Sunday's Sermon April 11

When we were over to Geri and Anthony Scozzafava’s for the book study, The Five Languages of Love (which by the way is still open to new participants!), Geri told us of being a kid growing up going to Catholic Church. On her way during the Mass to receive the sacrament she got giggling out of nervous habit.

The priest, not understanding what was happening, said in front of the whole congregation, “What is so funny young lady,” of course mortifying Geri and a friend. Geri remarked how devastating that was, that she was embarrassed in church instead of being received with grace in church.

Like Statler and Hilton, the Muppets Odd Couple, always with a word of wry criticism, seeing the worst in others, but never seeing it in themselves.

How easy it is to become a Pharisee and turn from the grace you yourself have received and even worse, turn from offering grace to others who have come to Jesus to hear those incredible words of acceptance!! Can you imagine Jesus at the altar with the sacrifice in hand saying such a thing to a nervous or even silly child.

The Pharisees, who were believers in Jesus in Acts chapter 15, and the Jewish believers in Galatians chapter 1 were not intending to be mean. They were just extending what they thought was the logical extension of the gospel to Gentiles, that they, through Jesus, would become Jewish believers; that they too would then rejoice in the Torah and keep it as the Jewish believers were.

They were not being mean or intending to be mean, as much as Paul was frosted at them. He wasn’t angry because they were not extending the gospel to the Gentiles. They were! They thought all Gentiles should hear and heed the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah.

No, Paul was mad at them because inadvertently, without real understanding, they were tying cement blocks to the feet of the whole Gentile Community by suggesting they be circumcised and begin living the Law.

They were sincere in believing that people had to become righteous in order to be acceptable to God. They thought of that as happening through the law and circumcision. They did not understand imputed righteousness; that is holiness to given to us by God.

Grace is as simple a concept as it can be. God loves you and accepts you as you are! If you are willing to let him, God will wonderfully shape and mold your life as you go forward from today. But in order for that to happen, you have to let go of your control of your life.

And, you have to let go of control other people’s lives as well. That is, you have to let them experience grace; from God, of course, but also from you.

And the Law is a step backwards from grace, from where we let God, to where we are in charge.
Grace you see, is easy but hard.

Grace is God choosing to love you as you are!

For me, and for all humans, we want to love you too; but naturally we want you to change: because you are imperfect, because you need fixing, because you don’t measure up.
Paul suggests we throw away the measuring stick and instead flee into God’s presence where grace does away with our attempts at human standardization.

Think about it this way. Are you married? Just how good a spouse is your beloved? Perfect I assume. Now transport your loving relationship to a place and time where there are no measures by which you could measure your spouse’s spouciness. Now how good is your spouse? The two choices are perfect, because I have no idea how to measure spouciness, or since there are no comparisons relationships to use, then wonderful. If the only standard you have is the love of Christ, then loving with your whole heart would be the only possibility, and the only conclusion is grace.

That is the way in which Christ loves you! With his whole being, and that is the way in which we are to love each other. Grace makes the standard of the law unnecessary, because if we live in grace and live out grace, the law will be fulfilled. And it becomes superfluous.

That is why Paul had no desire to send the Gentiles back to the law. The Law was a dead weight. It was a sign post of going in the wrong direction. People quickly and easily saw it as a way to measure themselves and others, and a way to judge themselves more holy than others without realizing that it also condemned them all.

Grace lets me off the hook and you off the hook. I am no more holy than you are, no less holy either. We are all made holy by Christ’s grace, and so we now live in that holiness as we live out grace towards each other!

The Five Languages of Love suggests that being filled up with love is a matter of discovering our primary love language and then letting others fill up our love tank by letting them love us in a way we will understand for sure that we are loved. And being sure that we are loved, we will, quite willingly choose to speak other people’s love languages so we can fill up their love tanks.
Grace: loving others not because we want something from them; instead loving others so that they will be filled with love. And a world it would be.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that whoever believed in him would not perish, but have everlasting life.
Grace. Amen.