TROUBLING GRACE

Sermon preached at Sage Granada Park United Methodist Church, August 2, 2020. Scripture reference - Romans 9:1-5 and Matthew 14::13-21

Troubling Grace and John Lewis[1]

• Wade in the water; the Lord’s gonna trouble the water.Wade in the water; wade in the water, children.

This song has its roots in the Underground Railroad, the movement of Harriet Tubman and others to free slaves from the south and send them north. The words flow from the biblical stories of Israel’s fleeing slavery through the Red and crossing the Jordan into the promised land; and also the gospel story that we heard last week when Ratheesh was preaching, about the man waiting for the angel to trouble the water. If he could just get up and touch that water, he could be healed.   

Recently I talked about grace as something that goes before us and attracts us to God, to salvation and a better life – that’s prevenient grace, and sometimes it works through trouble.

This week I want to talk especially about troubling grace, because in order to have a better life, sometimes the status quo needs to be shaken a little.  And I can’t talk about trouble without first joining the eulogies for the late congressman John R Lewis who passed away July 17.  The child of Alabama share croppers, he was so drawn to the power of the biblical stories that he was ordained a Baptist preacher.  Inspired by another Baptist preacher, MLK, Jr., Lewis joined the Freedom Rides, took on leadership of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and was the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, right before MLK, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech.  Like King, Lewis’ biblical faith was also seasoned by Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings on satyagraha or truth force.  I will take up this connection another time. 

John Lewis became known for troubling the water because of his passion for the civil rights of African Americans and other minorities.  “Sometimes you have to find a way to get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Let me be clear.  Frankly, I do not like trouble. I don’t go around looking for conflict.  But I know that trouble can be a motivator for change.  Trouble can force us to see that

• before we make things right we need to stop the wrong,
• and before we get healed we need to face the disease,
• and before we can be saved, we need to repent.

And that, my friends, is the work of divine grace.  Repentance is a work of gra grace from the first time we recognize our need for God and throughout life. That grace draws us to new moments of awakening, repentance and  ce from the first time we recognize our need for God and throughout life. That grace draws us to new moments of awakening, repentance and transformation.   

We have seen the troubling images of the civil rights movements, including the Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965.  John Lewis was beaten by riot police when he led peaceful marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.  Like the troubling stories of saints of old – Joseph in Pharaoh’s prison, Jeremiah beaten and thrown in the well, Christians thrown to the lions, Jesus on the cross – I hope these troubling images have caused you to stop and wonder.  Hey, is this right?  Do you or I need to change some behavior?  Do we need to repent?

Paul’s passion for his people

The great Christian missionary Paul taught us the language of faith and divine grace.  “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace” (Romans 5:1-2).  Yet, today’s epistle reading offers a glimpse of a very troubled apostle.  “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh.” 

What’s going on here?  Why so troubled?  Where’s the peace of Christ?  Read Romans 9-11 to get the whole picture, but basically he was hoping for the repentance and full salvation of his fellow Jews. “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1).  Exactly how that salvation will happen remains to this day a theological and political hot potato.  Paul identified continued to identify himself as a Jew and a Christian, but he was ready to abandon any benefit of his own for their sake.  Divine grace made him willing to forego his own eternal salvation, for the sake of his fellow Jews. [2]    So, the deplorable history of Christian anti-Semitism is also really anti-Paul.

While he promoted God’s inclusive, unmerited grace for all who believed, Paul still had his eyes on Jerusalem, as his Jewish home.  He still called on the Jewish Synagogues solicited resources from Jew and Greek to send back for the needs in Jerusalem. He did not want the new Gentile converts to think that the Jews were irrelevant. Far from it. Part of the strength of the church is recognize whose shoulders you’re standing on.   

 Prevenient Grace leading to repentance

I have been talking about Wesley’s understanding of grace.  Retired Bishop Kenneth L. Carder offers a good summary of prevenient grace: It is “all that is wrought in the soul by what is frequently termed ‘natural conscience,' ... all the ‘drawings' of ‘the Father,' the desires after God, ... that ‘light' wherewith the Son of God ‘enlightens everyone that comes into the world,' showing every one ‘to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with his God. While taking the seriousness of human sin and brokenness seriously, Bp Carder says, Wesley saw prevenient grace maintaining a glimmer of the divine image in each person.[3] 

Wesley recognized the progressive work of divine grace, progressive in that, as we respond to the drawings of divine grace, the work of grace continues.  If we fail to respond, it becomes weaker. As such, grace is essentially relational and participatory.   Prevenient grace begins first, attracting us toward the beauty of God’s presence; then, awakening in us the need for repentance; and finally, empowering us to make right choices. 

How does our Wesley understanding of grace make a difference?

It has often been said that we’re in a time of multiple pandemics.  Certainly the Covid-19 pandemic continues to claim thousands of lives, and wreck havoc on our economies. There’s also the pandemic of unresolved racism, not just personal biases, but more significantly institutional racism.  The other pandemic is the growing distrust of the old institutions – government, church, media.   How we need divine grace, prevenient grace that is drawing each persons to the point of repentance and change. Grace is illuminative. As we respond to God, we begin to recognize each person is a soul for whom Christ died, a soul in whom the gracious Spirit of God is also working.  So to harm or insult that person, regardless of color, ethnicity, gender, political position is to sin against God and the Spirit working in them.

I grew up in a fairly white community. I wasn’t interested in the civil rights movement.  Like many white Christians I saw it as social gospel, detracting from the real gospel.  But as my circle widened, including Asians and Hispanic people, and native American, and Black people, I began to see my own white privilege, and I have come to recognize the many wrongs done in our society based on such privilege.  Praise God! Because this is God’s grace.  But this grace does not lead merely to regret, but to the fruit of repentance, to seek opportunities for dialogue and reconciliation.  And the good news, if you also are on this journey is that Jesus is with us.

In today’ gospel reading, Jesus was with his disciples when they were tired. He called them away to a time restoration.  When the crowds came, he helped them to rely on divine grace to meet those overwhelming needs, to feed the crowds with compassion.  We have a lot of overwhelming needs around us, in our families, on the streets, in the hospitals, in the government. Don’t try to fix it on your own.  Let divine grace do its work.     

Are you troubled today?  In Discipleship Huddle language, that may be your Kairos moment.  Maybe God is trying to get your attention to stop, reflect, repent and seek a new course.  What needs to change in our world, in our society, in our church, in our own lives? What do you need to repent of in order to be healed? 

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[1] https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/july/died-john-lewis-baptist-minister-civil-rights-leader.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_(civil_rights_leader)

[2] Now that almost sounds like the Buddhist idea of the Bodhisattva, where the saint who is on the verge of salvation,sets it to help others share in the same blessing.  See John P. Keenan, The Emptied Christ of Philippians: Mahāyāna Meditations (2015) https://books.google.com/books?id=lvZOCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=st+paul+the+apostle+bodhisattva&source=bl&ots=8OzagziSny&sig=ACfU3U2YkHzxdogvfs5giEucruRhW-rUAg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjOj9ankfrqAhUDSq0KHVgXDos4ChDoATADegQIBhAB#v=onepage&q=bodhisattva&f=false

[3] Kenneth L Carder,  “A Wesleyan Understanding of Grace,” Discipleship Resources.   https://www.resourceumc.org/en/content/a-wesleyan-understanding-of-grace