Grace We Don’t Understand: The Strangeness of Grace
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
3/13/05
As you know we are moving into Easter. I wanted to “bring things down” a little bit – get away from that heavy prayer stuff (as good and important as it is) and get into something that will probably relate to a bigger group of people and help us deal with some big issues in our lives as we move into Easter. I’m going to talk to you today, next week, and Easter Sunday about God’s grace.
Grace – it’s a great word, isn’t it? It just sounds good. It’s one of those words that kind of sounds like what it defines. Philip Yancey has captured this better than I ever could in his book What’s So Amazing About Grace? Yancey writes:
“…grace is the one grand theological word that has not spoiled. …Every English language usage I can find retains some of the glory of the original. Even now, despite our secular drift, taproots still stretch toward grace. Listen to how we use the word.
Many people say grace before meals, acknowledging daily bread as a gift from God. We are grateful for someone’s kindness, gratified by good news, congratulated when successful, gracious in hosting friends. When a person’s service pleases us, we leave a gratuity. In each of these uses I hear a pang of childlike delight in the undeserved.
A composer of music may add grace notes to the score. Though not essential to the melody – they are gratuitous – these notes add a flourish whose presence would be missed.
In England some uses hint loudly at the word’s theological source. British subjects address royalty as ‘Your grace.’ Students at Oxford and Cambridge may ‘receive a grace,’ exempting them from certain academic requirements. Parliament declares an ‘act of grace’ to pardon a criminal.
New York publishers suggest the theological meaning with their policy of gracing. If I sign up for twelve issues of a magazine, I may receive a few extra copies even after my subscription has expired. These are ‘grace issues’ sent free of charge (or gratis) to tempt me to resubscribe.
Credit card companies, rental agencies, and mortgage companies likewise extend to customers an undeserved grace period.
I also learn about a word from its opposite. Newspapers speak of communism’s fall from grace, a word similarly applied to Jimmy Swaggart, Richard Nixon, and O.J. Simpson. We insult a person by pointing out the dearth of grace: ‘You ingrate!’ we say, or worse, ‘You’re a disgrace.’ A truly despicable person has ‘no saving grace’ about him. My favorite use of the word grace occurs in the mellifluous phrase persona non grata: a person who offends the US government by some act of treachery is officially proclaimed a persona non grata – a ‘person without grace.’’’
At the end of George Bernanos 1937 book Diary of a Country Priest, the main character, on his deathbed, utters the words, “Grace is everywhere.” And so I believe it is. Yet as many words as spring from it, and as often as we sing about it in church, grace itself is a mystery. We are strangers to it. Today I want us to look at what I call “strange grace.”
My favorite definition of the word grace is “unmerited favor.” When we receive grace, whether from God or from other human beings, we receive favor from them that we do not deserve. Our Easter Sunday message on grace is going to look at just how much we do not deserve God’s grace by focusing on the sacrifice of Jesus – because the suffering of Jesus proves that we do not deserve God’s grace.
Let me open the Bible to you to show you God’s grace this morning, to show you that God desires, and is able, to grant you his favor even though you don’t deserve it. In Romans Paul writes about each of us in our natural state, before our hearts are awakened to our sin and our need for God.
Romans 1:28-32 (NIV)
28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,
30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;
31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Now the same author, Paul, writes these words just a few chapters later:
Romans 5:6-8 (NLT)
6 When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.
7 Now, no one is likely to die for a good person, though someone might be willing to die for a person who is especially good.
8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
My friends, this is a mystery. We cannot really understand this. Even Paul cannot hide his amazement as he basically writes, “What’s up with that? I mean most of us won’t even die for a GOOD person, but look what Jesus did – died for us before we had a chance to accept him – died for us knowing we might reject him – died for us when we were helpless to save ourselves, and perhaps would not be very appreciative of the suffering he had to do to bring us to God.”
In Romans 1 Paul writes in depressing detail about just how far off the mark we can get in this life. Then in Romans 5 he writes that this is what Jesus died for – it was while we were in this condition that Christ made the sacrifice he made.
You know one of the things I hear most frequently from people is, “I can’t come to church, or I can’t commit my life to Jesus, until I get my act together.” Folks, the thing is it has been made clear just how untogether all of our acts really are. I mean that list of stuff Paul wrote about – SHEESH! It is precisely with you in that “untogether” condition that Christ has already died for you, already called you to come to him. Do we really believe Jesus suffered all the things he suffered, endured the kind of agony we know he endured, and then will turn around and say, “I won’t grant you my grace because you smoke too much. I won’t grant you my grace because you have a dirty mouth. I won’t grant you my grace because you aren’t sure if you can “live up” to the call I’ve placed on your life. I won’t grant you my grace because you have a long and unpleasant sexual history. I won’t grant you my grace because you used to drink too much – or drink too much now. I won’t grant you my grace because your questions and doubts are too much for me. I won’t grant you my grace because you don’t know enough about the Bible yet. I won’t grant you my grace because your church attendance isn’t as consistent as it needs to be yet. I won’t grant you my grace because the sins and wounds and scars of your past are too nauseating for me – get out of here, you disgust me.”
Can we seriously hear Jesus saying any of those things to us from the cross? Does the cross itself not show that God’s grace is without limit? I mean, sometimes we just don’t get it, do we? This whole thing is strange to us. Sometimes we act like God’s kind of a spiritual valley girl, going “Eeeaaww. Stay away from me, like you’re like dirty and everything.”
We do not understand God’s grace. It is a mystery to us. You know I looked up the word mystery in a thesaurus, and I found the word, “strange.”
