“Living in the world of God’s grace”

A sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Christine Jerrett at Central United Church, Sarnia on September 19, 2010.

Scriptures:     

Psalm 14; Luke 16: 1-13
       
J.R.R. Tolkien was one of the last century’s greatest writers of epic fantasy tales. He is probably best known for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Critics often accused him of writing escapist literature. They said that he wrote magnificent, fantastic stories but those stories shifted his readers’ attention away from the issues of the real world. He replied, “Everything depends on that from which one is escaping. The flight of a deserter is viewed very differently from the escape of a prisoner.” He asked, “Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home?”  (Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, p. 218)

The poet, T.S. Eliot made a similar point: “In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away.”  (The Family Reunion).  As followers of Jesus, we shall often find ourselves heading in the opposite direction from many people around us. The gospels are convinced that, when we follow Jesus, we are heading toward the real world. We are heading toward the way the world really is even though the values and priorities of the Bible’s ‘real world’ are radically different from the values and priorities of the world which often shapes our perceptions.

For instance, how would you define success? What does it look like? More importantly, how do you get there? Some of it is luck, of course. You were born at the right time, into the right family. Society provided you with certain opportunities. Nevertheless, from a very young age, we are told that success comes to those who hustle. Those who dream big and work hard and make the right connections and play the system will be able to be whatever they want to be. They demand their rights. They do whatever it takes to achieve their goals, even if ‘whatever it takes’ includes trampling over other people. There is, after all, only so much room at the top.

Jesus, on the other hand, invites us to live in a topsy-turvy world that turns our priorities upside-down. “The first shall be last and the last shall be first,” he warned. This is a world that is shaped by the grace and mercy of God. God’s grace is a gift. You don’t earn it. You cannot earn it, no matter how hard you hustle. God gives it. The only thing you can do is receive it. You can live with open hands and open hearts and lean into God’s grace with all the trust that you can muster.

The parable that is often called the ‘shrewd manager’ is the last of a set of four parables that Jesus tells to the Pharisees and scribes. The Pharisees and scribes had been complaining that Jesus spent too much time with people who had not succeeded in living according to their standards of how good, decent, religious people should behave. In response Jesus told two parables about a sheep who got lost and about a lost coin. The shepherd left ninety-nine other sheep in the wilderness in order to find the lost one. A woman tore her house apart looking for the lost coin. In both parables, a great celebration is held when the lost is found. In those parables we learn again that God loves each and every one of us as if there were only one of us. No matter how lost we think we are, God searches and finds us and brings us home.

Immediately after those two parables, Jesus told a story of a father with two sons, each lost in his own way. Then, he followed that up with the parable of the shrewd manager. This managers may have enjoyed some level of success as the world defines it, but, suddenly, everything shifted. He was accused of cheating his employer and was told he was going to lose his job.

Eugene Peterson (Tell it Slant, p. 99-108) suggests that the surprise in this story is that the manager is fired but not punished. He did not get what he deserved. He experienced mercy and grace. His next move was to extend that mercy and grace to others. He went to people who owed his employer money. “You owe 100? Make it 50 and we’ll call it even.” “You owe 100? Make it 80 and the rest is forgotten.” Then, said Jesus, the master commended the manager because he acted ‘shrewdly’.

The word ‘shrewd’ is related to the Hebrew word ‘wise’. To be wise in the scriptures is what you become as you spend your life alert to the ways of God. Wisdom consists in developing the right responses to God and to your neighbour. You are wise when you live into the grace of God. (Eugene Peterson, Where Your Treasure Is, p. 124-125)

The opposite of a wise person is the fool the fool does not know what is really going on in the world. He or she does not recognize how the world really works. In Psalm 14, “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God’.”

If there is no God, then it really is all up to you and me to hustle, to get ahead, and to make sure everything works out the way we want it to. The problem for fools, though, is that they’re heading in the wrong direction. They’re heading into a world of illusions, mirages and false promises.

When we are fools, we receive warnings that we are heading down the wrong path, but we do not listen. Jack Higgins is the author of a number of best-selling novels. The Eagle has Landed is one of his best known books. He has once asked, “What do you know now that you would have liked to have known when you were a boy?” He replied, “That when you get to the top, there’s nothing there.”  After the tennis star Boris Becker tried to take his own life, he reflected, “I had won Wimbledon twice, once as the youngest player. I was rich. I had all the material possession I needed; money, cars, women, everything, and yet, I was so unhappy. I had no inner peace.” (Intellecturals Don't Need God and Other Modern Myths, A. McGrath, p. 15)

Do you know how your life is measured in the world shaped by God’s grace? In the world that is real and eternal and not an illusion, your life is not measured by how much you have succeeded. Your life is measured by how much God loves you and what God is able to make of your life. It is not easy to remember that, not when there are so many other voices telling you how you do not measure up: you have to reach higher, do better, get more in order to make your life count, they tell you. When we are surrounded by so much gracelessness, we need to take small steps in learning to live into the world of God’s grace. We learn to be faithful in little things so that we become the kind of people who are faithful in much.

Author and speaker Brennan Manning suggests that we take as the slogan for our lives, “I am the one who Jesus loves”. The phrase comes from the gospel of John. John is identified there as ‘the one Jesus loved’. Says Manning, if John were asked, “What is your primary identify in life?”, he would not reply, “I am a disciple,” or “I am one of the apostles,” or “I am the one who wrote one of the four gospels.” He would not give any of the ways by which the world might say, “You’ve made it. You’re important.” John would say, “I am the one Jesus loves”.

Imagine the difference it would make if you lived into the identity. When your boss yelled at you: “I am the one Jesus loves”. When your children are crying and whining and you have picked up the toys for the one hundredth time and the house still looks a mess: “I am the one Jesus loves”.  When you are sitting in the doctor’s office waiting for news you dread: “I am the one Jesus loves”. When you have been deeply hurt by someone you trusted such that you begin to doubt yourself and all you have tried to do: “I am the one Jesus loves”.

This will not make the hard challenges disappear, but you will move within them with growing confidence that even they are in God’s hands. God can take even this experience and redeem it. God will weave it into God’s good and holy purposes and you shall find life in it. The resurrection of Jesus promises us that all our conflicts and defeats and failures are no longer decisive. God is at work, wiping out the marks against us; offering us new possibilities that we had not imagined.

We live into that primary identity for ourselves. Then, that deep grounding in God’s redeeming love frees us to go out and help others hear the good news as well: “You are the one Jesus loves.”  Many churches these days are anxiously looking for whatever it is they must do in order to survive, maybe even thrive. What programmes do they have to offer? What needs to they need to meet? What technology do they need to buy? Those are the wrong questions. They will lead us away from the real world -- the world ruled by God’s grace. We are the ones Jesus loves. It is our privilege and our blessing to be the kind of community whose passion it is to help others hear that as well. Hearing it, we and they may believe it. Believing it, we may create together a space where grace and jove and joy shape all we do to the glory of God.