The Grit in Grace
David C. Myers
March 22, 2009
Lent 4; New members
One Great Hour of Sharing
Numbers 21: 4 - 9
Ephesians 2:4 - 10
John 3:14 - 21
Text: "By grace you have been saved by faith." . . . Ephesians 2:8 - 9
There are certain words that are almost self-defining. The very speaking of them seems to convey their meaning. For example, when you say "serendipity" you almost expect a pleasant surprise; "Gloomy" indicates a pervasive sadness or pessimism. Even as I say "scintillate", we think of things that sparkle or excite.
"Grace" is one of those words. It's a very lovely word. The very saying of it conjures up happiness. "Grace" is, for me, a very . . . well, "graceful" word. It's a freeing word, for God's grace releases us from whatever restricts us; it releases all the baggage we carry around, and let's walk free in God's light.
Well, all of these things reflect the profound theology of God's gift of Himself and God's mercy to creation, without ill-will or restraint. Grace is beautiful, it's transforming, and most of all it comes with no strings attached. Grace is free or it is not grace. God is grace-full, gracious.
And being a gift that has no strings attached, there is nothing we can do to earn grace or trigger grace. As much as we would like to think that there is a causal relationship with our behavior and how God treats us - that is to say, if we are good, good things will happen to us; or conversely, if we experience bad things then it must be because we deserve them -there is no such casual and effect relationship in God's scheme of things. Even if that is how the rest of our life is played out, that is not the way it is with faith. The Creator has no reason to behave that way. God owes us no debts. God chooses what to create and how to respond to that creation. The Creator needs nothing from the creation, the creatures, unless God so chooses.
If we are honest in our faith, there is a huge chasm between God and humanity. Or, as God said to Job, "where were you when I created the heavens and the earth?" As if to say, "who are you to question My wisdom and judgment?"
Which gets us back to the subject at hand - "grace", which is the bridge between God the Creator and humanity the creation.
This morning's Scripture lessons teach us about grace. From John we hear the words so common, "that God so loved the world that He sent His only Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that through Him the world might be saved." We've heard this so often that perhaps we have taken for granted and thought that this was the natural order of things, that it is our natural right to be loved by God.
But Paul reminds us that is not the case.
In fact, that God so chooses to offer us grace causes Paul to note in amazement: (as if he were saying) "wait a minute, things don't happen like this all the time. It's not in our control. This thing we call grace is a real gift."
This is grace! This free gift of the God Who makes love to His creation; God strengthens, affirms, comforts, provides, without regard for what we have earned, apart from whether we are privileged or underprivileged, developed or developing, regardless of class or color, gender, age, gender preference, or degree. And most of all, God forgives us and takes away our guilt, and our feelings of inadequacy. Grace really is amazing!
Perhaps Kierkegaard said it best, "God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but [God] does what is even more wonderful: God makes saints out of sinners."
But it's not quite that easy. Grace is not cheap.
And this is where we need to pay heed to the Hebrew Bible, you know - when you open the Bible - it's on the left side; it's that part Christians don't often pay a lot of attention to. In the reading today from the Book of Numbers we encounter snakes. And from this reading we can learn something about the "grit" that is grace.
When I was a kid, I used to love to hunt for snakes. We would overturn stones and small logs to catch garter snakes, red belly brown snakes and occasionally green grass snakes. That's about the only kind of snakes we had in Maine. About the worse that could happen to you would be a snake bite - not poisonous, and it hurt a little, but it was only a snake bite. However, in November of 2001, while I was in San Diego with the National Association of Annual Conference Treasurers, one of the vendors - North American Moving Company - decided that they would host a welcoming party for us. Since they didn't have to provide any adult-beverages for this good United Methodist group, they could spend their money on something else. So they contracted with the San Diego Zoo to have some animals brought over for us to "fawn over". They were furry and fuzzy creatures, a koala bear and a wallaby. Graceful things. And when we were all feeling good, then they brought out a box and asked 6 of us to stand in line just outside the box. Out came out a 20 foot albino python, weighing close to 200 pounds. And they expected us to hold it! I discovered very suddenly that the same love of adventure and fun I had with snakes as a kid, now had turned into a sense of fear and dread! And guess who they wanted to hold the head of the 20 foot long albino python?!
Well, back to the book of Numbers. It is an interesting story. The Hebrews in their escape of enslavement from Egypt now found themselves in the Sinai dessert for 40 years - starving. You remember, out in the wilderness, the people in hunger and desperation cried out to God for nourishment. And God sent food from heaven - manna. Well, that was a long time ago. Now they were tired, lost, and they had been eating this manna day after day, and they told God they were sick of it.
These people had the gall to say, "We had it better in Egypt when we were in slavery where at least every once in a while we had a good square meal of meat, not this day after day manna."
