Means of Grace VI: Forgiveness

24 February 2019

Luke 6:27-38

What does it mean to really forgive?  It is usually understood that to forgive means we overlook a transgression done to us.  We don’t hold a grudge.  We let it go.  We forgive and forget.  To be able – even willing – to do this, the transgressor should apologize and make an effort to atone for the harm done.  The problem is we don’t forget so easily.  If we cannot or will not forget, then it must be said we have not really forgiven.  We haven’t really let it go.

To forgive AND forget is probably the hardest thing we can ever do.  Even if we don’t seek vengeance directly, to let go of the hurt and get to a place at which we can really forgive means we have to swallow our pride and allow ourselves to become completely vulnerable.  This means if we do not take action to make sure that hurt does not happen again, we have to allow – and learn to live with – the possibility it may happen again.

As a means of grace, that Divine love and mercy we desire for ourselves, forgiveness must be more seriously considered given that our Lord clearly states, “Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37).  Matthew’s Gospel puts it more bluntly: “If you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive you” (6:15). 

Forgiving someone is hard.  We should not believe it to be otherwise.  Like discipleship itself which requires much more than a spoken profession of faith, it is not enough to merely apologize with words.  If we have really hurt someone – by their standards rather than our own – then we have to make it right.  Our Lord compels us to.  If someone hurts us, however, do we require they make it right?  Do we assume we are somehow entitled an apology before we are compelled to forgive?

That’s the trick for us.  If someone apologizes, we can usually tell whether they really are sorry for what they’ve said or done; but as a means of grace, is forgiveness contingent?  Is it necessary that they apologize to us when it is we who seek unconditional grace and yet dispense grace conditionally?  We would like the transgressor to acknowledge they’ve crossed a line, but is their apology really necessary?  The short answer is “no” because we’re not talking about “them” … nor is Jesus.

Note Jesus’ discourse begins with “I say to those who listen …”  This may well mean Jesus is unwilling to waste His breath on any who will not “listen”, who will not take to heart what He is about to teach.  And given the importance of what He is about to offer, it is necessary that we do more than hear the words.  We must be willing to be corrected.  We must be willing to swallow our pride.  We must be willing to go to a place of vulnerability, a place of risk-taking that surrenders not to the will of a godless culture – but to the will of the Anointed One of God who teaches us not just about forgiveness but what it means to really live free.

We all know something big is happening in St. Louis.  The 2019 Special Called Session of General Conference is now in full swing with pretty high stakes.  Depending on the outcome, the trajectory of the United Methodist Church could be drastically altered.  Yet even prior to this called session, there have been comments not only in the Arkansas Conference but from other Conferences around the US – from both sides – that if we don’t get what we want, we will never forgive those who destroyed/altered/weakened the UMC.

“Never forgive”.  Those words should never pass the lips of a disciple, a genuine and earnest student of Jesus.  Even as we have declared those whom we will never forgive to be our enemies, Jesus nevertheless requires – REQUIRES – those who live by the Word and expect to be justified by The Word to forgive even those who have (at least in our own eyes) done irreparable harm to something we love so deeply.

“Love your enemies.  Do good [to your enemies], and lend [to your enemies], expecting nothing in return … be [as] merciful as [you expect or hope] your Father is merciful”. 

Now why does all this matter?  Do we somehow think those who willfully hurt us will somehow be magically transformed by our mercy?  Won’t those who act with such evil intentions only take advantage of us as we continually put ourselves out there in such a vulnerable and weakened state?  If we give to an enemy, won’t that enemy only expect more?

“From anyone who takes your coat, do not withhold even your shirt”.  “Turn the other cheek”.  “If anyone takes your goods, do not ask for them again.”

Ridiculous.  Unthinkable.  I would rather just “get saved”, call Jesus my “personal Lord and Savior”, keep my stuff, choose my company, and go on about my business.  I must admit to you that by these standards, I have no business calling myself a Christian, let alone a disciple of Christ (yes, there is a profound difference between the two).

