A sermon by Cheryl E. Easley, presented May 8, 1999

Scriptural Lesson

"To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, and my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." II Cor. 12:7-10¹.

The Corinthian church seems to have been a real source of trouble to Paul. In his second letter to this group he is obliged to defend himself against false teachers who had infiltrated the church to accuse him of lacking integrity and of fiscal impropriety. As a result the apostle engages in what he terms "foolish boasting" to justify his apostolic authority. At the end of a lengthy enumeration of his activities and trials, he relates in chapter12 a vision or revelation in which he is "caught up into paradise" and hears inexpressible things, that he is not permitted to tell. This experience is so intense that he is unable or unwilling to relate it in the first person, speaking rather of a man he knows. He mitigates to some extent for his readers the sharing of this glorious event beginning in verse 7 with the text that was we read earlier:

"To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

I would like to talk with you about grace, to begin to define it, to share some images of grace in old and new stories, and to consider the demands of grace for those who have taken the name of Christ.

I always like to begin with definitions. If I were teaching this as a class, the first thing that I would do is to have all of you take out your pad and pencil and write your own definition of grace. Then we would share all your ideas and compare them to the definitions found elsewhere. The definition Adventists usually give for grace is unmerited favor. It is a good start, but just that. I like the definition I came across as a young girl, I think in the Bible Commentary. Grace was described as God's powerful, saving love. I like this definition much better. It is possible to bestow favor upon someone in a rather impersonal way, without particularly caring for them.

This text (II Cor. 12:7-10) has always intrigued me, it is an answer, a promise, perhaps a rebuke. In my field, public health, the word sufficient has quite and interesting meaning. We speak of factors which cause disease as being necessary, or sufficient, or both. For a cause to be necessary, it must be present in order for the disease to occur. For instance the varicella virus must be present for you to contract chickenpox. On the other hand where there may be many causes for a condition like stroke that can result from a blood clot, a narrowing of an artery due to arteriosclerosis, or an aneurysm; no one of these causes can be termed necessary. A sufficient cause is one which all by itself can cause a certain condition. The tuberculosis bacillus is not a sufficient cause of tuberculosis. You may be infected with the organism and not have the disease. Usually some other factor , such as general debilitation or an immune system deficiency has to be present also, otherwise your body may be able to wall off the infection remain well. But the Ebola virus, seems much more able to cause disease in healthy contacts in and of itself.

Sometimes I think we like to consider grace as necessary but not sufficient. We know that we cannot be saved without it, but we just cannot seem to take that step of faith into the abyss of trusting fully in the power of His grace to save. A physician I know in Chicago told me the story of a Mafia chieftain who was once his patient. At the end of every visit the man tried to pay him more than the regular fee. After repeated assurances that he was not required to pay extra for his care, the Mafiosi said to the doctor, "I always feel better when I know that the fix is in." Sometime we want to have the fix in too, and the fix is our own righteousness. In Eph. 2:6-10 we read, "And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works." We are saved to work but not through works. Such a fine line that we have trouble walking it. I love the chorus of a beautiful song on Larnelle Harris's latest CD"

Were it not for grace I can tell you where I'd be Wandering down some pointless road to nowhere With my salvation up to me I know how that would go The battles I would face Forever running but losing the race Were it not for grace2.

The great faith text of the Protestant church, Romans 1:17 which is familiar to us as "The just shall live by faith," my brother-in-law translates from his Greek testament as "He who by faith is made righteous, shall live." That puts a different spin on it to doesn't it. Read this way, it says much more directly, that righteousness from any other source will not result in life. Through faith we laid hold of God's grace. We cannot receive it any other way. And the hand we reach to God for grace can hold in it nothing but faith and love. If our hands are full of self, self-righteousness, self-sufficiency, or self-absorption, there will be no room for grace.

Another troublesome thing about grace is how it can be free and yet cost so much. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ." (Rom. 3:23, 24). Grace is free, but it is not cheap.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the very interesting German theologian who gave his life in the plots to overthrow Hitler, differentiated cheap and costly grace in his book, The Cost of Discipleship:

"Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. . . . Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

"Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

"Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

"Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought with a price," and what has cost God so much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God."