Have you ever had days like that? Days when you felt that you were in the wilderness? Days when you thought God had sent you in one direction only to find out that you had nothing but bare sustenance - the Hebrews called it manna? Days when you hungered so badly - not just for food; but perhaps for affirmation, or a sense of worthiness - that you got angry and wondered why God has abandoned you?
Well, what did God do for the Israelites wandering in the wilderness - the complainers? God sent the snakes to bite the people who were ungrateful enough to call the God-sent manna in the wilderness disgusting stuff.
And this has to do with grace?
Well, Moses was told by God to then get a poisonous snake and put it on a pole; and then every one bitten by the snakes may look at the snake on the pole and live.
This weird staff was later adapted as the symbol for the American Medical Association, a curious image of healing - both threat and salve, twined together in the act of healing. Those of you who have had surgery know that these people who work under the symbol of two snakes entwined on a staff often hurt you in order to make you whole.
So we turn back to Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus. Paul does not say, "By God's grace you have been saved . . . period" and leave it at that. Paul adds to the end of that, "By grace you have been saved . . . by faith."
Faith, you see, is the qualifier to grace. It is, if you will, the grit in grace. Grace comes from God, Who can afford to give it. But faith is another matter. Faith comes hard in our world of unfaith. Being faithful goes against the ways of the world and goes against the values and conventions of the world. In a world that demands certainty, taking a leap of faith is not easy. But is faith that enables the grace to stick in our soul.
Having faith in the midst of illness is not easy. It is also hard to be faithful when confronting the loss of a loved one. But we can take comfort in knowing that God so loved us so much that God came to live as a person, being as vulnerable as we are, a Person - God's own Son - that would suffer and would die.
It is faith that gives us the courage to say that really bad things about ourselves in the Prayer of Confession, knowing that indeed, we are the finite creatures before the God Who forgives us. But we do it, because we have faith that Christ has promised us that when we turn to God, we will not be "cast out, but that our sins will be forgiven."
Earlier I said that faith requires commitment. Faith differs from belief. Belief is passive and cognitive. It is something you can do without being committed to anything.
Perhaps you have heard the story about the chicken and the pig that were walking by a restaurant advertising a breakfast special of ham and eggs. Bob Gray has told it on several occasions. As they read the breakfast menu, the pig is visibly upset; the chicken seems to go on as if nothing happened. The chicken asked the pig why he was so upset. To which the pig replied, "to you ham and eggs is just a donation, to me it's a sacrifice!"
Faith is a posture, one consciously taken, and defended if need be in the face of all the forces and conventions of this world. When the world seeks certainty, when the world sees cause and effect, faith says, there is a God who intervenes with goodness when you least expect it. Martin Luther King, Jr. showed us an example of faith. When in his peaceful marches for civil rights he was often beaten and hosed, imprisoned and ridiculed, the normal response is to retaliate. And make no mistake, King retaliated - but not with hatred, not with violence; but with love. He said, "you may bomb our homes, you may put us in jail, but we will still love you." It says we are different and we will be different; we will see and hear differently; we will be empowered differently. We will not respond with society's way of an eye for and eye, but rather with love against fear and hatred.
Faith is the stuff of hope. Norman Cousins said that, "we get our basic energy not from turbines but from hope." Faith asserts itself the way grace does, out of the blue, if you will. But it is not wishy-washy; it is a posture and a conscious response to grace; it is the grit in grace.
And it empowers us to love and serve.
Like we are empowered today as we celebrate One Great Hour of Sharing. It reminds us of the difficulty and the foolishness of our faith. You see, we United Methodists think that we can make a difference when people are suffering or struck by a disaster. And it doesn't matter it they are suffering from a tsunami in the Indian Ocean, hunger in Africa, malaria in the tropical areas, or genocide in Darfur, or hurricanes along the Gulf Coast, mudslides in California, or war in those "hot spots" of the world. It doesn't matter whether or not the political alignments of the country affected is favorable to the United States.
With the special offering we take today we set in motion the most efficient vehicle for distributing aid and disaster and hunger relief possible. For the proceeds of today's offering underwrite all the administrative costs of the United Methodist Committee on Relief, so that when disaster strikes - anywhere around the world - when we contribute money to help; every penny of it is delivered as relief. And right now UMCOR needs our help. With the enormous number and size of the disasters of the past few years their resources have been stretched - even in the light of the record giving. In order to continue to be able to respond quickly and effectively as they have in the past, they need our help now.
And our faith says we can do it. For we are a faithful people! And because of our faith, not only have we been saved, but when it comes to people in need - whether they are starving, suffering or homeless, we become the "grace-filled" agents of God. We become a free gift given to others in need by the faith-filled ones of God.