Grace

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and it is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast.

The helpful term is the gift of God.

God continues to reach out to us, urging us to listen gladly, sometimes in spite of ourselves.

That is grace.

Not what God has to do, but what God has chosen to do do with and for us, and then by extension, what we choose to pass on to those around us.

One of my pastor friends years back told me this incident he observed which illustrates the idea of grace:

Perhaps you have gone to a country fair sometime and there have seen the display of home-canned fruits and vegetables.

It takes meticulous work to make things look just perfect in those glass jars.

I've never entered anything in one of those contests, because when Donna and I can, it is to get things done just as quickly as possible and we're not worried about lining things up in straight rows in the jars.

But one person who entered had taken all the proper care to get things just right, and left the jar for judging and display.

What the person had not noticed was that in transporting the jar, the contents had shifted so that instead of perfect layers of white beans, one layer had an odd red bean showing.

Something like that could easily put the entrant low in the standings.

When it was spied...oh, the embarrassment!

Everybody who went by saw it and snickered: “Now how does that person expect to win with that odd bean in it...it looks dumb!”

“Everyone knows that everything must be perfectly done in order to win.”

But after the judging, what a shock; the jar with the red bean showing had received the blue ribbon.

Everyone had been sure it was a loser, but the judges saw something more there, and the entrant received wonderful news from the judge.

Now the others can talk all they want, but it doesn't make any difference, because the judge has spoken.

The jar with the red bean has been justified ( to use the technical term) by the free word of the judge,

There is grace, the gift of God, just because he chooses.

It is not earned; it can only be received, joyfully.

The gift of grace means that we are enabled to see things differently.

Several persons around the congregation have had the experience of having one eye out of commission temporarily because of injury or illness.

The latest instance was one of the kids who had a peculiar malady on our trip last week.

With only one eye, we have lots of problems with depth perception, etc.

It is easy to reach out and miss!

For the moment, let's say that we all have that infirmity.

With one eye, the kind of vision we all have in common, we can see lots of things around us: misery, illness, death, and destruction.

With this one eye of the world, a person may see Christ on a cross, suffering unto death, and term it a senseless sacrifice, perhaps even madness.

What could Jesus possibly have hoped to accomplish?

But with the second eye, the eye of faith, the eye given by a gracious God, we can look at things and see them differently.

When John in today's gospel bids us to look at the crucified Jesus it is with this special eye of faith.

Then we can see more than Jesus suffering; we see the love of God being acted out.

With both eyes, including the eye of faith, the cross is the most important event possible.

For John is playing with a double meaning in the first verse of the gospel today.

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness – that strange healing story about faith in the Old Testament lesson today – so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

The double meaning comes in the word lifted up.

That same word can also be translated enthroned, what one does to honor a king.

The world sees only Jesus suffering; with the eye of faith, we see also Christ enthroned.

The world sees the cross, laughs, and trivializes it.

With faith, we see the cross and treasure the love of God acted out there.

At various points it has been fashionable for rock groups and others to wear the cross as costume jewelry, as trivial ornaments.

They are laughing.

But with the gift of grace, we can see it as a reminder of the love of God,

and the world's laughter we turn into a positive remembrance.

Three bits of grace:

1. A Sunday School teacher welcomed a student to a young class, a student with a special problem; he had only one arm.

She took care that none of the other students made inappropriate comments and the class went well.

The hour was nearly over when the teacher asked the students to gather in a circle and she said, “Now let's take our hands and make the church and the steeple....” and she stopped in horrified embarrassment at what she had just said.

The child of course could not do what she had requested.

But where the adult goofed, a child standing next knew just what to do.

He said, “Here, I'll use one hand and you use yours and we'll make church together.”

That's grace in action.

2. A story about one who didn't quite “get it”.

A little girl was baptized in a country church one Easter Sunday.

That afternoon she ran through the house singing and dancing.

Her grandfather rebuked her: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Just baptized singing and dancing on the Lord's Day!”

Crushed by her grandfather's attitude, the child strolled out to the barn, climbed up on the corral fence and stared at an old mule standing there with a sad, droopy look on his face.

As she reached over and patted the mule sympathetically, she said,

“Don't cry old mule. I guess you've got the same kind of religion as Grandpa has.”

3. A parable from the old west:

A mean rancher caught a cowhand rustling.

They didn't wait for a trial: “Hang him; it'll teach him a lesson.”

Years later the rancher died and appeared before the throne of God.

He thought of all the mean things he had done over the years and quaked in his boots.

God looked at the rancher a long time and said “Forgive him; it'll teach him a lesson.”

Lord, have mercy!

by grace...not your own doing...the gift of God!

Grace to you! Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.