St.
George's
Sermons
Place du
Canada, Montreal
The
Rev. Canon Brett Cane, March 11, 2001
|
Lent 2; 10:30 am
Morning Prayer
|
"What's
So Amazing About Grace? #2: Receiving Grace"
Romans
5: 12-17 (Romans 5); Isaiah 55: 1-3a; Luke 13: 22-30
Opening
Prayer:
Heavenly
Father, we find it so difficult to accept that you are a God of grace; help us
now, by your Holy Spirit, to grasp this truth and receive all that you have to
give us in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Introduction
On Christmas Eve, my sermon was entitled, "Oh, you
shouldn't have!" referring to how many of us respond when given a
gift. I also said that I don't think you
would ever hear a child saying that on being given a present! Jesus said that unless we become like
children, we can never enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Mark 10:15). One of the hallmarks of children is that
they are good receivers. Jesus is
saying, that unless we are good receivers, we can never enter the Kingdom of
Heaven. In this second sermon in the
series, "What's So Amazing About Grace?" we are going to look at
receiving grace.
The God of Grace
Last week, we learned that God of the Bible is, from
beginning to end, a God of grace - the God who comes looking for us - the
Father who stands at the door with open arms waiting for his prodigal son to
return home. We said that grace
describes God's unconditional and unmerited love towards us.
Philip Yancey, in his book, "What's So Amazing About
Grace?" defines grace as follows: "Grace means there is nothing we
can do to make God love us more...and grace means there is nothing we can do to
make God love us less."[1] Paul puts it this way in the letter to the
Romans: "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still
sinners, Christ died for us...if, when we were God's enemies, we were
reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more...shall we be
saved through his life! " (Romans 5:8, 10). God is for us not against us!
Philip Yancey tells a story which contrasts the way of
grace and the way of "ungrace".
Speaking of the NCAA final championship basketball match every March in
the U.S.A.:
The most important game always seems to come down to one
eighteen-year-old kid standing on a free-throw line with one second left on the
clock.
He dribbles nervously.
If he misses these two foul shots, he knows, he will be the goat of his
campus, the goat of his state. Twenty
years from now he'll be in counseling, reliving this moment. If he makes these shots, he'll be a hero. His picture will be on the front page. He could probably run for governor.
He takes another dribble and the other team calls time,
to rattle him. He stands on the
sideline, weighing his entire future.
Everything depends on him. His
teammates pat him encouragingly, but say nothing.
One year, I remember, I left the room to answer a phone
call just as the kid was setting himself to shoot. Worry lines creased on his forehead. He was biting his lower lip.
His leg quivered at the knee.
Twenty thousand fans were yelling, waving banners and handkerchiefs to
distract him.
The phone call took longer than expected, and when I
returned I saw a new sight. This same
kid, his hair drenched with Gatorade, was now riding atop the shoulders of his
teammates, cutting the cords of a basketball net. He had not a care in the world.
His grin filled the entire screen.
Those two freeze-frames - the same kid crouching at the
free throw line and then celebrating on his friends' shoulders - came to
symbolize for me the difference between ungrace and grace.
The world runs by ungrace. Everything depends on what I do.
I have to make the shot.
Jesus' kingdom calls us to another way, one that depends
not on our performance but his own. We
do not have to achieve but merely follow.
He has already earned for us the costly victory of God's acceptance.[2]
However, we have an inbuilt resistance to grace -
"by instinct we feel we must do something in order to be
accepted."[3]
The "Grace Circle"
This desire to do something to earn God's love is
demonstrated by two circles designed by the Christian Counsellor, Dr. Frank
Lake.
Lake points out that Jesus moved from acceptance
("This is my beloved Son...") to Significance ("I am the light
of the world, etc...") and then to achievement ("It is
finished..."). We do the opposite: we start from achievement (workaholic, doing
religious duty, etc.) and hope that gives us significance so we can feel
accepted! But this doesn't work. We still feel we don't meet up to the
standards of others, let alone God's standards. But we still try. Why do
we find it so difficult to begin the other way around and start with God's
acceptance of us as Jesus did and move on from there?
Barriers to Receiving Grace
It all has to do with sin. Sin is an old-fashioned word with a very contemporary
impact. It means that we distrust God
and want to do things our way. We are
first self-centred rather than God-centred.
