In the Name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Earlier this week, and really just for fun, I asked my ten-year-old son, Gus, to tell me what he thought the word grace meant. He said, “Dad, I think it’s kind of like mercy.” I said, “Well, Son, mercy is certainly part of it, but what makes you say that it’s like mercy?”
Without missing a beat, he said, “Because you are always asking mom to show you a little mercy. And I think of her when I think of grace!” What a “momma’s baby!”
Today I want to talk to you about the greatest word in all the world, the greatest word ever – past, present or future. And that word is grace – honest to goodness, 200 proof, unadulterated, life-changing, flammable and amazing grace!
Yes, there is grace, even abundant grace, in this season we call Lent. In fact, it’s bubbling-up, brimming over, spilling out and ready for the taking today.
The Book of Common Prayer puts it this way in Lent:
It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to gives thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. Through Jesus Christ our Lord; who was in every way tempted as we are, yet did not sin; by whose grace we are able to triumph over every evil, and to live no longer for ourselves, but unto Him who died for us and rose again.
Let’s not get this wrong at the outset of Lent. It is His boundless, limitless grace that gives life and meaning to this great season of renewal – this vital season of repentance and faith.
You’ll be relieved to discover this is not (and I stress NOT) the season that God helps those who are finally willing to help themselves. This is the season God delivers those who can’t help themselves – those who can only be cleaned up by the Blood of the Lamb!
And, please don’t use this time to finally “get religion.” Is there anything worse than somebody who’s just found “religion?” Lent is not about religion. Lent is about relationship – a deeper relationship with the Living Jesus, which turns the modern “tragedy of religiosity into a triumphant faith in God’s love” (Rita Hinton, A Miracle of Love).
Boy, I’m tightly-wound today! And for good measure, because, “The sad fact,” writes Capon, “is that the church, both now and at far too many times in its history, has found it easier to act as if it were selling the sugar of moral and spiritual achievement rather than the salt of Jesus’ passion and death.” Which do you want?
Maybe this is why our Lord reminds the Tempter in the Gospel today that “man cannot live by bread alone” (and certainly not the bread of his or her own striving and achievements, however remarkable).
So what does all of this mean for you and for me?
I’m asking you this, because I realize that Lent is the time of year we’re most likely to arrive at the sermon excepting what my friend calls “the proper joining up of theory and practice.”
I very much enjoyed Pope Francis’s Ash Wednesday message. I watched it on You Tube. He must have sensed that his hearers were looking for an assignment – something to check-off and accomplish. If they were looking for the latest and greatest ten steps to move forward, they must have been greatly disappointed when he seemingly went off-script and said, “Lent is the wake-up call to go back to the essentials.”
Do you remember the original essentials – what those first Christians, those first followers of “the Way” – thought, said and did?
Michael Green, the late British evangelist, reminds us that the essentials are clear in the pages of the New Testament. In Evangelism in the Early Church, which I think is his best book, Michael reiterates the basics:
- Everyone “had to first and foremost repent, change their attitude…be willing to let go their sins…it meant burning their books for Ephesian magicians, and washing Paul’s stripes for the Philippian jailer…essentially it was a changed attitude towards God.[1]”
- Secondly, “Together with repentance goes faith; repentance towards God is matched by faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ,” and Michael wisely reminds us that this leap “of faith is prior to the life of” [2]
- And the third condition was holy baptism, which lead to the new life of grace.[3]
Some of you are thinking “Father, this message is for someone else. I’ve been a believer my whole life, and I get the basics.” And I say to you, as I say to myself, don’t fool yourself!
Do you remember Mr. Legality and his son, Civility, both of whom are from the City of Morality in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress? They told Christian, Bunyan’s main character, that his quest for God’s grace and favor wasn’t necessary, because they could prove their own goodness. They were “good” citizens. They always paid their bills on time, always got to work early, always served as community leaders, never were they rude to their wives and they always helped the less fortunate. Well, aren’t they special?!? I believe it was Jesus who said, “Those who are well are in no need of a physician.”
Don’t let Lent, with its many wonderful opportunities for repentance of faith, become a time we pretend we’re not sick, a time to play some kind of self-righteous game about proving that we’re finally good enough for God.
There’s an old preacher’s hack that I really love (and nobody knows who first said it). It goes like this: “The Devil knows your name but calls you by your sins. God knows your sins and calls you by name.”
To that I add this: The Deceiver is saying to you and to me this morning, as we enter Lent together: “You’ve really done it this time. I know what you did! You’ve got forty days to get right with God.”
God is also speaking to us this morning: “Come home. Just come home.”
More than anything else this Lent I want you – I want us – to stake our lives on the rumor of grace.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Charleston D. Wilson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
1st Sunday of Lent
10 March 2019