Amazing Grace

God's grace is one of the foundations of Christian theology. But what is it, anyway? It's a lot easier to say what it isn't! In this sermon, I offer several images of grace. I hope that one of them will resonate with you.

I distinctly remember my very first preaching class back in seminary. In fact, I remember my very first assignment in that class! We were asked to write a short sermon based on the topic “Our world is a world of darkness, but Jesus is the light of the world.” That sounded easy enough, even when our professor advised us to be sure to include images in our sermons. “Don’t just lecture your congregations,” he told us. “Give them something to see!” And off we went, confident that we would find more than enough images to illustrate both the darkness of the world and the light of Christ. It turned out that we did just fine with the darkness. We came up with all kinds of images: a walk-in closet when its light bulb burns out; a wilderness camp on a moonless night; the absolute blackness of a cave deep underground when the ranger extinguishes the illumination. Oh, we had that darkness nailed. But the light was a whole lot harder. That professor didn’t want us just to add light to our images of the dark closet, the midnight campground, and the black cave. He wanted us to offer an image of the light all by itself. As I remember, very few of us were able to do that. Now, I have nothing but good things to say about that professor. He taught me a lot about preaching, and about ministry in general. But I am not sure that his goal of separating light from darkness was a good one. We only know light, after all, as it contrasts with darkness.

God’s grace is something like that. God’s grace is a cornerstone of our faith. We believe that our God is gracious; and that God’s grace is available to anyone, anytime, anywhere, inside the church or out of it. But that begs the question… what is grace, anyway? If it is part of the foundation of our faith, maybe we should be able to explain it. But much like light and darkness, it is almost impossible to explain grace without talking about what it is not. Grace is the opposite of God’s anger at our foolishness, God’s judgement of our bad behavior, and God’s punishment for what we have done wrong. Grace is God’s forgiveness; but it’s way more than that. Grace not only lets us off the hook, it offers us a way to stay off the hook because our lives are permanently changed.

But how do we picture grace itself? One way to picture grace is as God’s “Get out of jail free” card. Without grace, we all live in a dark dungeon. Sin has put us there, locked the door, and thrown away the key. We didn’t mean to get there, but now we’re stuck. And it’s all we know: a dog-eat-dog place where everyone is greedy, selfish, and hopeless. We couldn’t get ourselves out of that jail in a million years! But God’s grace can let us out. Grace opens the prison door and frees us into a world that we never imagined – a world of sunlight and fresh air; a world where people love and care for one another; a world of joy and beauty. That’s one way of understanding grace.

Or we could picture grace as God’s eraser. Every one of us has written all kinds of messages on the pages of our lives. Some of those messages are loving, compassionate, and wise; and we are proud of them. Others, though, are hateful, judgmental, and foolish; and we would do anything to get rid of them! The good news is that God can pull out grace and erase those messages from our lives. Grace lets us get rid of all the foolishness of our past and start all over again with clean pages. Grace gives us a chance to make a new beginning.

And God’s grace not only allows us to start all over; God’s grace helps us to start all over! Grace is like a road map that guides us down roads that can help us to grow into the image of Christ. Grace helps us to feel God’s presence with us, helps open our eyes to God’s presence around us, and helps us open our ears to what God has to say to us. Grace helps us to stay on the straight and narrow, so that we don’t end up back in the prison of sin, scribbling hateful, foolish messages on the pages of our lives. And when our lives fall down around our ears through no fault of our own, God’s grace is like a transformer, bringing love out of hate, wisdom out of foolishness, and good out of evil. God’s grace is all kinds of things: “Get out of jail free” card, eraser, road map, and transformer; all so that we can be loosed from our past, live fully in the present, and be guided into God’s kingdom in the future.

But maybe the most powerful way to describe God’s grace is to recognize how we feel when we experience it.

Grace is like a red and gold sunrise after a long, dark night.

Grace is filling your lungs with the fresh, cool air of April after being confined all day in a stuffy room.

Grace is rain falling on the dusty earth after a drought.

Grace is the bear hug of a loved one after a long separation.

Grace is the relief that washes over you when you realize that God loves you, and that nothing in heaven or on earth can ever change that.

Grace is the hope that you feel when you realize that you don’t have to be the person that you’ve always been.

Grace is slave-trader turned Anglican clergyman John Newton (who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace”) affirming, “I am not the man I ought to be, I am not the man I wish to be, and I am not the man I hope to be; but by the grace of God, I am not the man I used to be.”

Grace is the way to live a full, joyous life in this world, and an invitation to spend eternity with God in the next.

That’s amazing, astounding, astonishing grace!

And thanks be to God that it is ours!