Ephesians 2:4-10
“You Are God’s Masterpiece”
A colleague told me about a man named Jerry who was found by his girlfriend sprawled out on the bathroom floor, pills littering the tile around him.
Jerry had lost his entire family of four, one by one, in a matter of years.
When the last member of his family, his twin brother, died of leukemia, Jerry sank into despair.
After a week and a half of intensive care, Jerry had survived his near-fatal suicide attempt, but he didn’t seem any better.
Reluctantly, Jerry went with his girlfriend to speak with the pastor of her church, my colleague.
I am told that Jerry walked into the office that afternoon looking like the living dead.
My colleague had assumed it was despair over his loss that drove him to want to end his life, but he was wrong.
“I just can’t get rid of the guilt I feel,” Jerry confided.
“I miss my family terribly, but what haunts me is what I did to my brother. He resented me for years after I got involved with a girl he really loved. He felt betrayed and told me: ‘You are no longer my brother.’
For years we didn’t talk because he refused to see me.
I wanted to try to resolve it, but before I could, he passed away.
I feel so horrible for what I did to my brother; I just don’t want to live.”
My friend couldn’t believe it.
What Jerry needed most was not an explanation of why tragedy happens, what he needed was simply to understand God’s grace!!!
And don’t we all?
What our world needs more than anything else is grace.
And not just more talk about grace, but grace that seeks out lost people like God does.
“Grace with skin on it” shall we say—because people are born to run from God without it.
We all know deep down inside that something’s wrong with this world.
It’s not hard for people to comprehend the words of the Apostle Paul in Romans Chapter 7 when he says, “I really want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do the very thing I hate.”
Yet, instead of turning to God for help, people naturally run from God, the only One Who can heal us, change us, and give us life.
It’s so sad how automatically so many people feel unacceptable to God!
This world is filled with unhappy people who are living lives with the heavy yoke of guilt around their necks.
So many folks do not know that they are loved unconditionally.
And until we realize this; we can never really live!!!
The uniqueness of Christianity boils down to this one word: Grace!!!
Grace says that God accepts you and loves you—“just as you are”!!!
Can you even begin to imagine what the world would be like if people really believed this?
Can you imagine what the Church would be like if we really and consistently believed this and lived it out?...
…if we put skin on it?
If we were to go out on the street and ask people I wonder how many folks would associate Christianity or churches with anything closely resembling grace?
According to some new books by Christian research groups, what many folks feel is law—zero tolerance, judgment, condemnation.
Many people are afraid of coming to church—lest they be judged or deemed unacceptable.
I don’t know how many times I have been giving out food from our food pantry, and then when I invite the person or persons to come worship with us they say things like, “I don’t have any good clothes…” or “Do you allow people of a different color to come to your church?”
Allow?
My goodness, I’d ride my skateboard off the roof if it would get them to come!!!
It’s that important!!!
Being a part of God’s Body is that life changing!!!
How can we better get the message out that we aren’t looking for “perfect people”…
…as if there were any…
…we want people to come just as they are…
…because that is how God accepts them and that is how God accepts us!!!
Paul writes in our Scripture passage for this morning, “because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”
God loved us long before we loved God.
God sought us out while we were doing who knows what?
And God continues to seek us out every minute of every day!!!
That’s what I call LOVE!!!!
Grace is the greatest News in the Bible!!!
But it is so “other-worldly” that it is often so hard for us to “get it.”
I mean, people do not naturally understand what Paul says in Romans Chapter 8, that even though we fail to live up to God’s standards, or even our own: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Not only are we set free from the fear of judgment and condemnation through Jesus Christ, but God accepts us and pulls us into the closest of relationships.
You know how it is.
Ever love someone so much that you felt like you just couldn’t get close enough to them?
Many of us have that kind of experience with a wife, a husband and definitely children!!!
Just imagine how God feels about us!
We are God’s children.
And God is for us; God isn’t mad at us.
In fact, Paul writes, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
And nothing and no one can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord… “neither death, nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation…” can separate us from God’s love.