Here is where it begins to matter.  First of all, being a genuine disciple goes far beyond a profession of faith or memorizing the Apostles’ Creed or even being a member – active or not – of the Church.  We can easily profess what we claim to believe, but we can never be more than we are willing to do.  As Jesus so clearly states, we cannot be forgiven if we are unwilling to forgive.  And we can never fully experience grace (Divine love and mercy) if we are unwilling to offer that same grace.  If we offer grace conditionally – say, an apology is not enough for us – then we must reasonably expect those same conditions to be imposed upon us.

I must also make another confession.  My thoughts about this particular subject have been all over the place.  This is perhaps one of the most challenging, most difficult sermons I’ve ever had to write, let alone deliver. 

I wondered how this could be, given that forgiveness is the cornerstone of our faith.  It should be simple.  Well, it is – theoretically.  In reality, however, we cannot talk easily about something that is not a part of us, something we are unwilling to do ourselves.  We cannot rise above our self-imposed obstacles, and we can go no further than the chains we freely wear allow us.

Forgiveness is hard.  This is why it took a tortuous death to set us free.  This is why our Holy Father could not simply wave His Mighty Hand and forgive us.  For us to be able to give so fully of ourselves, He had to give so fully of Himself. 

We must step away from the chains that bind us.  We must move away from the shackles that prevent us from being and doing all we have been justified to be and to do.  For it is as our Lord has assured us; “Give, and it will be given to you.  A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back”.

No limits.  Full mercy.  Amazing Grace!  This is our God, our Shepherd, our very life!  Amen.

Means of Grace V: The Pure Church

17 February 2019

Jeremiah 17:5-10; Luke 6:17-26

"We have become so doctrinally indifferent that ... pastoral care is reduced to therapy, mission to sociopolitical action, evangelism to church growth, academic theology to amateur philosophy, administration to quality control."  William Abraham

Each of these illuminate the difference between holiness and humanism.

As we continue our series on the means of grace, it occurs to me that the genuine means of grace (prayer, fasting, worship, tithing, the Sacraments, Scripture study, fellowship) are of limited scope outside and independent of the context of the Church – the Church as the congregation, not the institution.

Yet even within a church that is not interested in growing in discipleship, the means of grace can be robbed of their genuine power to transform our lives.  For instance, praying with an agenda rather than praying as Jesus taught us to pray.  And if our own lives are not transformed, we have no chance of, and no hope for, the “transformation of the world”.

This is not to say prayer and devotionals, fasting, or study of the Scriptures cannot be done alone (they must be our regular, daily practices); it is rather to say the Body of Christ – which should define the Church – is weakened when we decide to go it alone.  Consequently if the Body itself is weakened, the individual parts are weakened further. 

The spiritual well-being of the Church is perhaps most important of all during this anxious time for the United Methodist Church.  We are in a good position to split and further weaken our witness and credibility, or we can purposefully choose to grow stronger through adversity to be the Body and the Presence we are called to be. 

We must resist the false choice to be a “liberal” church or a “conservative” church since we were not created as liberal or conservative.  These are cultural, man-made labels created to divide us.  Rather, we must choose simply to be The Church – not as a political or even social organization - but as The Presence of Christ.  Choosing anything less, especially according to the social issue du jour, puts us in danger of degenerating into a mere social movement and, worse, a political institution.  Our children need and deserve better.

Many have become convinced this battle within the United Methodist Church is confined to a single issue.  It is, but I have said before, “that issue” is only a symptom of a greater and more lethal spiritual illness.  I submit to you that THE issue at stake goes even deeper than this.  I have come to believe we must choose between holiness and humanism.

To be “holy” is to be sanctified; dedicated and consecrated to The Lord for His purpose rather than our own.  We serve The Lord through the Word which is intentionally “set apart” from the world; it is this very Word which distinguishes The Lord’s people from the rest of the world.  It is the “holiness code” written in Leviticus (17-26) and affirmed by Jesus.  The Lord commanded His people they must never assimilate, and Jesus teaches us how to resist it.

