A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — March 7, 2010
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Isaiah 55:1-13;  Luke 6:27-38

[God] will abundantly pardon.  For my thoughts are not your

thoughts,nor are your ways my ways; says the Lord. — Isaiah 55:7b-8

[The Most High] is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. — Luke 6:35

In my preaching and teaching I use the word “grace” a lot.  I daresay virtually every sermon I preach has something to do with grace.  I remember one of my preaching professors saying that all pastors really have only one or two sermons—meaning that everything they preach is a variation on a theme.  For me that theme is grace.  So, I was telling someone a few weeks ago that when I read scripture I do so using grace as a lens—looking for whatever grace might reveal, and if I can’t find any grace in a particular interpretation, then I’m pretty sure it’s wrong.

So that person asked me, straight out, “What is grace?”  I’ve been wrestling with that ever since, and it’s not an easy question.  First I realized that dictionary definitions don’t cut it when it comes to grace.  Webster and Roget can offer us lots of pointers—words and phrases like “beauty,” “free gift,” “generous,” “freely bestowed,” “unmerited favor,” “divine love and protection,” “thanksgiving,” and “forgiveness.”  But I think that person was asking me the question in the spirit of Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady,” when she begins the song “Show Me” by singing, “Words!  Words!  Words!  I’m so sick of words!”

 

I guess grace is like… well, like the kingdom of God.  That’s clear as mud.  What I mean is: when Jesus talked of the kingdom of God, he’d end up using a figure of speech, a metaphor, a parable, a story, or he’d do something that was like an enacted parable.  The kingdom of God is like a woman looking for a lost coin, or like a mustard seed, or like this healing on the sabbath.  Grace is like this.  We need lots of images, metaphors, poems, songs, stories, shared experiences.  There’s no end to the possibilities, which is good for me if grace is the only sermon I got.

So here goes.  Grace is like…that incredible vision of the prophet in Isaiah 55.  You’re thirsty unto death, and here is a cool, crystal spring.  You’re starving, and here’s food.  Free food!  No choosing between feeding your family and paying for your rent or your prescriptions.  And this isn’t a bag of food from the food bank.  Nor is it the cheap, high-calorie, processed junk foods, sweetened with subsidized corn syrup, that lets you stretch your food stamps far enough to feed your children for an entire month.  No, this is a first-class banquet of the best, nutritious foods for everyone—a feast of meats, cheeses, artisan breads, organic produce, rich food and drink, a real dinner party.  Grace is like that.  Even the wicked are drawn in and find pardon because the host does not think or act vindictively like we do.  Grace is like a parade that celebrates peace instead of war.  Grace is like rain and snow falling to water the desert and bring forth life.  Grace is like when the mountains and “the hills are alive with the sound of music.”  Images, metaphors, parables.

Sometimes Jesus refers to things the kingdom of God is not like.  It’s not like people worrying about who’s first, not like judging others, not like showing off just how religious you are.  Likewise, it can be helpful to point to things that grace is not like.  Of course, there are an infinite number of such things, most of which are probably not very helpful.  I recall a book title from some years ago, Grace Is Not a Blue-Eyed Blonde.  (Actually it’s not a bad book.)  In Luke 6, Jesus is preaching on the plain when he starts talking about some things grace is not like.  The trouble is, we might miss this because of the translation.  In the NRSV translation Jesus asks, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?”  He asks the same thing two more times.  “If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?”  “If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you?”  The Greek word translated as “credit” is charis.  But charis is the word that is rendered elsewhere in the New Testament as “grace.”  So in essence Jesus is asking, “If you act because of what you hope to get out of it, then where’s the grace in that?”  Grace is not like looking out for number one or for just your friends.  Grace is not like making a bargain.  So what is grace like?  Grace is like loving an enemy, without requiring your enemy to surrender.  Grace is like doing good expecting nothing in return—not even a thank-you.  Grace is like lending money to a bad credit risk without charging sub-prime rates or making plans to foreclose if they can’t pay.  Grace goes out of its way to be kind.