So what are we afraid of?
“God so loved the world…”
…Jesus came to save, not condemn!!!
It’s been said that the litmus test of whether or not you understand the gospel is what you do when you fail.
Do you run from God and go try and clean yourself up a bit before you come back into the throne room, or do you approach the throne of grace with confidence?
It’s said that if you don’t approach the throne of grace with confidence, you don’t understand the gospel because you are still trying to earn what’s freely given.
I would put it another way, salvation occurs when you trust unwaveringly that “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works…”
When we believe this, and embrace it we are finally free to start the process of becoming truly human, truly real, truly loving, truly accepting, truly ourselves!!!
As Philip Yancey noted, “you only learn grace by being graced.”
I recently read an article about a student ministry holding a series of meetings with college-aged students.
The topics ranged across the spectrum, but each conversation had three rules: be honest, be gracious, and be present.
One night the students wanted to discuss habitual sins.
Although they struggled with a variety of sinful behaviors, they all agreed on one thing: God was extremely disappointed with them.
Often through tears, students shared stories about how they believed God must be disappointed with them.
After listening to their stories, the campus minister asked, “How many of you were raised in a Christian home?”
They all raised their hands.
He continued, “Then, why, did not one of you say that in the midst of your sin God still loves you?”
You know, surprisingly, the Bible contains a virtual “museum of failed discipleship.”
Over and over again, the Gospels record the “false starts: and spiritual failures of the disciples.”
Thankfully, they also record Jesus’ willingness to encourage and challenge His flawed disciples.
We tend to cover up our hero’s faults, but the Bible allows us to see the disciples’ failures—and most of those stories came from the disciples themselves.
This honesty should give us encouragement when we feel like saying, “I am not good enough. God can’t possibly love me. I’ll never make it. I might as well give up.”
Our Scripture Lesson for this morning says “we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Have you ever thought of yourself as “God’s workmanship”?
Have you ever thought of other people in this light?
What difference would it make in our dealings with ourselves and our dealings with other people if we did?
Would we be more accepting and less judgmental?
A person once described their Christian neighbor like this: “She does good works automatically. It’s just what she does.”
Living into our calling to be truly human through accepting the love God has for us through Jesus Christ inevitably leads us into a life where we not only are able to receive grace, but we extend it to others as well.
The motivation for what we do is no longer “in order to” secure a reward, but “because of” the gift we have already and continue to receive from God.
I’m convinced that the central problem for Christians as well as for seekers is—we don’t trust God.
We still feel the need to “do” or “succeed” or “prove” somehow that we are acceptable.
The absence of feeling deeply loved, or truly at peace is a consequence of this.
Many of us live stressed, worried, anxious, controlling, joyless lives because we do not yet trust that we are fully accepted “as is” and that God “is for us not against us.”
When we truly live in grace, that’s when we find freedom and salvation.
And when we Christians wrongly assume that it’s our job to help make other people acceptable to God—even though we could never make ourselves acceptable…
…we send the wrong message about the God of Christianity.
But, like I said, to truly believe the Good News about God’s grace, people must often experience grace through God’s people.
It’s not our job to fix people—that’s God’s job.
Our job is to love and accept people.
Paul sums up our job in this world like this: “If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill all the requirements of God’s law.”
If you saw a Rembrandt covered in mud, you wouldn’t focus on the mud or treat it like mud.
Your main concern would not be the mud at all—though it would need to be removed.
You’d be so ecstatic to have something so valuable in your care!
But if you tried to clean it up yourself, you might damage it.
So you would carefully bring this work of art to a master who could guide you and help you restore it to the condition originally intended.
When people begin treating one another as God’s Masterpiece waiting to be revealed absolute miracles happen all around!!!
In God’s hands, within a grace-filled congregation such as East Ridge United Methodist Church—each one of us are like a work of art, a poem or a sculpture.
Or perhaps we are like a musical score; and the music is our genuine way of being human, laid out for us in God’s grace-filled design for our lives so that we can follow it.
Let us pray.
