Sermon 26th February 2017

And now we start preparing for Easter – with the help of a study book – as the season of LENT approaches.

Our Vicar, Cameron Barker, begins our preparation. The reading is from Luke 15: verses 11-32.

“Gracious; graceful; gratitude; congratulate; gratuity; ex gratia; grateful; with good grace; period of grace; grace notes”. Or: “Ungracious; disgrace; ingrate; graceless; ungrateful; fall from grace; in bad grace”. It’s quite the pair of lists; and there is plenty more that could be added to both of them as well.

I know that there are countless other words that give rise to many further words; but do any of them rival grace in its power to inspire; or to lay bare ugly truths? No wonder it’s been described as “the last best word” – by our old friend, Philip Yancey. He found it to be such a good word that he wrote a whole book about it: What’s so amazing about grace – all the way back in 1997, I was shocked to be reminded.

This book has been hugely influential in my own life, I would say. The areas that he covers in it are core to the vital task that any Christian faces each day: how do we live out what we believe in the face of often-gritty reality. The kind of gritty reality that Jesus addresses in the parable that we’ve heard today from Luke 15 – where choices, words, and actions have consequences that are far-reaching and life-shaping. Those can be for the good of all: if they’re gracious and Godly; or for untold ill, if they are ungracious and un-Godly. And all of that is what Yancey was trying to address in the context of life at the end of the last millennium – which is rather different to life 17 years into it.  

So he’s had another go at the subject in these times – and that’s what we are going to be exploring here this Lent. I know that doesn’t start until this Wednesday; but this latest book is very much based on his previous one. So we’re beginning our Lent series a bit early, with a reminder about the original. I say ‘reminder’ because it’s a book that preachers here have often mentioned over the years; but not for some while that I can think of. It may be new to you; in which case I highly recommend that you read it. Grace really is a timeless concept in every way that matters – as is clear from us learning about it from Jesus, in a story that he told over 2 000 years ago! But it’s particularly instructive looking back over these past 20 years to see what has changed in both the world and the church in that time; and to grasp why this later book is called VANISHING grace.

Adjoa will introduce this book in detail when she speaks next week so I’ll leave that to her. But the scene for it need setting today; in particular by making clear just what grace is; and why it really is quite so amazing. Obviously that’s a topic much more broad and wide than any one sermon could ever cover; but grace is best summed up for me by the time of year when we’re looking at it. Of course this isn’t any co-incidence! Lent is when we prepare for Easter which I’d say is, in itself, the best-ever, fullest definition – and illustration – of grace. Jesus’ death on the cross truly says it all about grace. In the classic explanation of it, here are God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense (G.R.A.C.E): offered for free: to each one of us; and to all humanity.

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” So wrote St Paul in his letter to Christians in ancient Rome, as he tried to explain what he believed and why. Read any New Testament letter that he wrote, and ‘Grace’ is in its first paragraph; if not its first word! As much as any person in history Paul knew he had nothing to commend him to God. He’d given his whole life to wiping out the early church; to the point of being complicit in the murder of Jesus’ followers, even. And God’s response – before Paul had even done it – had been to send Jesus to die on the cross so that Paul could be forgiven for persecuting him. And that is what grace is!

From my reading this week I’ve come away with literally a whole side of A4 in cracking Yancey quotes – yes, in my teeny-tiny hand-writing! I’ll offer 2 of them here, even if they may be familiar to some. So: “Grace means there’s nothing we can do to make God love us more. And grace means there’s nothing we can do to make God love us less.” And, 1 of my all-time favourites: “Grace comes free of charge to people who don’t deserve it; and I am one of those people.” That’s just a flavour of what to expect between now and Holy Week – from either of Yancey’s books, in fact. But don’t expect this to be just words that are put together to sound fine: Yancey specialises in setting those words in the gritty reality of daily life, which is the place where faith is to be lived out.

Yes, some of that will be foreign to us because he is American, and he writes for an American readership, primarily. But there are many common threads, along with his use of illustrations from around the world: Mother Teresa; post-Soviet Russia; the ending of apartheid South Africa all feature in his 1997 book. Here is one of his stories from the days of apartheid, to illustrate the challenge of being gracious in all circumstances. Yancey tells of how a black woman had the audacity to be walking on a pavement with her children. So a young white man spat in her face as she went past him. “Thank you, sir”, she told him. “And now please can you do that to the children too.” Shocking; and yet so very real; and I can believe from my having lived there in those bad old days that this is a true story. I only wish I could say that her gracious response shamed him into inaction. My fear is that it probably made him angry enough to beat her up – and then to spit in her children’s faces, claiming that they deserved it for their ‘cheek’.