"When Christ calls a man," wrote Bonhoeffer, " he bids him come and die."³

Next I ask, "What is grace sufficient for? To return to our main text, we would have to say that grace is sufficient for suffering, trials, and distress. Paul has asked the Lord three times to remove a certain thorn from his flesh, but the answer comes with finality, "My grace is sufficient." "Don't ask any more for relief. You are going to have to bear with this hurt, this loss, this adversity, perhaps for as long as you live," In the wisdom of his loving grace he acts not to eliminate these issues from our lives, but to sustain and transform, perhaps even transfigure, our experiences of loneliness, pain, and grief. In her book, The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom reveals the lesson she learned through the imprisonment and persecution of herself and many of her family in the Nazi concentration camps as an indirect result of their successful efforts to save Jewish people from the Holocaust. Her father, her beloved sister, and other relatives died at the hands of the Germans. Yet at the end of it all, she said, "There is no pit so deep, but God is not deeper still." And her heart was filled, not with bitterness, but with a spirit of forgiveness and love for those who had been her enemies.

Do you remember the last time in your life you were comforted on your mother's lap for some hurt or loss? I do. I must have been 10 or 11 years old. I was making pancakes for the first time and somehow burned my hand severely with the hot oil. I can still remember the pain. But I also remember the sweetness of being resting in my mother's arms on our front porch as I had so many times before and never would again in quite the same way.

In the midst of our struggle, God opens his arms to us as a loving mother into whose lap we might crawl to be held and comforted. And thus strengthened by his grace we are able to withstand and to transcend whatever we are called on to confront. In the assurance of his powerful love we are able to find meaning in the darkest experiences, even those in which we cannot discern reason. The promise of the sufficiency of his grace allows us to persevere when life itself seems not to be possible.

But this is not the context in which we usually think of grace. Our usual association of grace is with forgiveness of sin. His grace is sufficient for our sin. Jesus told many parables that show us the varied facets of his grace. The one we call "The Prodigal Son," my pastor Dr. Walter Douglas always calls "The Prodigal Father." To be prodigal means to be wasteful, extravagant, bountiful, a spendthrift. According to Walter, what is remarkable about this story is not the waste of money by the son, but the abundant, even extravagant love of the father. To those who understand Middle Eastern cultures even the fact that the father ran out to meet his son, is remarkable. This would be thought of as beneath the dignity of a man such as the father is portrayed to be. Dr. Gottfried Oosterwaal tells the story of his relating this parable to group of Buddhist monks somewhere in his travels. All during his narrative they were giving nods and gestures of assent, until he reached the climax of story, and then they became quite agitated. A story very similar to this is in the Buddhist sacred writings, but when the wayward son returns home he is accepted only after he has worked for years to regain the father's approbation. They were astounded at the picture of a God who welcomed the prodigal home with forgiveness, love, and joyous celebration.

We read in Ephesians 1:7, 8, "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding." What a wonderful thought, that his grace is lavished on us. Even the word itself seems rich and abundant on the tongue.

Now having had his powerful saving love lavished on us, what is demanded of us in return for this grace that is free and yet so costly? I will speak of only one thing: the imperative that we become mediators of God's grace to those around us. My understanding of the depth of this responsibility grew tremendously through reading Phillip Yancey's book, What's So Amazing about Grace.⁴ When I finished reading it, I sent it to my sister and brother-in-law. Later received a message from Greg that it had changed his life. I said, "Why do you think I sent it?" I would highly recommend it to those of you who have not read it. Near the beginning of the book he writes,

"Grace comes free of charge to people who do not deserve it and I am one of those people. I think back to who I was - resentful, wound tight with anger, a single hardened link in a long chain of ungrace learned from family and church. Now I am trying in my own small way to pipe the tune of grace. I do so because I know, more surely than I know anything, that any pang of healing or forgiveness or goodness I have ever felt comes solely from the grace of God. I yearn for the church to become a nourishing culture of that grace."

The counterpoint experience of the prodigal son is the story of the elder brother. We can associate him with the man in the parable of the two debtors and that of the disgruntled laborers. Read story of the prodigal son in Luke 15:11-31, paying special attention to the section on the older brother (v. 25-31). How sad a figure is this older brother. He lived his whole life with a father overflowing with compassion and love, yet he turned his back on all of it, willing to stake his future on grudging labor and cold obedience. In the very presence of the father he was a lost man, lost in his father's house. His true condition is demonstrated in his response to the return and reception of his brother.

