"Words To Live By II: Grace"
God's greatest gift to us.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, December 8, 2002
Text: Philippians 1:3-11
It was a dark and stormy night (how's that for an original introduction?) and I had just come from my very first presbytery meeting in the United Church of Canada. Overwhelmed by boredom and excitement both, I hopped into my car and began to drive back to my pastoral charge, which was some 30 miles away.
The route from Antigonish to River John, Nova Scotia is a beautiful one unless, of course, you are driving at night in the middle of December. It was one of those dark and stormy and snowy Nova Scotia nights when I hopped into my car. My car in those days, because I was a poor theological student, was a Russian-made Lada. Do you remember those? Oh, cursed by God were they.
I got into the car and I switched it on. I headed home with the snow falling and only one of my windshield wipers working. After about three or four miles the car began to speak to me in Russian. It spluttered and coughed and hacked as if it were filled with vodka and not gasoline. After about another five miles I realized that, even with my foot firmly planted to the floor, 25 miles an hour was as fast as I was going to go on that night.
It continued to splutter and cough until finally I reached the little town of Stellarton. I tried to pull into a Canadian Tire to have my car fixed, but the Canadian Tire was closed; then I pulled into a local garage. When they saw me coming, it was evident that they thought it might as well have been from the moon as from Russia. They didn't want to touch it. So I got back into said Lada and began to drive, realizing that the car was going to go very little further.
I coasted down a hill and at the bottom of the hill there were only two sets of lights on: one in a tavern, the other one in a United Church. Guess which one I pulled into! I got out of my car at the United Church and I heard the most glorious music. There was frivolity and laughter on that cold and stormy night in Stellarton and I walked into the building and I must have looked like a vagrant. All the people were seniors and they were having a Bean Night and Dance and were thoroughly enjoying themselves. Knowing that I had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, I continued to go into the church and finally in the distance saw the minister.
I went over and introduced myself to him as the lay, supply minister in River John, newly arrived from South Africa. He took me in and he introduced me to everyone that was there and I ate the supper and I joined in the dance and, after it was all over, one kind soul took me to a neighbourhood hotel called "The Heather." They paid for my room and they made a deposit on my breakfast and said: "While you're with us you will want for nothing. You will be safe."
I remember going out in the morning and having my car towed to the local garage and waiting the rest of the day, and returning to River John. And to this very day, when I go past the Heather Hotel on the Trans-Canada Highway in the middle of Nova Scotia, or I think of the Stellarton United Church, I am overwhelmed by that warm sense of generosity on that cold and dark and stormy night.
A couple of weeks ago it would not have been in my mind that this past week I would be stranded in North Carolina as I was preparing this sermon. I was there for three days. I was supposed to be giving a speech at a university prayer breakfast on Friday morning; but, as many of you know, an ice-storm came exactly as I arrived in the state. All the jokes about Canadians and their weather, you can imagine, were on everybody's lips.
For two-and-a-half days I was stuck in a hotel, not able to go out because the power was not on anywhere else in the city of High Point. It's remarkable that, as the power was out and the roads were icy and nobody knew what to do, within that hotel a community was created. We all got to know each other so well, the waiters and the waitresses came and sat down and ate with us. The manager, the local police chief, the ambulance driver - everybody came. It was the only restaurant in town that was open. People would gather round a table and say grace. They would warmly welcome one another and by the time I left on Friday afternoon, it was as if we were all friends having communed, as it were, around the table of the Lord.
When the Apostle Paul thought of the church in Philippi, he thought of them in the same way as I think of that church in Stellarton, or those kind people in North Carolina. He had experienced there the power and the graciousness of Christian fellowship. He says so beautifully and eloquently: "I have a place for you in my heart, for we have been partakers together in the grace, the grace of Jesus Christ."
Now, for Paul, this was a profound message. It hadn't always been the case. Philippi was the place where he and Silas had been imprisoned after they helped a young woman with an evil spirit. He had been arrested and imprisoned in Philippi and it was a place where he and Silas sang at midnight; and from that song as one person wrote, "the church at Philippi was born as the walls came crashing down." This was the place where described the people as a koenoneia, as a fellowship. Another meaning for the word "fellowship" is to be partners. He understood, then, that this church in Philippi was not only the place where the walls had come crashing down and he and Silas were freed, it was also the place that had supported his ministry when he was in jail and elsewhere in times of difficulty and distress.
