“Grace to the Heart”
“Grace to the Heart”
Exodus 14:19-31 Romans 14:1-12 Matthew 18:21-35
Year A, Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 14, 2014
Pastor Andy Kennaly, Sandpoint, Idaho
"Yevtushenko, a great Russian poet, writes in his autobiography of a moment in 1944 when 20,000 German war prisoners were marched through the streets of Moscow, wearing blood-stained bandages, hobbling on crutches, leaning on comrades. [You can imagine how despised these prisoners of war were in Russia because millions of Russians had been killed through German aggression.] At one point an elderly woman, herself ill-clad, pushed through a police line, went up to the column of ragged German soldiers, and pushed a crust of bread into the pocket of a soldier so exhausted that he was tottering. Suddenly from all sides women were running to these enemy soldiers, pushing bread, cigarettes, whatever they had into their hands. It was reminder that human compassion has sources that transcend powerful hatreds. It suggests that the roots of reconciliation are not alien feelings to the human spirit, but a residue of our origin in the timeless being of the Creator, the Eternal One." (Pulpit Resource for August 18, 2002).
Although the roots of reconciliation are not alien feelings to the human spirit, the world really forgets this. It is easy to get caught by surprise in the noise of materialism, unhealthy rationalism, and violence. Just the other day I was watching a Methodist Church in Minneapolis online, a YouTube channel that features that congregation’s Taizé worship service, held monthly.
Because I don’t pay extra for a subscription to YouTube, when I was watching the candlelit sanctuary scene and listening to the song leaders chanting the repetitive refrains inviting Christ’s holiness to “come and fill our hearts with your peace,” an abrupt disruption occurred. YouTube throws in advertisements, and the screen now featured a balding, middle-aged, white guy thrusting a book back and forth telling me that there are several steps to confront your enemy, step number one is to throw dirt in their face. Before I could scramble to move the computer curser to the “skip ad” icon, the flash of scene changed to show him taking a handful of dirt and throwing it into the eyes of another man standing in front of him. This act of violence in a conflict situation had to endure a few more seconds before YouTube allowed the skip. First it went back to the scene of him waving his book to appear as an expert on self-defense. Three, two, one, Skip Ad, one click, and I was back in a peaceful sanctuary to claim God’s life and salvation in ways the violent cultures and fearful peoples of the world mock. A few deep breaths. What a difference as we choose our focus.
Today's texts spotlight the power of God and the transformation God's grace and forgiveness bring. We see that grace is a gift from God and if truly received, is a matter of the heart that affects who we are and who we become.
Someone once asked me, "What is grace?" Grace in the human sense can mean charming or kind, like someone has a graceful way about them. It could even be a prayer you say before a meal, very often a memorized one that gets said sometimes mechanically, like “God is great, God is good, let us thank God for our food.” Or, “Bless us, O Lord, in these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ, our Lord, Amen.” Sometimes the Amen is even substituted, by “dig in” as the formality of grace concludes.
In a biblical sense, Grace is both an action and a description referring to God with divine qualities. One could say, for example, that God's kindness knows no end, and that God's mercy is from everlasting to everlasting. Yet grace is more than mercy, and more than kindness, both of which involve judgment and pardon. God is Grace in the truest form. Grace is Reality, Ultimate Reality, blessing us with God's Presence, acting in unwarranted compassion, undeserved forgiveness, and unconditional love. When God's grace is received it brings transformation and new life that was impossible without it. Grace is a gift from God that restores us to that original image of God we were created to be.
Grace reminds us that Christian faith is not just a set of beliefs we intellectually ascribe to, not certain prayers that we memorize, nor specific doctrines or dogmas that demand adherence, but an experience of the mind, heart, and soul that celebrate our union with God through Christ, Jesus.
In the story of Moses and the people Israel crossing the Reed Sea, or Red Sea, the people were helpless in the face of Pharaoh's army. But God's action makes a way for them to journey on, through the waters as they part. Historians and theologians debate endlessly over the mechanics of how this worked, whether it was Moses raising his staff and the waters dramatically parting like the movies tend to show, or a natural event like the annual winds that literally blow the water away from a certain region of the sea, exposing the bottom for a couple days before the waters return. Either way, God's providence was involved, and the people were saved. Moses is simply invited to partner with God and be part of God's saving work, and this affects the people. They "feared the LORD and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant." Sounds great!
A few years ago I went to a continuing education weekend which featured a seminary professor who taught courses on the Hebrew Scriptures, which many Christians incorrectly call the Old Testament. It was a very stimulating presentation as she reminded us of the scholarly vein of the church, the academic wing of faith that recognizes facts and is not threatened by them. Like Moses, for example, not being an actual, historic person, but a literary character of the Hebrew Scriptures. That would mean that stories involving Moses are not written as fact like our mental concepts like to interpret. In the time they were written, the mental structure hadn’t emerged. Mythical structure, with rhythms of polarity, oceanic currents coming, going, and returning in circulation as truths are taught, experienced, and relived. That God can be relied on even in difficult times, that God can make a way where there seems to be no way, these are lessons that any number of stories, including parting the Red Sea, can express. Of course, most people and the church at large don’t tend to emphasize what scholars find fascinating and wondrous about Christianity. Pastors who venture to burst bubbles of felt-board Jesus and Moses stories, do this at their own risk.
What is really important, anyway? What is the goal of life? What was so important for the Hebrew people that stories show the intensity of struggle and the faithfulness of God? Why would Jesus tell this story about forgiving, not seven times, which was a lot, but seven times seventy times? What was it that this slave of the generous lord didn't catch on to as he failed to extend generosity towards his fellow servant? What was it that we would've hoped he learned?
Grace. God's gift of God's self. We need to pay attention to the essence of grace, and less to the package, to our own constructs of what we think grace should look like or be communicated through in story. Grace is as readily present as each breath. Maybe this is why contemplative prayer focuses on the experience of breathing, and when our bodies get tense with anger and aggression, we need to stop and catch our breath for we find its easy to get swept up from God's intentions, wrapped into our own egotistical, prideful, hateful desires that so quickly engulf us. When we’re engulfed, we are not free to live in generosity and grace.
God's grace has a way of reaching out and in, deep into our life in ways that go beyond what we thought ourselves capable of or in need of, and this is based on God's graciousness and God's presence. Love and forgiveness and grace transcend evil and sin because through Jesus the Christ we don't owe God anything, and in fact we have been freed from ourselves. Jesus sends us out, letting us go with forgiveness, new life, and the enormous gift of God's grace. This comes with an invitation, not an obligation, to share that grace with the world, to allow God's gifts to flow through us to bless others as we share grace from the heart. May God bless us as we receive, as we live, as Christ dwells within our hearts. May God be glorified now and forever. Amen.