Beginning the Year with Grace
Douglas Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
Viewers tuning into watch the Sugar Bowl football game on January 1 between the University of Florida and the University of Cincinnati saw star Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, quarterback with “Eph. 2:8-10” in white on the eye black on his face. Tebow is a strong Christian, the son of missionaries. What he was referencing was these words:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— 9 not the result of works,
so that no one may boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” Ephesians 2:8-10
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After what was a tumultuous decade, it seemed to me that focusing on beginning the year with grace was good idea. Grace is unmerited, unearned, undeserved favor or blessing. It is the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God. None of us would be alive today were it not for grace. We were not able to create our life. Truly there is no such thing as a self-made man or woman. We couldn’t care for ourselves when were born. We were totally dependent upon grace, unmerited, undeserved, favor or blessing. Sometimes we forget how totally dependent upon grace we remain throughout our lives; sometimes living in a world that is often so lacking in grace makes it is easy for us to forget.
Grace is standing at the end of a long line in a supermarket and a checkout person opening a new line and telling you to come on over. Grace is someone letting you take a left-hand turn on Cape Cod in the summer. Grace is someone offering you help, a meal, encouragement, a hug when you need it. When we look at Jesus we see grace at work and it is different than the way much of the world operates. Some people live life on the terms, “In God we trust, all others pay cash.” God says to workers upset because others received equal pay even though they didn’t work as long (Matthew 20:15), “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
“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 Muslim code of law – each of these offers a way to earn approval. Only Christianity dares to make God’s love unconditional.”[1] Grace is confusing. We believe, “All sinners are punished.” Then Jesus tells a story that basically says, “A younger son wishes his father was dead, receives his inheritance while his father is still alive, squanders it like a fool, returns home a disgrace to his family – and he isn’t punished. He is welcomed, forgiven, and a party is thrown in his honor.” For the most part, this hasn’t been our experience. When we have strayed, sinned, or wandered from the faith, not many of us got a party when we came home. Make no mistake, the son behaved horribly, yet God is more like a parent who stays up late at night staring out a living room window hoping a child comes home, rather than a God who waits up waiting to catch and punish a child caught in a transgression. It is easy to become more accustomed to punishing and fault-finding than we are to grace. “Grace isn’t a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It’s a way to live.” The law tells me how crooked I am. Grace comes along and straightens me out.” -Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899).
Bob Beasley, a pastor in Ontario, shared an experience he and his wife had with their three-year-old daughter, Rena, during a Sunday night baptismal service, which was a new experience for her. Pastor Beasley said, “She exclaimed in surprise, “Why he pushed that guy in the water? Why, dad, why?” My wife tried to explain quietly and briefly, but Rena just wouldn’t be satisfied. Later that night we tried to provide an answer that a child’s mind could comprehend. We talked about sin and told Rena that when people decide to live for Jesus and “do good they want everyone to know. We then explained that water symbolizes Jesus’ washing people from sin; when they come out “clean,” they are going to try and to be “good.” Rena immediately responded, “Why didn’t Pastor Bob just spank him?”
Charles Stanley wrote this about grace, “Hurt and pain, while they may invade, cannot change the presence of God’s grace. Grace is not dependent on circumstances. The operation of grace is not less or more because you did or did not do a certain thing. Grace is a gift and always will be.” The presence of grace doesn’t necessarily spare us from hurt or pain, but being grace-filled enables us to respond to difficulties in a different fashion than those who haven’t been touched by God’s grace and filled with the Spirit. Anne Lamott wrote, “I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”
One of my favorite stories in Philip Yancey’s excellent book, What’s So Amazing About Grace, comes from an article in The Boston Globe about an unusual wedding banquet:
Accompanied by her fiancé, a woman went to the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Boston and ordered a wedding banquet. The two of them pored over the menu, made selections of china and silver, and pointed to pictures of flower arrangements they liked. They both had expensive taste, and the bill came to $13,000. After leaving a check for half that amount as a down payment, the couple went home to flip through books of wedding announcements.
The day the announcements were supposed to hit the mailbox, the potential groom got cold feet. “I’m just not sure,” he said. “It’s a big commitment. Let’s think about this a little longer.”
When his angry fiancée returned to the Hyatt to cancel the banquet, the Events Manager could not have been more understanding. “The same thing happened to me, Honey,” she said, and told the story of her own broken engagement. But about the refund, she had bad news. “The contract is binding. You’re only entitled to $1,300 back. You have two options: to forfeit the rest of the down payment, or go ahead with the banquet. I’m sorry, Really, I am.”