This was the same place that sent him Epaphroditus when he was in need. This was the same church that supported his ministry when Macedonia was the centre of the benevolence of God in the ministry of the Apostle Paul. Philippi was dear to his heart. When he wrote to them he said: "I have a place for you there, for you are partners with me in grace."
You see, the Apostle Paul understood grace. It was the central theme, in fact, of his whole ministry. It was grace that was for Paul the divine action of God. It was that which was always initiated by God. It was God's overwhelming gift of support and love and forgiveness and salvation.
But for Paul, it was not only just God's action, it was also God's inspiration in the life of the believer. The grace of Jesus Christ, as objective as it is, also becomes a subjective reality. It creates fellowship. It is the source of love and strength and partnership. For the Apostle Paul, then, when he says to the people in Philippi, "You are partners with me in grace," they are partners with him in receiving what God has done in Jesus Christ, and they are partners in sharing that grace in the world around them.
And at this Advent season, as we are looking at the words that give our faith substance, this morning we cannot stress anything more important than the word "grace."
The first thing that Paul stresses, then, is that we share, as he shared with the Philippians, and as all Christians share, the grace that is a gift, the grace that is a gift. I want to use three definitions of grace that we find in the Hebrew language, because for Paul as a Jew, he understood that the coming of Jesus Christ, the message of Immanuel was the fulfilment of his view of grace, even as it was expressed in his Jewish background and in his Jewish roots.
In Paul's mind when he is writing to the Philippians, I am confident he would have thought of the word "hesed." Hesed is the covenantal grace of God. For all Jews, the Torah was the expression of God's abounding grace. It was the word of God's covenant. It was the word and the seal of what God had done through the people of Israel. They understood that they were partners, that they belonged in what God had initiated. As God had made a covenant with Abraham and Sarah, and God had made a covenant of the Law with Moses, and God had continued to renew this covenant throughout the ages, Paul as a Jew would have known that God's hesed, God's covenantal grace was something in which he participated.
In Jacob's great dream, in Genesis 28, these are the words that describe this covenant: "And behold, the Lord stood above it and said 'I am the Lord, the God of your father, Abraham, the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants. Your descendants shall also be like the dust of the earth and you shall spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south and in you, and in your descendants, shall the families of the Earth be blessed. And behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.'"
Paul understood that this very gift of the covenant was now extended to the people of Philippi and to the Gentile world through the gift of Jesus Christ; that the fulfilment of this covenant love was to be experienced in none other than the Lord of his life, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he believed that the people of Philippi were participants now in this new covenant: Through Christ's blood they would share equally in this great gift of grace, and they now belonged and would forever belong in the community of God's redeemed; but that this covenant is founded in the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. For the Apostle Paul, then, it was this very grace, this very singular moment of the incarnation that would constitute his joy, his life and his hope. That is why Paul knew that the Philippians were participants, partners, in that grace.
But more than that, there was another word to describe grace. It is rehab and rehab is not only those who have been recipients of the covenant, but those who have been forgiven and, because they have been forgiven, can share with one another openly and freely what Jesus Christ has done in their lives.
Very recently I was reading a book by the famous Corrie ten Boom, who was a great, Dutch Christian. She had lived in Holland throughout World War II and had suffered under the Nazis. In a wonderful book entitled "Tramp for the Lord," she described how in 1947, after the war, she went to Germany. She wanted to bring the word of forgiveness to the people there and let them know that in this bomb-struck country, in this country that was suffering from guilt because of what it had done, she, as a Dutch woman and as a Christian, had a word of hope. When she spoke to people she said that the image in her mind was as if she was on the ocean that was coming into Holland. She told the German people that that ocean is the place where they would dump their sins. They would just throw them out into the water. God was like this great ocean, receiving their sins and forgiving them.
