Grace Revisited

view from organ console, FPCE, photo by jch

Sermon Series “Through the Bible,” № 72, Ephesians 2:1-10

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God ...  –Ephesians 2:8

Today, our journey through the Bible arrives at Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. I call it “Paul’s letter,” but not everyone does. You can read in the brief introduction I placed in the bulletin how the true authorship of Ephesians has been a subject of debate. Many contemporary scholars have argued that Ephesians was written by a disciple of Paul as an elegant preface or companion to his undisputed letters.

Regardless of the author, the content of the letter is believed to reflect Paul’s experience of Jesus, and his theological understanding that grew out of it. The text I read for you today contains the central message. In our Protestant Reformed branch of the Church, that central message has been analyzed, interpreted, taught, and preached, at least as much as any other portion of the letter.

At its heart, that central message is about God’s grace, a concept and experiential reality we Christians talk about frequently, and which we revisit today.

I went through my files looking for a way to talk about grace as an experiential reality, and came across a clipping that describes it as well as any I could find.

The article talks about the experience of people, several years ago, on a commercial airliner who came in for a seemingly routine landing. Passengers on Northwest Flight 1152 from St. Paul expected to get off at Rapid City Regional Airport. But when the plane came to a stop, they were told to close their window shades and not look out. They could feel the rumble of vehicles surrounding the plane. Finally, the loudspeaker came on, and the pilot said, “We have landed at an Air Force base a few miles from Rapid City airport, and now we are going to figure out how … to get from here to there.” When you think you’ve had a bad day, when you feel that you’ve been publicly embarrassed, remember the pilot of this plane. That was only the beginning of his bad day.

Figuring out how to get from one place to another took several hours. The passengers were examined and the crew interrogated. The story emerged that the pilot descended through clouds, made visual contact, and focused on the first runway he saw.

The plane’s crew was relieved of duty, and replaced with a new crew for the short hop to the correct airport. Everyone somberly pondered what might have happened if those in charge of airbase defense had not resisted the urge to pull a trigger. In this new age of heightened air traffic security, forgiveness for such a mistake felt like a gift of grace.[1]

Most of us can relate to that feeling. At one time or another, we have been flying through life, high on a belief in the importance of our accomplishments or the rightness of our decisions. One day, we land to look around at who is admiring us. Instead, we come to the humbling realization that while flying around with our heads in the clouds, we have done something wrong that has offended others, perhaps even God. Then, if we were very lucky, we were surprised by the good news that we were going to get another chance.

It seems to me that the experience of grace is like that.  It’s knowing that you should have been shot down once and for all, but weren’t. It’s learning that you will fly again, if you’re wise enough to realize that successful flights depend on a following guidance that comes from outside your own limited point of view.

The experience of the passengers on the misguided flight is one way of appreciating not just the text, but also the person who was writing the text. Once, Paul been so passionate in his belief that the Christians were wrong that he looked on approvingly as Stephen was stoned. Later, he realized how poorly he had behaved, how in any court of divine justice, he was condemned. When Paul speaks about grace, he is coming at it from personal experience.

I’ve told you before how Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the great theologians of the 20th century, emphasized that the word “grace” has a double meaning in the New Testament.  On the one hand, it represents the mercy and forgiveness of God; on the other hand, it represents the power of God in humans.[2] Our text from Ephesians – originally part of a first century baptismal liturgy – contains reminders of this duality. If verse eight is about the first part – the mercy and forgiveness of God – then verse ten is about the second part – the power of God in disciples of Christ. The ones who have received grace are called to give grace to others.

Mark Yaconelli is a teacher and author who, years ago, told a story in the Christian Century magazine. He was reflecting on his experience at a U2 concert held in Toronto in 1983. The lead singer of U2 is Paul David Hewson, better known Bono. Something happened that night that helped Yaconelli to recognize God’s grace at work in Bono, and the way Bono chose to extend that grace to others.

At this particular concert, chaos was a constant threat.  When the band was introduced, people began climbing over seats, pressing toward the stage. By the second number, people were jumping onto the stage, provoking an anxious response from members of the security team, who began strong-arming people back to their seats. Bono stopped the music, expressed gratitude for the effort people made to attend, and asked that everyone remain calm so that no one would be injured or forced to leave. It took only a few more songs for the stoned and star-struck to begin pushing their way forward again.             

The crowd was so completely out of control that the band could have simply walked off the stage, and let the security team – and perhaps the police – try to quell the riot by force. Instead, Bono gave some quick-thinking instructions for the other band members to leave the stage, and to cut the lights, except for a single spotlight on Bono.  There was fighting, swearing, and confusion in the darkness all around. And out of the light, Bono began to sing, very quietly at first:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

As he sang on, the fighting stopped. The cursing faded. The crowd grew quiet. Chaos was replaced by calm.

We experience grace at work in at least two ways.  Sometimes grace is a personal experience of God’s mercy and forgiveness.  And sometimes grace is the power that enables us to extend Christ’s healing and peace beyond ourselves. Blessed is the one who receives the gift of grace, and how beautiful is the one who shares it.

NOTES

[1] “Northwest flight lands at air base,” The Associated Press, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 21 June 2004, A4.

[2] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, II.IV.

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