Over the years the Church has perhaps overplayed its hand with an “overemphasis on justification to the exclusion of the sanctifying work of the Spirit” (First Things, “Evangelical Apocalypse”, Dale M. Coulter, 14 Feb 2019).  As a result, we have allowed the humanist culture to determine the gravity of sin or whether a particular action or state of being can be classified as sin at all – especially if the broader culture has accepted it.  To this end, the Church has long fallen victim to the notion that the gravity of sin is directly proportionate to its destructive force.  That is, if no one is being hurt, how bad can it really be?

As opposed to holiness which is dedicated to the service of The Lord and His Word, humanism is much more insidious in its dedication to the service of self.  Regardless of whether we call ourselves Christian, if “me” comes first, we are humanist.  Humanism rejects the Objective Truth of the Eternal Word (calling it “legalism” when it interferes with our choices) and reduces sin to subjective cultural relativity – which only confuses our children AND us - and renders the means of grace as optional.  That is, the humanist culture decides what is right and what is wrong. 

Because the moral authority of the Church has been compromised over the years precisely because of its political engagement and involvement, we have decided that what is popular is much more important than what is truly righteous.  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer maintained in the mid-20^th century during the reign of the Third Reich, cheap grace has displaced discipleship.  However, the Holocaust itself did not cause this displacement.  Rather, the Holocaust was the result when the Church – the whole congregation – went along, even if blindly and fearfully.

Jesus’ discourse in the Sermon on the Mount is entirely about righteousness, not popularity.  It is the expression of the Pure Church, the Holy Church when those who mourn are comforted, when those who hunger are filled, when those who are lost are found.  But it is also the mark of the Pure Church when we are hated and reviled and persecuted not simply for being generic Christians but because of our faithfulness to the Word in our devotion to holiness.  It is a hard life we have largely rejected in our “overemphasis on justification to the exclusion of the sanctifying work of the Spirit”.

We must not allow whatever will happen in the coming weeks to determine what we will choose to be or which direction we must go.  Like it or not, true holiness is not determined by majority vote.  It is the Word of The Lord for the People of The Lord embraced and lived where the Pure Church is found.  Let that be our choice for now and for all time.  Amen.

Means of Grace IV: Salvation

10 February 2019

Isaiah 6:1-8; Luke 5:1-11

It may seem strange to some that I would name “salvation” as a means of grace when we generally understand grace itself as the means to salvation.  When I first wrote that statement and let it roll around in my head for a moment, it sounded even stranger.  I have a concept in mind, but getting there will take some doing.  It also means it can no longer be “business as usual” in the life of The Church.

It is my sincere hope we will all have a better understanding of what salvation really means rather than what we think it means – not because we may have been wrong all this time but because what may be wrong can be made so right!  Much like the word ‘grace’, salvation can be so casually tossed about that we don’t really appreciate its depth.  In many cases, salvation has become an ‘event’ rather than a sustained life of spiritual growth and maturity; “grace upon grace”, as it were.

In the Wesleyan tradition of understanding grace, there are three stages in our spiritual development, each requiring The Lord’s mighty hand but each leading us to a greater sense of awareness.  Progression in this journey will come to require more of us, but each stage prepares us for what may come. 

Beginning with prevenient grace, we grow and are invited into justifying grace, and then sanctifying grace.  On the surface it may seem as though Methodists try to make “getting saved” harder than it has to be, much more complicated than the Bible seems to make it.  Yet each level speaks volumes about The Lord’s mercy and our active participation as genuine disciples. 

In prevenient (or preventing) grace, it is the Divine Mercy of The Father to “prevent” the total destruction of the Divine Image in which we are all created.  It is The Father’s Presence and Activity in our lives before we are even aware, and still we know something is stirring, something is awakening within us.  As John Wesley once wrote, “Prevenient grace includes all that is [brought about] in the soul by what is frequently termed ‘natural conscience’ … that light by which the Son of God enlightens everyone who comes into the world”.

