suffer for any sinfulness. I have some trouble with that idea too. But it is really not important. It is part of the stage settings for the real drama. It is best to forget that and move directly to the bottom line. What is this biblical witness to the saving work of God trying to tell us?
Here it is. Our sins are serious. They are serious because they are destructive. But God has absorbed the costs that result from our wrongness and God sets those things aside and forgives us. God loves you. God loves you right now, just as you are. God is reaching out to you in love, in many different ways, to work with you and to help you get your life together and make it something beautiful and genuinely good. That's it in a nutshell. Now let's look at it part by part.
There is a cost to our wrongness. Deep down inside, we know that. It is costly not just because we have broken some moral law. It is costly because it has done damage to some other person or to the very structure of life in human society or to ourselves. It is the destructiveness that gets something on God's list of "Thou shalt nots" and not just someone's puritanical uptightness. God and the whole of human society has absorbed that cost. It hurt but it was done. The image of Christ suffering on the cross to pay the price for our sins is a meaningful one. Our wrongness is costly -- but it is forgiven.
When the people of South Africa decided that they had to move out of the era of oppression called apartheid into a new era of democracy, they knew they had to reckon with the enormous amount of harm that had been done by people on all sides of the conflict. People had been arrested and held in prison for years. People had been evicted from their homes. People had been tortured and killed. People had been necklaced with old tires and burned to death. It just would not be possible to act as if those things hadn't happened. But then, neither was it possible to punish all for the crime. There was too much of it. Too many people had been dragged into it. They would have to forgive in order to move on. First they had to call their sin what it was and admit it and repent of it. They actually found a way of doing that as a nation. They called it the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The nation absorbed the painful things that had happened in the past so they could move on. God has made the same decision about our sins. God absorbs them so we can move on.
Can you take that in? God has absorbed the cost of whatever it is that is haunting you so you can leave it behind and move on.
Now we have come to the starting place. Lots of people think that having your sins forgiven is the end of the process of salvation, but it is not. It is the starting place. Having been set free from what was, you are ready to move on toward what can be.
The first part of what comes next is the news that God loves you. Do you know what that means? Lots of people have never really experienced love. To be loved is to be valued by another, not for what you can do, but for yourself. When someone loves you, that someone makes a commitment to your life, wants what is best for you, and is willing to do whatever is necessary to help you reach what is best for you, even if doing it is costly. Do you know that kind of love? I hope you do. The good news is that God, that great other who is ultimately the most important other in the world, loves you with that kind of love.
God is ready to enter into a lifelong, life-shaping relationship with you to help you become all that you can become. One person who is active in Alcoholics Anonymous is fond of saying, "God loves us just as we are. But he loves us too much to leave us just as we are." When you take God as your partner in living, life will become an adventure in becoming and it will be full of exciting possibilities.
It is not pleasant to talk about our need for salvation. It makes it necessary to remember things we have been trying to forget. But there is something better than just forgetting. I hope this hasn't been too painful for you. I just want to be for you an Ananias who comes to say, Brother Saul, Sister Jane, Brother Bill, God loves you and God has something better in store for you. Amen.
