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To err on the side of Grace is a saying that keeps one in line with doing the “Do’s of the Gospel versus the obvious—“don’ts.” Easier said than done is another one, for it is easier to SAY we follow Christ... but just how real have we made him a part of us and our faith journey? Making it real doesn’t mean claiming yet another phrase: “I’ve arrived,” either—for ours is a journey that last a lifetime. A lifetime built upon reflection, confession, repentance and renewal—Luther’s daily steps to remembering and growing to affirm your Baptism (the process of sanctification).
The
world has our saint/ sinner selves teetering on the edge of falling either on
the side of grace or crumbling into the graceless wilderness the Evil One
places in our path. Grace or a graceless
wilderness (?), you’d think that would be an easy road/ “choice” to
contemplate. Being willing, accountable
and intentional are all aspects of the role we play in the process of
sanctification and justification.
These
are all Words to describe, to empower and encourage, BUT is their truth being
lived creedally in your heart as faith? Christians today have once again
steeped themselves further into an identity crisis as well as a crisis of
purpose. This identity crisis is owning
up to the truth of whose you are and who you need to strive to BE/ become. Christians no longer are exampling being “contagious”
as the discipleship book by Bill Hybels is titled, more than becoming
exclusionary and wound up in everything and anything BUT Christ and his Will
for the world!
Everyone
has a virtue and a vice to how they live into their call from God to
serve. How much do you realize and say
daily that God is my heavenly parent and loves me unconditionally? I must admit, this one’s a hard one for
me. It has to start with you however...
for how could you begin to follow Jesus commandment to love Him and love your
neighbor? You have to own up from that
very vulnerable and uncomfortable spiritual place deep within to make it truly
REAL—internally then externally lived as faith in action.
Faith
in action is that other high wire we barely keep our footing in place
upon. Either the cheap grace police
challenge us to stop being “epicurean” Christians with our “comfort-food, pre-packaged
agendas” or the legalists have us hardening ourselves into a judgmental
universe of “works righteousness.” To
err on the side of Grace—the gauntlet has been cast down: There’s got to be a
gracious, somewhere-in-between especially for the sake of the Gospel!
Poor
St. Paul isn’t stressed to preach to his wayward Corinthians, but putting on
his “top hat and tap shoes” to preach the Gospel to a bunch of “arrived” Athenian
intellectuals in the Areopagus in today’s lesson from the
Book of Acts:
“Athenians, I see how extremely
religious you are in every way. 23For as I went through the city and
looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar
with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as
unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24The God who made the world and
everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines
made by human hands, 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he
needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all
things. 26From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole
earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the
places where they would live, 27so that they would search for God
and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each
one of us. 28For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as
even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ 29Since
we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or
silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 30While
God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people
everywhere to repent, 31because he has fixed a day on which he will
have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of
this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
To BE/ become a truthful—TRUTH-Filled
evangelist for the Gospel (especially today...) demands WITNESS. Being/ becoming a witness for the Gospel is
living it—making it real, being “contagious” for Christ! I love that, probably wouldn’t make a great
name for a church but would make great motivation individually for making
disciples.
Being a witness isn’t about you but incorporates
you to BE about JESUS. This is the most
difficult reality our current culture can’t and doesn’t want to deal with. Once the Gospel of Jesus takes a back seat to
your wants, needs or “plans...” you risk destruction. Where there is no ark or life raft to save
you or waters to cleanse you but a graceless wilderness... where nothing is sewn
nor reaped.
John’s Jesus sounds a lot like a
Beatles song once again with lots of I am’s and lots of love to weave together
into challenging the simple disciples to live past that conditional IF. 15 “If you love me, you will keep
my commandments....” The Greek Word for Love here is agape—unconditional. Jesus starts with a conditional to build the
unconditional however—this is that fine line.
Jesus’ Words are wonderfully re-assuring
(something we barely grant each other these days...): “16And I will
ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17This
is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees
him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in
you.”
The Spirit of Truth is the Holy Spirit—our
Comforter, Counselor, Helper, Intercessor, Advocate, Strengthener, and Standby.
Got to love the Amplified Bible’s “ample” understanding of the Holy Spirit here
in an effort to make it real, manifest, revealed to us and hopefully within us.
We are children of Grace—whose we
are: God’s. Who loves us and has given
New Life to us through His death and Resurrection? JESUS. Knowing this as you profess and
confess to be Christian should make manifest the Kingdom but we can’t say that
we’ve truthfully made this “real” for ourselves yet alone others.
Jesus continues upon this thought in
reassuring, directing and refocusing his disciples: 18 “I will not
leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19In a little while the
world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will
live. 20On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in
me, and I in you. 21They who have my commandments and keep them are
those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will
love them and reveal myself to them.”
Wherever
you are on the journey as a disciple of Christ Jesus you need to do a reality
check. Whose are you? Where are you (on that road as His Witness!)?
And What are you planning to Do?
Whenever or wherever people’s hearts and minds are ruled by God’s Holy Spirit
presence—there the fruits of the spirit manifest the reality of the lifestyle
of GRACE=the Kingdom of God.
AMEN
Sunday May 25th, 2014;
6th Sunday of Easter; Year A; SOLA Nicole
Collins
Psalm 66:8-20; Acts 17:16-31; 1
Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21
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