But then she reminded them that God would not only receive the sins in the water but also would put up a sign on the beach. The sign would say: "No Fishing Allowed." Once the sins are in there, they are gone. The forgiveness is complete. God's grace needs nothing more added to it, and the word for the Germans who were living under that burden of guilt was that she, along with them, was a partner in the grace of Jesus Christ; that they were partners of a covenantal relationship with God, because their sin was removed and there was no longer any divisions between them. That is what Paul understood by the grace of the gift that we receive.
But there is a second side. There is a gift of grace that should be shared. The gift of grace is something that we share. I don't know about you, but despite all my proclivities to be compassionate, to be generous, I am getting tired at this time of the year of all the letters I am getting asking me for money. It seems everywhere I go someone wants money from me. Sometimes it's for a good cause; sometimes it's just a business reminding me that I should buy something, for them to make their bottom line at the end of the year look all the better. Everybody, it seems, wants something from me.
As I was paying my bill at the hotel on Friday, I was reminded of a story I heard many years ago about a husband and wife who went to pay their hotel bill. When they went to the desk, the manager came out and said that there would be an extra charge on their bill. They looked at this bill with incredulity. It was for fruit. They said: "What on earth is this?"
The manager said: "Well, for the last three days you have been with us, there has been a basket of fruit in your room."
The husband said: "But we haven't eaten any of the fruit."
The manager said: "Well, that's not my fault. It was there. You could have eaten it."
The husband and wife conferred for a moment and they came back to the bill and they put a line through it and deducted $150. The manager said: "What are you doing? Why are you doing that?"
The husband said: "Well, my wife has been here for three days and you haven't kissed her."
The manager said: "But I didn't want to kiss her. I had no idea that I should kiss her."
The husband said: "That's not my fault. She has been here all along. You could have kissed her."
We live in a world where everybody wants a piece of us.
Well, the gift of Jesus Christ is a gift that says, "I don't want anything from you. The Christian faith and grace is what I am giving to you." If there is anything in my life and my heart that I want to say to a world that is cynical about religion, that is cynical about our faith, it is that it is a free gift of which we can partake.
For there is another word to describe grace in the Old Testament: It is henan. Henan is compassion. At the heart of the Christian gospel is the desire to share this great, freely given gift. All that Jesus Christ asks of us, all that Paul asked of the Philippians, is to receive it and then to share it. It doesn't matter what age we are. It doesn't matter what state of life we are in. This is something that, if we receive it, changes our whole life and our whole outlook. When we are partners in grace together, it becomes the foundation of our lives.
Very recently I was given a poem written by an eccentric 17th century nun. It was her prayer as she was getting older. This is one of the most delightful things that I have ever read. It sums up for me the power of being gracious in all things:
Lord, thou knowest better than I know myself that I am growing older and will some day be old. Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and on every occasion. Release me from craving to straighten out everybody's affairs. Make me thoughtful, but not moody; helpful, but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom, it seems a pity not to use it all, but thou knowest Lord that I want a few friends at the end.
Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details. Give me wings to get to the point. Seal my lips on my aches and pains. They are increasing and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by. I dare not ask for grace enough to enjoy the tales of others' pains, but help me to endure them with patience. I dare not ask for improved memory, but for a growing humility and a lessened cock-sureness when my memory seems to clash with the memories of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken.
Keep me reasonably sweet. I do not want to be a saint. Some of them are so hard to live with; but a sour, old person is one of the crowning works of the Devil. Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places and talents in unexpected people and give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so. Amen.
Isn't that wonderful! That is the sense of grace and it is grace that is not just in appearance. It is not grace that is full of oneself. It is grace that is truly humble and full of God's self.
That is what the Apostle Paul wanted for the people in Philippi. He wanted them, as he says, to love one another and be abounding in that love, that they would be partners with him in grace, for only Jesus Christ can give it.
As we approach this Christmas season, may each and every one of us be partners in that grace. May it infuse our lives. May it be as deep as our bones. May it reside in our hearts. May it inspire our deeds, because it is the gift that only Christ can give and is the greatest gift of all. The word that we should live by today is grace.
To our Lord be praised. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.