Prevenient grace prepares us for justifying grace (what we commonly refer to as ‘getting saved’).  “Justification”, Wesley wrote, “is another word for pardon”.  In prevenient grace, we become aware of our sins, our failings.  In justifying grace, we become aware of His mercy.  We become aware that, by His mercy alone, we have been “justified” to stand before Him.  We have been freed from the shackles of our past, and we have been restored to a right relationship with Him.  Our journey, however, must not end there.  It is far from over!

This justification leads us into sanctifying grace, what Wesley believed the author of Hebrews meant in our need to ‘go on to perfection” (6:1).  It is this particular point of a deepening relationship with our Holy Father that becomes in itself a genuine means of grace, a level of mercy fulfilled not only by His Heart but also by our willing acceptance. 

Yet the “acceptance” is not one of simply saying, “Ok, I’m saved.  I’ve accepted Jesus into my heart”.  No, our Wesleyan tradition and the discipline of a Church charged with “making disciples equipped to make disciples for the transformation of community and world” challenges us to look harder and go farther and deeper to give real meaning to the idea of Jesus abiding within us.  To be sanctified, to be “perfected” in grace is to let Jesus be much more than a dashboard icon.  It is this point at which He becomes our True Shepherd as we also learn to shepherd others.

This entire process is one of “becoming”, but it is still not entirely of our own doing.  Rather, we are being led because we are willing to be led, allowing ourselves to trust The Word more than our own instincts.  Think of it in terms of our reading from Isaiah.  As the prophet gazed upon that heavenly vision, he became painfully aware of his sinful state; “Woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5) - the reality of prevenient grace; The Lord stirring in our “natural conscience”.   

Next we see the angel (seraph) coming to the prophet, “holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.  The seraph touched my mouth with it and said, ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out” (vs 6-7).  Isaiah, by his confession and the mercy of The Lord, has been justified strictly by the Hand of God to stand before Him; yet there is even more beyond this moment of justification.

In this moment of “becoming”, in this moment of spiritual clarity, the prophet is experiencing much more than merely “being saved”; he is being called.  In his willingness to answer The Lord’s plea, he is “becoming” all he was created to be.  Living into his salvation in responding as he did, Isaiah will find the grace necessary to begin his ministry in earnest and without fear.  The prophet still has his own mind, but he has surrendered his will.

In a manner of speaking, then, I submit to you there is not an ounce of difference between “being saved” and “being called”.  While we may typically think of “the call” as that of being called into pastoral ministry, what may be closer to the Truth is we are all “called” to some ministry according to our gifts.  We cannot all be prophets or apostles or preachers or teachers, but this does not diminish the sacred value of our own unique spiritual gifts.  It is a shame, when we stop to think about it, that we have come to believe pastors, preachers, and priests somehow have a higher calling than anyone else.  

We are all “called” when we are awakened to the reality of The Lord.  Though I may sound like a broken record, I think it cannot be stressed enough that not every decision we make is a matter of “heaven or hell”.  In the present reality, it is more like the difference between being asleep and awake. 

As we grow in faith and in love, then, grace becomes all the more necessary.  And as we grow into what we are created to be from the beginning, as we purposefully live into our salvation in what we are called to do and to be, grace is given all the more.

Like grace itself, salvation is the means to a Much Greater End.  It is the Light come into a dark world.  It is the clear Voice of the Shepherd calling us through the haze of cultural confusion.  It is discipleship, and it is Life itself.  Amen.

Means of Grace III: Fellowship

3 February 2019

1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 6:32-38

As we continue our series on the means of grace, it is important at this point to stop for a moment and understand what grace is really about.  It’s a churchy word not well understood outside the Church – not because church folk cannot define it but because we often have trouble conveying it in a way by which those outside our churchy circle can comprehend it. 

