The Place of Grace
Luke 9:51-56
In this series, we’ve been talking about the Crux which in Latin means cross. But you can’t understand the cross if you don’t understand grace. The cross is the place of grace. Grace is one of the hardest things for us to grasp. We’ve experienced it in our life, but it ‘s diifult for us to understand. It is probably one of the most difficult things for the church to express to the world and the fact is we haven’t been very good at it. It’s much easier to judge than to extend grace. And the world knows it. The Barna Organization interviewed 18-35 year-olds across America and asked, “What is the church?” The three top responses received were “Judgmental, hypocritical and anti-gay.” We see this in our Scripture today when Jesus sent messengers ahead into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him, but the people there did not welcome them. When his disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” As Christians, we are good at that, especially in political arenas. It’s much easier to judge than to extend grace. Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they went on to another village.
One of the things we need to understand is grace includes the excluded. Jesus sent the disciples on ahead to a Samaritan village. Who were the Samaritans? The Samaritans were despised by the Jews because they had intermarried with the Gentiles even though it was forbidden by God. Although they worshiped Yahweh as did the Jews, their religion was not mainstream Judaism. They accepted only the first five books of the Bible as canonical, and their temple was on Mount Gerazim instead of on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. They also did not refrain from pronouncing Gopd’s name which was forbidden in Judaism. Because of their imperfect adherence to Judaism and their partly pagan ancestry, the Samaritans were despised by ordinary Jews. Jews so despised the Samaritans, they would take two to three days longer to go around Samaria rather than go through when traveling from Judean to Galilee.
So if it was forbidden to have any contact with Samaritans, why is Jesus going through villages in Samaria which Jews would avoid like the plague? Because grace includes the excluded. In Luke 10, Jesus is uses the parable of the Good Samaritan. In the Jew’s eyes, how can any Samaritan be good? Look at Luke 10:25, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. An expert in the law was someone who had totally memorized the Pentateuch or Torah, which are the first five books of Moses and its 613 laws. Now this expert asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus asks, “What is written in the law? And the man said, “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.””
The key word is love. If you want to understand God, you have to understand his love. The best explanation of God in Scripture is love. To see love in its purest form is to see who God is. He is love. But it’s not any old love, it’s unconditional love. There’s not anything you can do to earn or deserve God’s love and there’s nothing you can do to lose God’s love. It’s unconditional. God’s love has no conditions. So, Jesus says, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.” That leads us to our second point: grace is unconditional love.
He doesn’t say anything about following and living out the 613 laws. He focuses one thing: love, loving God and loving neighbor. The expert presses Jesus further when he asks: “Who is my neighbor?” In other words, who is in and who is out? Who is right? Who is wrong? Who is in good standing with God and who isn’t? Who am I obligated to love and who don’t I have to love? So Jesus tells the parable, of the Good Samaritan.
There were no good Samaritans in the eyes of the Jews, they had violated too many of God’s laws. But Jesus tells the story of a man who was mugged, beaten and left for dead. A Priest passed by and moves to the other side of the road ignoring the hurt man and then a Levite. Levites were one of the twelve tribes of Israel. All priests of the Temple came out of the Levite tribe. Thus, they were immersed in the word of God and sought to live out perfectly the law of God. But they pass on by this Samaritan who is beaten ad bloodied because they had no obligation by the law to stop and help. He was a Samaritan for God’s sake! Then a Samaritan saw the man and took pity on him. He bandaged his wounds and took him to an inn to care of him. The next day, asked the inn keeper to look after the man promising to pay for the cost. And Jesus asks, “Which of these do you think was the neighbor of the man who fell in to the hands of the robber?” The expert replied “the one who has mercy on him.” And Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.”
Third, grace is mercy. This is what it means to demonstrate God’s love and grace. God’s grace is ridiculously inclusive. It includes those who reject him and it includes those who don’t follow His laws. In fact, there is no one to whom God’s grace doesn’t extend, even prostitutes and tax collectors. Everyone is invited and welcomed to this table. One Sabbath Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee. Jesus was being carefully watched. One of the laws, as the Pharisees interpreted it, was you could not heal on the Sabbath. Yet Jesus heals a sick man. Why? Because it is the merciful thing to do! Jesus says “When you give a luncheon or dinner do not just invite your friends, your brothers and your sisters, your relatives or your rich neighbors for if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
In Luke 14, Jesus tells the story of a certain man who was giving a banquet. He invited the wealthy, the connected, the powerful and the religious but they don’t show up. So in the verse 21, he sends his servants out into the streets and alleys to invite people to this incredible banquet. Who do you find in the alleys? Addicts, drunks, homeless and prostitutes, right? They round up as many as they could but there was just one problem: there’s still room at the table. The point is that there’s still room for you and me. The fact is none of us deserves to be here. All of us are broken, flawed and undeserving. There is no room for judgmental attitudes in the church. Grace includes the excluded. Grace legitimizes the illegitimate and it’s available to all!