It seemed crazy, but the more the jilted bride thought about it, the more she liked the idea of going ahead with the party – not a wedding banquet, mind you, but a big blowout. Ten years before, this same woman had been living in a homeless shelter. She had got back on her feet, found a good job, and set aside a sizable nest egg. Now she had the wild notion of using her savings to treat the down-and-outs of Boston to a night on the town.
And so it was that in June of 1990 the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Boston hosted a party such as it had never seen before. The hostess changed the menu to boneless chicken “in honor of the groom,” she said – and sent invitations to rescue missions and homeless shelters. That warm summer night, people used to peeling half-gnawed pizza off the cardboard dined instead on chicken cordon bleu. Hyatt waiters in tuxedos served hors d’oeuvres to senior citizens propped up by crutches and aluminum walkers. Bag ladies, vagrants, and addicts took one night off from the hard life of the sidewalks outside and instead sipped champagne, ate chocolate wedding cake, and danced to big-band melodies late into the night.[2] “Grace is the central invitation to life and the final word. It’s the beckoning nudge and the overwhelming, undeserved mercy that urges us to change and grow, and then gives us the power to pull it off.” -Tim Hansel
While we may not have had quite as big a banquet at Christmas, many of us probably got a gift or two. Some gifts are thoughtful, kind, creative, or generous…and others head back to the store to be returned or to the closet to be re-gifted to some other unsuspecting soul. Pastor Clifford Steward of Louisville, Kentucky, sent his parents a microwave one Christmas. Here’s how he recalls the experience:
“They were excited that now they, too, could be part of the instant generation. When Dad unpacked the microwave and plugged it in, literally within seconds, the microwave turned two smiles into frowns! Even after reading the directions, they couldn’t make it work. Two days later, my mother was playing bridge with a friend and confessed her inability to get that microwave oven even to boil water. “To get this darn thing to work I really don’t need better directions; I just needed my son to come along with the gift!”
When God gave the gift of grace and salvation, God didn’t just send a complicated instruction booklet for us to figure out on our own. God sent a Son, full of grace and truth and from him we have received grace upon grace.
We all stand in need of God’s grace and we cannot earn it or deserve it because there is no way we can earn or deserve the life of God’s Son. Grace is totally God’s choice. “In one of his last acts before his death, Jesus forgave a thief dangling on a cross, knowing full well the thief had probably converted out of plain fear. That thief would never study the Bible, never attend synagogue or church, and never make amends to all those he had wronged. He simply said, “Jesus, remember me,” and Jesus promised, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” It was another shocking reminder that grace does not depend on what we have done for God but rather what God has done for us.”[3]
The hymn Amazing Grace was written by a wretch named John Newton. John Newton was nurtured by a devoted Christian mother who dreamed that her only son would become a preacher. But she died when John was only a child, and he followed his sea-captain father to a sailor’s life. John didn’t care for the discipline of the Royal Navy: he deserted ship, was flogged, and eventually was discharged. He then headed for regions where he could “sin freely,” and ended up on the western coast of Africa, working for a slave trader who mistreated him. A year after escaping from the island where he was working, the ship he was on was battered by a severe storm. Newton had read The Imitation of Christ, and during the life-threatening voyage he became a Christian. Sadly, his Christian faith didn’t stop him from serving as captain of a slave ship for six years. He gradually came to abhor slavery and later crusaded against it.
Newton came back to England, married his long-time sweetheart and began studying for the ministry and preaching in vacant buildings. He was ordained within the Anglican Church, and took a church in Olney in 1764. Newton began writing his own hymns, many biographical in nature, including “Amazing Grace!” Near the end of his life, his health and memory failing, and being encouraged to retire, Newton replied, “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: That I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior!”[4]
John Newton left instructions for his tombstone to read, “John Newton, Clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy.”
What a story of grace and transformation.
“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 happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you.
But there’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.”[5]
Prayer: “God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that can be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish one from the other” Reinhold Niebuhr
Romans 5:6-11
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. 8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. 9 Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. 11 But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
[1] Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI 1997, page 45.
[2] Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace, pages 48-49.
[3] Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace, pages 54-55.
[4] “The Golden Age of Hymns,” Christian History, no. 31.
[5] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC. Leadership, Vol. 17, no. 4.