We read in Matthew 20:1-16 and 18:21-35 the two stories I referred to earlier of failure to mediate the grace of God. In the first a group of workers argue with the landowner because he chooses to pay workers who came late to the vineyard as much as the early workers are paid. In the second a man who has had a huge debt forgiven, refuses to forgive a small amount that is owed him. In each of these stories, the main characters are associated with the figure of God as debtor or servant. All had to some extent answered his call or connected their lives to him freely. Who were these people who had so much trouble accepting and transmitting the grace of God?

In each case they were recipients of the blessings and grace of God, but none of them appreciated the gift. They were totally absorbed in their own efforts and desires. Because they failed to recognize the goodness of grace in their own lives, they were not changed by its power. Focused on their own merits, they responded to others with unrelenting harshness, resentment, and an unforgiving spirit.

In the saddest sense possible these ungraceful examples can be seen to represent Christians, church going people who bear the name of Christ but are not bearers of his grace. I remember once some time ago being invited by a neighbor in Berrien Springs to participate in her Sabbath School Class. It was one of the Pioneer Memorial Church Sabbath School classes held in the Seminary building. The lesson related somehow to leprosy as described in the scripture and the my friend wanted to use the idea of leprosy as a metaphor for AIDS, which in the early years of the epidemic elicited so much fear and emotional response. I was appalled to hear her describe how some class members felt that the harshest treatment, bordering on downright neglect should be given to AIDS patients. Her hope was that through comparing these two conditions that result in social stigma and rejection and by looking at the compassion of Jesus for lepers, these church members would have a change of heart. It saddened me to hear Christians say that the victims of AIDS had gotten what they deserved. If God was in the business of handing out what we deserved right here and now, what kinds of plagues would we all receive? What do we think we deserve? Like the disgruntled workers in the parable, we do not understand that as Yancey says, God dispenses gifts not wages. If he treated us fairly as we deserve we would all end up in hell. If we don't understand the working of his grace in the world and model that grace in our lives, who will.

Yancey tells the story of a preacher who tinkered with the details of the Prodigal Son parable in a sermon to make a point. In the preacher's revision, the father puts the robe and ring on the older son and makes the feast in his honor. A woman in the back of the sanctuary yelled out, "That's the way it should have been written."

I don't agree. This is how I think it should have ended. The former prodigal son is changed by the loving acceptance of the father. The full realization of his own need and the father's gift breaks his heart and he is filled with love that flows out to everyone he meets. One day this broken hearted, transformed man is traveling on the Jericho road. Suddenly he sees a man on the wayside unconscious and covered with blood . . . but then you know the rest of this story. This is what God wants from us, not the knowledge of rules and doctrines in our heads or the busy working of our hands. He wants our broken hearts that he can mend in his own workshop so that they remain sensitive both to his grace and to the great cry of the world for his saving love.

Here is a modern parable about grace that some of you may have read in the Adventist Review in February.

In the Laundromat: You Don't Go There Unless You Have To⁵

Rain splashed down the foggy windows in dispiriting torrents. The asthmatic wheeze of the dryers was accompanied by the rhythmic ch-clunk, ch-clunk of the washers. Small children with dripping noses and grime-smeared faces careened around the grungy laundromat floor until they were caught short by hard-faced mothers who screamed at them to cut out their noise. Each time the door opened, billows of cigarette smoke rushed in on the clammy air. I sat silent and withdrawn; cold, damp, and depressed. . . .

A whoosh of stale air announced the laundromat's next patrons. Three teenage boys sporting oversized jeans, shaved heads, and tattoos burst in. The atmosphere tensed as parents pulled their children closer. The teenagers swaggered in, leering at the women and staring challengingly at the few men who were there.

Oh, God, why do I have to be here when they're here? I moaned to myself, feeling a mixture of panic and irritation. Haven't I seen this kind of kid enough?

Their loud talk and expletives became the center of attention. Two of the boys had ridden to the laundromat on BMX bikes and had garbage bags full of dirty clothes balanced on the handlebars. The third boy fished around in the pockets of his Army jacket for change to purchase a small box of Tide.

They packed all the dirty clothes into one washer. I caught amused glances all around me; these boys obviously had no idea what they were doing.

As they went outside to smoke, the amused looks became conversation. "Did you see that? There's no way those clothes will get clean," a gap-toothed woman with blue curlers in her thinning red hair chuckled to the woman next to me.