Fourth, grace brings us to the fringes. A lot of times, we want to avoid people like addicts, drunks, homeless and prostitutes but Jesus gets right into the midst of them and he calls us to do the same. John 4 says “Jesus had to go through Samaria.” Now as stated before, any good Jew would go around Samaria. But John says Jesus had to go through Samaria! Why? Because people were there who needed grace! It was there that Jesus came met a Samaritan woman drawing water from a well. She came at noon in the heat of the day. Why? Because that was the time when the least amount of people would see her. She was Samaritan woman who had been married 5 times, and was now living with a man. In other words, she was the scorn of the town. The Samaritan woman said to Jesus, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman, how can you ask me for a drink?” Jesus’ disciples had gone into town to buy food and when the disciples returned, they were surprised to find Jesus talking with a woman, which was forbidden, but a Samaritan woman as well. Why did Jesus talk to her? To offer her grace and eternal life.
Once grace gets a hold of you, it will never let you go. You cannot escape the grasp of grace. It will transform your life and lead you to places you would never go and extend grace to people you never thought you could and to people who you thought weren’t worthy of God’s grace. It led Jesus to the cross and while there people were mocking him and crucifying him, his words were, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Paul speaks about grace this way: “But where sin has increased, grace increased all the more.” Romans 5:20 Author Ann Lamont who wrote “Traveling Mercies”, says, “I do not understand the mystery of grace, only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” God loves us too much to leave us in our sin and brokenness and that love leads us to extend grace to the excluded.
Being a Methodist first and foremost means extending grace to all. That is why our communion table is open and everyone is welcome to the communion table. John Wesley spoke of grace in three movements. First is prevenient grace which is God’s love chasing you from day one. God’s grace is working on you even before you know Him. That’s called prevenient because God’s grace comes to us even before we have acknowldged who God is or received what God has to offer. Second is justified grace which occurs when a person surrenders and receives God’s love and forgiveness in Jesus into his or her life. Because you are forgiven, you are now considered just or innocent of your sins because they have been wiped clean. The third movement of God’s grace is sanctified grace which is God working in our lives as we continually grow to become more like him. This is the grace at work in our lives when we are working out our “salvation in fear and trembling.” This is the Holy Spirit working in our lives and us cooperating and working with the spirit until Christ is fully formed in us. It is a continual process from the moment we give our life to Christ until the day we die.
It’s all about Amazing Grace. You know who wrote that song, John Newton, who worked on slave ships. On one voyage, a terrible storm arose and a book he was reading entitled On Imitation of Christ, he considered what if these things were true and because a Christian. Yet he went on to become a slave ship captain and then a slave trader. Finally he realized the sin in his life and as a pastor wrote the hymn Amazing Grace, realizing the depth of God’s grace in his own life. So when he says, saved a wretch like me, he really knew amazing grace.
In his book, “What’s So Amazing About Grace,” Phillip Yancey tells the story of Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway grew up in a very devout Christian family, and yet there he never experienced the grace of Christ. He lived a wild sin-filled life but since there was no father, no parent waiting for him, he sank into the mire of a graceless depression. A short story he wrote perhaps reveals the grace that he hoped for. It is the story of a Spanish father who decided to reconcile with his son who had run away to Madrid. The father, in a moment of remorse, takes out this ad in the town’s newspaper. "Paco, meet me at Hotel Montana, Noon, Tuesday… All is forgiven… Papa." When the father arrived at the square in hopes of meeting his son, he found 800 Pacoes waiting to be reunited with their father. Was Paco such a popular name? Or is a father's forgiveness the salve for every soul and how much we year for the Father’s forgiveness in our life.
I just want you to receive the grace of God in Christ Jesus that he has for us. Remember, we aren’t here because we are worthy. We are here because we are loved. “Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus, neither height nor depth, neither angels, nor principalities, nor any created thing.” You can’t separate yourself from the love of God. You are loved. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You cannot escape the grasp of grace. Receive God’s grace today in your life and as you go forth, be God’s instrument of grace in a graceless age. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, so be it. Amen. God bless you all.