What if we think of God’s grace as a stranger to us? Kinda puts a new spin on things, doesn’t it? We have some emotions wrapped into the word “stranger.” I mean, stranger means danger, right?
It seems to me like when we think of the word stranger there are several things wrapped up in that for us. There are the elements of unfamiliarity, suspicion, and fear. I think each of these can open a window for us and help us see how little we understand grace, and why.
Unfamiliarity is the blanket word, here. A stranger, by definition, is someone with whom we are unfamiliar. If you are familiar with someone, that person is no stranger to you. But unfamiliarity in and of itself is a powerful thing. It is unfamiliarity that leads to suspicion and fear.
So we have to start by realizing that we are simply unfamiliar with God’s grace. We don’t understand it because grace as a way of operating is unfamiliar to us. It’s not our natural way of being. God’s way of thinking and being is entirely different than ours.
Isaiah 55:8-9 (MSG)
8 "I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work." God’s Decree.
9 "For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.
God’s language is the language of grace. God is in the business of extending to us his favor, even though we do not deserve it. God isn’t concerned with fairness in the way we are. Grace is strange because there’s absolutely nothing fair about it.
Exodus 33:19 (NIV)
. . .I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
By definition, no one who receives grace deserves it! Just about the only fair thing about grace is that God has extended it equally to everybody! See I think that scripture from Exodus is God’s way of saying, “You’ll be surprised who I’m prepared to show mercy and compassion to. Don’t get into the business of guessing who will receive grace from me, because you won’t be successful.”
Human beings have to be overly concerned about notions of fairness because we have sinful natures that, if we don’t pay extra close attention to fairness, will allow us to easily take advantage of people and commit terrible acts of injustice, maybe even violence, against them. God has no such concerns.
Isaiah 51:4 (GW)
4 Pay attention to me, my people. Open your ears to hear me, my nation. My teachings will go out from me. My justice will become a light for the people.
God’s nature is justice and mercy and truth and love, so he doesn’t have to get obsessed with fairness like we do. He just gets to dole out his mercy, his compassion, his grace, on anyone who will draw close enough to him to receive it.
James 4:8 (NIV)
8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. . .
God’s ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not like our thoughts – that means his ways are unfamiliar to us. And as I said before, when something is unfamiliar it leads to suspicion and sometimes fear.
We almost never trust something we are not familiar with. We’re always a little suspicious of things we don’t know. Indeed, familiarity BRINGS trust. If you are here today and I have deep, implicit trust in you, it is because I know you. And the more I know you and you have “proven” yourself to me the more I trust you. And the more I trust you, the more I am willing to “put myself out there” for you. That’s human nature. But it’s not God’s nature. Remember earlier, our long list of terrible sins from Romans 1? Isn’t it amazing that Jesus died for us when he knew for a fact that we were untrustworthy? That’s what Paul’s saying isn’t it? He’s saying, “Most human beings will not even die for a GOOD person – but God was willing to die – and die horribly - for EVIL people – people who had sinned, and would keep sinning, against him.
So in our way of being, we don’t understand grace. We are unfamiliar with grace as a way of being, so we do not trust anyone who claims to bestow grace without limit on everyone. We’re a bit suspicious of God. As I explained earlier we’re suspicious enough that we tend to keep exempting ourselves because we just can’t understand this. “Well yeah, God, I know you love those people over there, but ME? With what I’VE done? You can’t be serious.” Next week we’ll spend more time talking about our struggle to accept God’s grace.
Our suspicion of God, of his intentions and his commitment to this whole grace thing in our lives, springs from our own inability to live this way. Some have an impression of God as uptight, rigid, condemning, stern – but I think God’s grace demonstrates to us that he is exactly the opposite of all those things. God can live with totally open hands. We can hurt him and he keeps loving us. We can distance ourselves from him and he stays available when we are ready to return. We can mock him and he bows his head and waits for us to stop (look at Jesus at his trial and crucifixion – that’s God!!). We can pierce his heart with our selfish, rebellious behaviors and attitudes, and we already know what he says – “Father forgive them – for they know not what they do.” We just don’t get it. God in his grace reminds me of our children who, when we hurt their feelings, accept our tearful apology almost as a formality because really all they want is to get back to the joy of loving us again, and being loved by us. I think that’s who God is. I think God has boundless joy that flows out of his boundless willingness to continue loving you and me despite the awful things we sometimes think, say, and do. And frankly I wonder if anything pains God more than when we, who know the suffering he did for us, who know the humiliation he endured, doubt his willingness to love us through all our flaws and failures. Next week we’ll be talking about the embrace of grace – our struggle to let God love us the way he really wants to.
Full-blown suspicion takes the form of fear. When I suspect that you may not do what’s good for me, I distrust you. When I suspect you may have a secret agenda to harm me, I fear you. Because God’s ways are not our ways, we are unfamiliar with God’s grace. Our unfamiliarity leads us to be suspicious of God and to not really trust that he extends this grace to us completely, because we don’t completely extend it to others. And for some, suspicion leads to a fear that perhaps God has malevolent intentions – maybe in some way God seeks to harm us.
And there is where we end today. Just like that. See the answer to unfamiliarity and suspicion and fear is to become familiar, and that’s what your journey toward God is all about. You cannot turn a stranger into a friend by having someone else tell you about him. You have to muster your courage, introduce yourself, and begin building a relationship. I want to encourage you this morning to take the next step in building a relationship with the one who designed you, created you, and loves you implicitly, no strings attached, despite whatever distrust, fear, confusion, and misunderstandings that might cause in you.
My closing question for you today: What is your response to God’s desire to extend his grace to you – to love you no matter what you may have done, or who you are, or where you come from?