"Serves 'em right," the woman snarled back, filing her curved red fingernails. "Coming in here like they owned the place. Kids these days got no manners."

I transferred my loads to the dryer in silence.

The boys trooped back in, their clothes carrying the acrid, bitter smell of the cigarettes they'd been bumming. In search of a dryer, they circled the room, intimidating people into taking their clothes out when the machines stopped instead of adding additional quarters. I shrank back onto my corner, folding laundry, pretending that I didn't see them.

But I had to notice them when they were right next to me, shoving their things into the dryer. Gray water dripped from a shirt, and pieces of twigs and leaves fell onto the floor as they crammed in the clothes. Couldn't they see that the clothes weren't clean?

A voice from across the room caught my attention.

"Boys? Boys! No those aren't clean." I turned in surprise. A short Indian woman wrapped in a patterned tan sari waved her hand to the boys.

"Bring those back, the clothes," she said. "They're not clean."

The laundromat patrons stared at the diminutive woman with her foreign clothes and the red dot on her forehead. I glanced at the boys.

Reluctant eyes met. I suddenly realized that the boys knew all along that their clothes were still dirty.

"Ain't got enough money," the tallest boy in the camouflage jacket muttered, sticking out his chin, his eyes hooded.

"Bring them back," the woman insisted. "I show you how to fix them."

Tentatively the boys slouched back, carrying armloads of wet clothes. The Indian woman briskly instructed them how to separate loads. She touched their muddy garments. Their one huge load became three smaller ones.

She wiped out the washer and got them started again, measuring out her own soap and sliding in her own quarters when theirs ran out. The boys' hunched shoulders and aggressive stances became relaxed. Light shone in their faces where there had been no light before.

"You'll show us how to work the dryers, too?" I heard one of them exclaim in a boyish voice that cracked and skipped. "You're really nice. I've never met anyone as nice as you."

Suddenly the teenaged "hoods" turned into respectful young men who called everyone "ma'am" and "sir," offering to play with small children and carry clothes out to people's cars. Their pale young faces, which had looked so identical when they walked in took on character - dimples, crooked grins, bright eyes. The rain-damp, smoky-stale air in that laundromat turned into a place filled with the breath of God.

In an instant I was reminded of the psalmist's request to God, "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow" (Ps.51:7).

This parable works on two levels, first like the boys with their loads of dirty laundry we too may have swaggered into God's great laundromat, our arrogance and self-righteous pride barely concealing our pathetic efforts to make ourselves clean and whole. But Christ like the patient Indian woman sees beyond our unattractive veneer right into the very soul of our helplessness and need. Like her he brings us face to face the reality of our situation. He touches our muddy, sin-stained garments, sorts us out, and starts us over again, himself paying the price for our cleansing. And in so doing he transforms us into the people we really wanted to be all along, and we are inspired by his light.

Seen from a different perspective, we take the place of the woman. By the work of grace in our hearts we too are empowered to transcend the barriers of race, class, age, and appearance, and to see only friends in need where others perceive enemies. Through grace we become neighbors in the truest sense. We reach out with hearts and hands to bless and within the circle of his grace we bring the outcasts into community. Through grace we create the context within which they also may be transformed and enabled to extend the work in grace in ever widening circles. As we become mediators of his grace the most unpromising places are filled with the breath of God.

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."(II Cor. 12:9,10)

I would like to share with you a poem that sings of this weakness and this power.

The final thing then to be said of grace is that it is the manifestation of the power of God's love. Power for which our weakness creates both the context and the occasion. Through the door of grace we enter the upside down Kingdom of Christ, where by His power the last become first and the weak strong, where all the walls that divide us become as nothing, where sins of scarlet become as wool, and where through death we are brought into life.

"To keep me from becoming conceited there was given me a thorn in the flesh. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient. . . ."

_______________

¹All scriptural texts are from the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible.

²Hamilton, David and Phil McHugh. "Were It Not for Grace." Dayspring Music, 1997.

³Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. New York: Collier Books, 1963.

⁴Yancey, Phillip. What's So Amazing About Grace? Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing, 1997.

⁵Davis, Tanita S. "In the Laundromat: You Don't Go There Unless You Have To," Adventist Review, February 25, 1999.

⁶Woodruff, Jennifer L. "With the Drawing of this Love and the Voice of This Calling," Weavings, vol. XVI, no. 3, May/June, 1999.