Our textbook definition of grace = unmerited favor; unmerited because we cannot earn it, and favor because of the nature of our Heavenly Father.  Call it the capacity for “mercy”.

We can pray, we can fast, we can worship, we can tithe, we can receive the Sacraments, and we can do all sorts of religious acts that will sustain us as individuals; but until we understand grace always involves others, our personal religion will always fall short.

Being religious and having a strong sense of religion are important.  However, it can also be a two-edged sword.  Religion can feed us and strengthen us in our faith, but it can also destroy us – and others! - if we become too “holier than thou” in self-righteousness; believing ourselves to be so “saved” that we can do no wrong.  Being solely focused on “me and Jesus” while neglecting the well-being of our neighbor – or believing the well-being of a stranger to be unimportant to our need to “go on to perfection” (Hebrews 6:1) - misses altogether the essential component of our religion in all Jesus has taught us. 

Just as St. John wrote, we cannot claim to love The Lord while hating someone else (1 John 4:20).  John’s context of “hate” does not necessarily mean only that fiery passion we sometimes feel against someone who has wronged us.  It can also include those we deliberately neglect; those we have deemed innocuous, unimportant to us.  In sharp contrast, the depth of Divine love, as Jesus teaches, goes beyond loving only those who will surely love us back and includes those we would step over.

Thus understanding the nature and the depth of mercy is necessary before we can effectively use any means of grace for ourselves.  This is what Jesus is talking about; “Love only those who love you”?  Meh.  “Lend only to those who will pay you back?”  Meh.  “Do a favor only for those who will return the favor?”  Meh.  Those are the easy things that require no real effort because they are primarily self-serving.

Like love itself, mercy is hard for us.  Like love itself, mercy is not dependent on how we may be feeling at any given time.  The reason grace is so difficult for us to extend and offer is because we have not yet learned how to receive it.  For if we think we have received it only for our own soul’s sake, we have received it wrongly – assuming we have received it at all.

So there is a reason fellowship – interacting with others – is considered a means of grace as important as worship and prayer, fasting and Scripture study.  Whether we’re gathering on Sunday evening with food and Bible study, or Sunday morning in small group Bible study, or helping out in the Mission House, interacting with others is as much a way to receive AND convey grace as is Sunday worship or private Bible study.  It is never either/or when it comes to the several means of grace; it is always “and”.

For instance, if we are diligent in our personal devotions and Bible study but will not participate in small group study with others, we get little because we give even less.  This is the principle behind St. Paul’s so-called “love chapter” in 1 Corinthians 13.  It matters not how awesome we may believe ourselves to be in our personal piety; if we lack love, we lack everything else which is given meaning through love.

Couple Paul’s words with our Shepherd’s words, and then we can see what “love” really means.  Because “love” itself is the very source of grace, then, we should be able to see that, while giving of ourselves to those who love us is still important (as it is so easy to do with our own children), giving of ourselves to those who infuriate us, to those who offend us, to those who oppose us, is all the more important – because it is where grace is needed most.

When grace itself is so poorly understood, we become defined by these many so-called “hot-button” social issues that are so easy to get caught up in.  Beyond “hot-button” this week, however, abortion has become a social lightning rod.  Outside the political rhetoric which narrowly defines us as pro-life or pro-choice, there are much deeper issues at stake.  We lose sight of these issues because we choose sides, we demonize those who do not agree with us, and we forget what we’re supposed to be about; what we are “saved” for and called to do.

What we are willing to give to others outside our family and social circles is the truest measure of what we have received from Above because we cannot give what we do not have.  As our Lord has taught us, those who offer mercy will themselves be offered mercy (Matthew 5:7), and those who forgive will themselves be forgiven (Matthew 6:14-15).  By this we can easily see grace always – ALWAYS – involves others.

There can be no small moments in grace; for when we offer mercy, we open the very Gates of Heaven; so that which we had formerly declared impossible will suddenly become possible: reconciliation and, ultimately, peace.  This is our religion, for this is our Savior; this is our Father’s Heart.  Amen.