What Do We Do With the Grace of God?

by Rev. Eric Folkerth

“What do we do with the grace of God?”

I hope you understand that there is not just *one* self-obvious answer to this question. That is why this deceptively deep question frames our theme for the holy season of Lent.

Sometimes we embrace grace.
Sometimes we realize just how deep and abiding God’s love for us is and we willingly and joyfully accept God’s grace into our lives. We realize, as Frederick Buechner says, that “life itself is grace,” and we respond with gratitude and joy, spreading that same grace to others.

Sometimes we resist grace.
Sometimes we put up blinders, deny our need for grace and pretend we can be self-sufficient.  We convince ourselves that we are “self-made” and that we have no need of God, or perhaps even the help of other people.
Or because we have been harmed by the “the church” —by a thin patina of grace on the outside, hiding messages of judgment on the inside— we distrust those who speak of grace, believing “it must be some trick.”

Sometimes we try to stop or limit grace.
We cannot do this, actually. But Lord knows we try.
We might understand grace in our lives, but we cannot fathom grace for “those people over there.” We falsely believe we actually have the power to stop God from being God…to prevent God from sharing God’s grace to all God’s children. 
We cannot do this, of course. It’s ludicrous to imagine we have the power to limit God’s grace. But throughout history, human beings have made this third and painful move.

Rather than embrace grace, or even personally resisting grace, we’ve tried to stop or limit grace from being shown to others.

This final, tragic, human tendency is the metaphorical truth in the story of Jesus’ suffering and death. Jesus’ suffering death is a result of those in his historical time who simply could not fathom the sheer expanse and size of God’s grace for all God’s children.

On the very first time Jesus ever preached (in Nazareth) the crowd gets so *angry* at his message of grace to foreigners that they seek to “throw him off a cliff.” 

In our day, many churches and preachers now play the very same part as those who resisted God’s message of grace in his day. Only, in most cases, like the ungraceful people in Jesus’ day, modern preachers and churches sadly believe they are defending some concept of God that needs defending…rather than seeing their calling as spreading grace as far and wide as they can.

I don’t know why we human beings, time and time again, believe we have the power to stop and control God’s grace. But we do. It seems to be deep in our psyches to want to do this…to want to be in the place of God. 

Songwriter Don Henry describes this very dynamically in his powerful song about the non-violent ministry of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Recognizing the true power of King’s message and actions, he says this about we human beings, and our reaction to somebody like King:

“To fight a fight, without a fist
All human instinct puzzles this
How dare you threaten our existence.
Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus Christ
History repeats itself so nice
Consistently, we are resistant…
…to love.”

And we are. Over and over, human beings display our apparently unquenchable ability to resist, stop, or limit God’s love and grace…rather than accepting, embracing and sharing it.

As we walk through the season of Lent, over these next forty days, I invite you to join us in worship, as each week, we unpack the question:

“What do we do with the grace of God?”

See you Sunday,

Eric Folkerth