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A coffee house conversation on Grace
voices lift like the sounds of the steam from the expresso machines: “10
Be still and know that I AM God!...”
Another voice, another table: “23... since all have sinned
and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by His Grace as a
gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. And still at yet another table: “27
Then what becomes of boasting? It
is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28For
we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the
law.” At the head table and the final voice to ascend and quiet those around
Him, we hear: “31... If you continue in my Word, you are truly my
disciples; 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will make
you free.”
In
a perfect world, this is the disciple’s dream, where the Living Word is not
only heard deeply and etched gracefully and gratefully upon the heart of the
believer but LIVED! To Tell you the
TRUTH however... You can’t handle the truth! None of us can! For we want our money
for nothin’ and our kicks for free~ Yes another song innuendo but such is the
winding, twisting and challenging path of the disciple of Jesus trying to LIVE,
go against the grain of human nature!
The
randomness of how we wander away from the truth is our ongoing stumbling
block... The headlines don’t really help
us either these days. We have the world “painted”
before our eyes as either self-absorbed idolatry and trivia or see the black
cloud of evil hearken back to primitive history—not seeming real... but surreal. The main stream news this past week spent an
inordinate amount of time on actress Renee Zellweger’s plastic surgery’s “change
of face;” while across the ocean and across the miles, a video “trends” showing
a young woman pleading her father to not be stoned to death for adultery (she
was falsely accused), outside of her pleading the father remarks that he does
not know her anymore and that he can’t forgive yet alone go against Sharia
law... Amongst the sobbing, he binds her and drags her to the pit to be put to
death.
Just
with these two examples we have the two extremes of bondage: transaction (what’s
in it for me?) and following the Law while forsaking obedience to Love neighbor
(No Grace, no forgiveness, no mercy!). The latter half of that sentence is the opposite
from the Gospel for us Christians in that we are called to love God and
neighbor with no partiality (the challenge of living into Grace). For the ancient “faiths” the Code of Hammurabi
and the Ten commandments hold within them the timeless commandment of Love the
Lord Your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength as well as Love your
neighbor.
The
black cloud of death and evil that ISIS brings with it into the world is in how
they see the Law and “commands” of their God being the death and demise of
neighbor, “submission to perfect obedience.”
Convert or Die is not an evangelist model... unless you were seeing it
and understanding it quite abstractly, quite spiritually. What do I mean by that? We have learned from St. Paul’s
conversion-fed heart knowledge that if we want to grow in Christ, we are to die
to the Old Nature and rise into the New Nature which is fully and completely
putting on Christ as our loving and gracious response to a loving and gracious
God: LIVING GRACE.
Easier
said than done, for what we even celebrate today being Reformation Sunday. Around 500 years ago, a relatively unknown
German monk nailed his treatise, words of debate upon the “closed” cathedral
doors of the “universal” church of Christ seeking well-needed reforms. A number of years later and some 774 pages
later we have the Book of Concord which essentially struggles to find and
define: what is GRACE? What do we do
with it? How are we to respond? And so
on...
Nearly
2,000 years ago St. Paul’s conversion-fed theology defines this to the Romans
as: “28For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from
works prescribed by the law.” Living into this takes a grand leap of faith, it
takes intentionality and Being still to Know (and GROW spiritually) that Jesus
is our redeemer, our crucified Lord!
It
is Living into the Word as most actively realizing our cross and “cross-roads.” As disciples of Jesus living into the TRUTH
of the Gospel, we live to strengthen our relationship to God (the vertical) AND
to graciously, naturally share from the gift of faith as fruits of the spirit
freely given to and for neighbor (the horizontal). This is living our lives into the lifestyle
of Grace as shaped by the cross. The
cross, Jesus gift of defeating sin, death and the devil was given to where we
can never fathom its magnitude.... for as St. Paul said we all fall short of
the glory of God.
We
are in bondage to sin but we are offered radical freedom: GRACE. Justification by Grace through faith are those
five Words we are unnaturally challenged to know and grow truthfully into as
professed disciples of Jesus. There is no righteousness that can stand alone
before God, except the righteousness of Christ Alone.
Living
into the lifestyle of Grace is a process plain and simple. It is living into an accountability that was
founded through the gift of faith. The
health-wealth Gospel people may fill arenas and bank accounts with temporal,
transactional success but like changing the news channel... there is no lasting
truth or purpose without the cross.
Modern
theologian, N.T. Wright personifies our struggle with being and purpose as a
child of Grace in saying that there are “existential” needs. These needs are: “the longing for justice, the
quest for spirituality, the hunger for relationships, and the delight in
beauty.” None of these can be satisfied
through “works-righteousness.” They can only be answered through our genuine
faith realized in, with and through us. For what is done and left undone can only be
heard and seen by God in the heart effected by the TRUTH of the Living Word—The
Gospel! The ultimate objective of Grace
is for us to be transformed and re-formed into the image and character of Jesus
Christ.
In
our everyday lives, there are little things we do that we may be completely
unaware of or even avoid. We can say
that we love someone, yet it may not feel real enough for us... Chauncey Gardener, Peter Seller’s character in
“Being There,” spent his days and hours wandering, tending to his garden of
course, but nothing around him seemed real more than a painted picture of
snapshots of life lived. What a tragic
view of the world, when you limit yourself into being and becoming, defining a
reason, a purpose to LIVE?!
That
foundation of who you are and who you will be, become will always be fragile—this
is human nature. Let us not forget nor
not hear deeply enough as people of faith: Christ IS that cornerstone of
redemption, New Life, mercy and Grace planted within our very hearts. To re-form, transform is formation to the
TRUTH—the Living Word. Jesus said to His disciples: “36So if the Son
makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
AMEN
Sunday October 26th,
2014; Reformation Sunday; Year A; SOLA Lectionary Exegesis
Psalm 46; Jeremiah 31:31-34; Revelation
14:6-7; Romans 3:19-28 & John 8:31-36
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