It can all sound pretty otherworldly and idealistic.  How about out in the world?  What is grace like?  And to what should we compare it?  Grace is like the story of Les Miserables.  In the novel by Victor Hugo, a bishop named Bienvenu opens his home to lodge and feed a recently released convict, Jean Valjean.  Up to this point Valjean has experienced nothing but hostility and rejection since his release from prison, and he is shocked by the bishop’s hospitality.  But having lived a dog-eat-dog life and thinking of himself as a “criminal” for so many years, he decides to make off that very night with the bishop’s silver.

The next morning, the bishop’s servant discovers the theft and is irate.  But the bishop responds to her: “Madame, I have for a long time detained the silver wrongfully.  It belonged to the poor.  Who was that man?  A poor man, evidently.”

Soon after, there is a knock at the door, and three policemen are there, having collared Valjean.  “Ah!  Here you are!” the bishop exclaims, looking at Valjean.  “I am glad to see you.  Well, how is this?  I gave you these candlesticks, too, which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get 200 francs.  Why did you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?”

The police are shocked and dumbfounded to hear the bishop refer to the silver as a gift.  They release Valjean, who recoils, saying in an almost inarticulate voice, as if talking in his sleep, “Is it true that I am to be released?”

The bishop takes the two silver candlesticks from the mantle piece and hands them to Valjean, who takes them mechanically, bewildered and trembling.  As the policemen look on, the bishop says to Valjean, “Now, go in peace.  By the way, when you return, my friend, it is not necessary to pass through the garden.  You can always enter and depart through the street door.  It is never fastened with anything but a latch, either by day or by night.”

Valjean looks about to faint, but the bishop draws near to him and says in a low voice, “Do not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use this money to become an honest man.”  Valjean, who made no such promise, remains speechless.  The bishop continues, “Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good.  It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.”

From story to experience.  What is grace like, and to what should we compare it?  In January of 1983 I entered a 30-day program for alcoholism at the Cottonwoods Treatment Center south of Albuquerque, NM.  In one sense, this was voluntary—I checked myself in—but in reality I had no choice.  My life was in shambles.  I’d hit bottom, to use the terminology of Alcoholics Anonymous.  The core of the treatment program at Cottonwoods involved working the first five steps of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-Step Program in company with other patients and with the guidance of several counselors.  In that month, it was amazing to see others in the process of getting well as their tattered lives were being rewoven, and then to become able to see the same thing happening in the utter mess I’d made of my own life.  Grace is like being blind and having my eyes opened to what wellness and wholeness might be like.

I spent my fourth week of treatment working on Step 4, “making a fearless and moral inventory of myself.”  The treatment center had a long, multi-page document to guide a personal inventory of failures, weaknesses, and strengths.  When I finished, it was time for Step 5:  “Admitting to God, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs.”  That’s pretty intimidating.   I sat down with a volunteer counselor who was an Episcopal priest and also in recovery, and I shared with him as honestly as I could my inventory and the story of my life as an alcoholic.  We were together something between three and four hours.  We both shared.  We both wept.  We both laughed.  And what I experienced in that time, for perhaps the first time in my life, was a non-judgmental acceptance and love.

After we closed by praying the Serenity Prayer together, I had about an hour of free time before dinner that I was allowed to spend walking alone on the grounds of the treatment center—really the only time in the 30-day program anyone was permitted such freedom.  I chose to walk down the rough gravel lane to the highway and back, about a half-mile each way.  As I walked along reflecting on my month in treatment and what it might be like to return home, I was also gazing at the Sandia Mountains, at the cottonwood trees along the Rio Grande River, and at that enchanting New Mexico sky.  Now that image in Isaiah comes to me, of mountains singing and trees clapping their hands.  Then, as I went in to dinner I realized something.  You see, when I was in high school I played tennis, and during my senior year I sprained both ankles badly.  They’ve been weak ever since, and ever since it’s been really easy for me to turn an ankle.  So while walking I’m always looking down to keep an eye on my footing.  I miss a lot of scenery that way.  But that day as I went in for dinner I realized I’d just walked a mile on a gravel road with my head up, not watching where I placed my feet.  And I hadn’t stumbled.  Grace is like that.

Jesus tells us that God loves us, not because we are good, but because God is good.  God loves us, and there is nothing you, or I, or anybody can do about it.  God loves us even when we are at our worst.  And the work of God’s love is to transform us so that we can love and live as God lives toward us, generously, mercifully, graciously.  Grace is like that.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.