Again, I’ve told that one very deliberately, because of the cultural divide between us and the characters in Jesus’ parable. The request from the younger son that the story begins with is the equivalent of spitting in his father’s face – and that of the extended family too. It was telling his father that he wished he was dead – which is about as ungracious as it gets. The father’s gracious response was to let him have, and do, what he demanded; even when he shamed his family further by selling their land to a stranger; and then again by going off to a foreign land; not to mention the shame of abandoning his duty to care for his aging parents. His father watched him go; without a word; no threats, no demands, no warnings. And how would any parent feel about being treated worse than dirt by the child you’d loved, nurtured, and brought up? Yes grace is often costly, difficult, demanding and very, very gritty.

The details of the story stick in the mind; how this young man shamed himself to the pig-sty, before he ‘came to his senses’. He crawled home, expecting nothing; yet hoping not to be treated the way that he fully deserved. There’s no hint of his hoping for the grace of forgiveness; that was beyond his wildest expectation given just what he’d done. But fullest grace awaited him there: no condemnation, or ‘I told you so’; but a loving welcome with all the trimmings – from the same father he had so ungraciously rejected, of course. How can we not marvel at the glorious, gracious love of God that is willing to forgive, to forget, to wipe our slate clean at the first hint of just wanting to come back?

But this, of course, is nothing like the half of it. Yancey tells the story of the bold preacher who rewrote this parable as he taught from it. In his version the father agreed with the younger son’s suggestion, and sent him off to the servant quarters. He called the older son in from the fields, and threw a party for him; and yes I can see some approving smiles. Yancey’s preacher was greeted with a cry from the back: “Well, that’s what should have happened!” And, be honest, it’s not hard to understand why people should think like that. We get what we deserve in life; and quite right too; people who spit in other people’s faces do have to face up to the consequences of their actions. If you can’t take it, then don’t hand it out in the first place.

There is something of the older brother from this parable in all of us; and the tricky part is that there’s a way in which that’s a reflection of a Godly sense of justice and fairness. People should not get away with outrageous behaviour. But as Yancey points out here it’s grace that solves God’s dilemma. Our choices and behaviour so often repulse Him; but He chooses in Christ not to treat us as we deserve; but rather with this forgiving, gracious love. You see, grace, thank God, really does come free of charge to people who don’t deserve it; and I am one of those people. So was the older brother in Jesus’ story; and he was treated in just the same loving, forgiving way by his gracious father. The son who’d stayed home was just as ungracious, in his own way, as his younger brother had been. The difference is that he had not got to the point of recognising his sin; let alone of doing something about it. And this is a mirror which most of us need to look deeply into.

How often do we sit on our high horse; where we have got to where we have done through our own hard work, or good character? The view from up here is so sweet, as we enjoy what we deserve, we think; and if others haven’t got as much – or even enough – well, that’s their problem. The grace that Yancey identified when he wrote his later book in 2014 as vanishing has been dissipating even faster in the years since then, I’d say. Never better than right now could we tackle a series about grace; in these storms of un-grace that assail the world and the church everywhere we look. And maybe the very best place that each of us can start is with a mirror in one hand, and this parable in the other as we enter this Lent.

So let’s put ourselves into this story: ask where we really are in it; and what we truly think. Do we honestly see ourselves as crawling back; not deserving to be accepted, let alone welcomed; or do we see ourselves instead as deserving everything that we’ve worked so hard for? Either way, what we each need first and foremost is a full measure of God’s grace that doesn’t treat us as we deserve. And then we need to share that grace, with others who deserve it just as little as we do. There is the challenge, and the joy, that lies ahead this Lent: to learn about, and live out, that grace – in the grittiness of our lives. This surely is the best possible way in which to prepare for Easter – which is, remember, the best-ever, fullest definition – and illustration – of grace. And so may we be amazed by God’s grace in Christ all over again. And now let’s pray …