We have reversed the great commandment.
Instead of loving God with everything we have and our neighbours as
ourselves, we love ourselves with everything we have, sometimes our neighbours
if they don't get in the way of our own pleasure and progress and then maybe
God if there's any time or space left.
Paul describes our situation in Romans: "Sin entered
the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to
all people, because all sinned" (Romans 5:12). A few weeks ago, we heard of recent discoveries through the human
genome project that we can trace our genes to one small family grouping in
Africa. Just as this is true of our
physical make up - that we have a common genetic inheritance - so, Paul says,
is it the same with our spiritual make-up.
Our first ancestors sinned and we have inherited the tendency which we
ratify by going along with it. By
inheritance and choice, we are oriented to sin, self-centredness.
Well how does that stop us receiving God's grace? Because sin clouds our view of reality. We see neither ourselves nor God
clearly. This creates barriers which
prevent us receiving God's grace.
One barrier is that we think we do not
need God's grace - we are good enough!
However, in order to do this we have to say that sin is not a problem so
we redefine sin as something else.
Gossip becomes "I ask because care." Or more piously, "I share this so you can pray." Sexual sin becomes a "lifestyle
choice" or "fulfilling a legitimate need" and so on. We say, "I'm not a bad person, so how
could what I'm doing be sin?"
"I have a legitimate right to hold this grudge after what she did
to me." We don't want God's grace
because we think we don't need it - we're good enough without it.
A second barrier is the opposite tendency - we do not see
ourselves as all right but all wrong.
We are not worthy to receive God's gifts because our sins are too big to
forgive, they are unforgivable. This
barrier says we can't receive God's grace because we think could not possibly
have enough merit to earn it.
A third barrier is not a wrong view of ourselves, but a
wrong view of God. We feel we can't
trust him, that he doesn't have our best interests at heart. This can arise if
we have been hurt by others. We feel
God didn't help us back then and so we have to take matters into our own hands
from, now on. We can't receive God's
gifts because we feel he might let us down again.
And so the result of all this is that we try to make it
by ourselves - to impress others and especially God. Why God? Because, deep
down in our hearts, we know that we are answerable to him and so we must have
some achievement scheme to impress him in the end.
Receiving Grace
The antidote to all this is to get a right view of
ourselves and God. You think you're
good enough? Face reality and call a
spade a spade - none of us measures up to our own standards of goodness, let
alone God's. Don't be like the stay-at
home son in the story of the Prodigal Son and think that because you have the
appearance of respectability you are good enough - he seemed like he was so
close but was really miles away from being open to receive his father's love.
You think you're not worthy of receiving God's
forgiveness? Oh really? You mean that when Jesus died on the cross,
he did that for everyone else except you?
What makes you so special that your sin is unforgivable? If God could forgive King David after he had
committed adultery and murder to cover it up and also St. Paul who persecuted
and tortured Christians, he can forgive you.
The whole point is that you need God's grace as a gift - you can't earn it!
You can't trust God?
Then look at Jesus. If God has
gone to that length to rescue us, how can he not have our own best interests at
heart? As Paul says later in Romans,
"He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will
he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:
32). God is for us, not against us.
One or more of these steps are necessary to take before
you can receive God's grace:
_ acknowledge your need of his help
_ admit your worth in his eyes
_ see God's love for you.
Then the next step is to hold out your hand and open you heart
and receive his grace as a gift. It is
as simple as that - a "yes, please" - no more, no less. This is the "narrow door" Jesus
invites us to enter (Luke 13: 24), the "free meal" Isaiah calls us to
share (Isaiah 55: 1-3b).
The first gift is that of forgiveness and new life in
Christ - the reversal of the penalty and effects of sin. Paul says, "For if, by the trespass of
the one man (Adam), death reigned through that one man, how much more will
those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of
righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:
15, 17). But this is just the beginning
of receiving God's grace; there is so much more. His "abundant provision" of grace takes many
forms. For some it is the opportunity
to grow and move ahead in your life, freed from some past sin or hurt. For others, it is a deeper intimacy and
knowledge of his love that he wants give you.
For still others, it is a filling of the Spirit for service - the
gifting for a new task. Whatever his
gift of grace to you today - are you willing and ready to receive it?
Notes: