There are times when I whine a little (well, maybe more than little) about gifts/talents I have not been given but… in all the years of my relationship with God in Christ and through the church (57 years!) I have never doubted that God’s towards me. I realize now, maybe because of this sermon, I realize that maybe I have never doubted the grace as acceptance but not always grace as transformation… God and I have work to do, it is a work in process.
The sermon text is below the sermon audio
Sunday February 6th 2022
Zion Episcopal Church, Washington NC
The Reverend Alan Neale
“Grace”
Hebrews 12:15 “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God”, Message Translation: “Make sure no one gets left out of God’s generosity”.
Sometimes I wonder how best to describe the ministry of ordained clergy (not particularly liking the definition of “six days invisible, one day incomprehensible); and not only ordained clergy but the ministry of the church. I think it may be well expressed in our opening text – my charge towards you, and your charge towards one another and to the world is this “see to it that no fails to obtain the grace of God; make sure no one gets left out of God’s generosity”. And when I speak of our ministry to the world, you know I am speaking about our neighbor at home, at work, at shop or wherever. “To love the world for me is no bore, to love my neighbor… that’s the chore.” I am also speaking of your call to be kind, gracious to yourself.
For some the thought of grace is a challenging, if not uncomfortable, concept. For such forlorn folk, to live in the atmosphere of grace is to live in a rarified atmosphere in which breathing is difficult, halting, a challenge. Talk of grace is talk in a strange language, barely known and rarely used. To such my ministry, our ministry, is make sure no one gets left out of God’s generosity. It begins with us for we cannot carry a message that is not our own, we frankly cannot share what we do not have… it begins with us and, with God, it begins always here and now; the sanctity of the present moment.
About ten years ago I attended my final CREDO conference, organized by the Episcopal Church Pension Group. CREDO conferences are arranged for those at the beginning of their ordained ministries, those midway and, finally, those looking towards retirement.
As always happens at such conferences, some of the time was spent in writing and reflection on the themes of the day. One theme was to write about the person I would like to become. I eventually felt bold enough to write that I wanted to become a person of grace (now, don’t laugh, especially don’t wince!). I wanted to be a person who walked, talked, lived with grace. I wanted to be a person who knew what it was to occupied, subjugated, captured by grace.
Now I am not going to ask, a la Ed Koch – once mayor of NY, “how am I doing?” for this definitely a work in process (however you pronounce the word!). And I am encouraged to remember that once when C.S. Lewis was adversely criticized for his poor witness as a Christian, he responded, “Oh but you should have seen me before I was a Christian!” A work in process; we are the clay in the skillful and loving hands of our Mother/Father God – a work in process.
In today’s reading from I Corinthians 15 (vv.1-11) we confront the apostle of grace, Paul who writes in verse 10 “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain”; Message Translation “But because God was so gracious, so very generous, here I am. And I am not about to let his grace go to waste”.
Reading this verse makes me mindful of someone once described as an existential philosopher, you may have heard of him? Popeye The Sailor Man who in his memorable dictum echoes the very words of St. Paul “I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam”.
You see, grace enables, facilitates acceptance. Grace does not demand of us that we beautify, prettify, gentrify who we really are… known to ourselves though often hidden from others at severe cost and trauma. Paul lays it on the line, tells it as it is… he once persecuted the church of God (v.9), he issued wild threats against Christians, he was (as the Message Translation reads Acts 9:1) “out for the kill”. And even after conversion he describes himself as an aborted foetus – unformed, premature and lifeless; the least of all the apostles.
And yet (the great two words of a grace-filled life) and yet grace transformed Paul; the community that he had once sought to destroy, he now carries their very message; and the community of Gentiles that he once despised… to them he now becomes “the Apostle of the Gentiles.
And this same dynamic, pattern, model we see both in Isaiah 6 and in Luke 5.
In Isaiah 6, we see the young man in the Temple at a time of crisis… in the year that King Uzziah died!
Isaiah accepts his true identity, and with it the true identify of his people – an identity that deals in hypocrisy, manipulation and double-talk. A hot burning coal is transferred from glowing altar embers to sensitive and delicate skin and by such an act Isaiah is sanctified, both made clean and also made one with God.
By grace Isaiah accepts his identify, emboldened even to stand before the presence of God in an overwhelmingly sacred place and by grace is emboldened to offer himself for God’s service. As he hears the clarion call, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for me?”, he is transformed to respond, “Here am I, send me” (unlike the response I have sometimes heard in years past… Lord, here am I, send her… send him).
And Peter too experiences grace as he accepts his identify (“Lord, I am sinner”) and yet also is transformed to serve the Lord as a “fisherman for people”.
By the way, I think also Peter was amazingly gracious to accept the fishing advice of an apparent landlubber who seemed to be ignorant both of the skills of fishing and the arduous work already undertaken by Peter and his friends. You see, how grace can appear, be required, in the most surprising of situations?
Ash Wednesday comes March 2nd, I hope that you and I are both giving a little time already as to how we can make this Lent of 2022 a special, vital, authentic time; a time in which we experience grace… the grace of acceptance and the grace of transformation.
So, today, this week see to it “that you do not fail to obtain the grace of God”; today, this week see to it to “make sure no one gets left out of God’s generosity”. AMEN