Grace

Jeremiah 1: 4-9
Romans 5: 6-11
Matthew 18: 1-6; 19: 13-15

Grace

During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world debated what, if any, belief was unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating various possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of gods appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of return from death.

The debate went on for some time until C. S. Lewis wandered into the room. "What is the rumpus all about?", he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity’s unique contribution among world religions. Lewis responded, "Oh, that is easy. It is grace." It is all about grace.

A story is told about Fiorello LaGuardia, who was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of World War II. He was a colorful character who used to ride the New Your City fire trucks, raid speakeasies with the police department, take entire orphanages to baseball games, and whenever the New York newspapers were on strike, he would go on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids. One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court in an area that served the poorest ward in the city. LaGuardia had dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread.

She told LaGuardia that her daughter’s husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. The shopkeeper told the mayor that it was a real bad neighborhood. She had to be punished to teach others around there a lesson.

LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said,”I have got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions. Ten dollars or ten days in jail.” But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his hat saying, “Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.”

A total of $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren. Fifty cents of that amount was contributed by the red-faced grocery store owner.

Did the elderly lady in the story get what she deserved? Clearly the answer is, of course not. She had stolen a loaf of bread. Yes, she may have had a reason, but stealing is stealing and regardless of the reason, punishment would seem to be the order of the day. To us, seeing it as the grocery man saw it, it isn’t fair.

What we see in the story is called grace. Grace is when someone in superior power shows kindness or mercy to someone in a lesser position. Mayor LaGuardia, with all his power, showed mercy and rather than demanding punishment of the woman herself, paid the fine and then further helped her cause by the collection of the fifty-cent fines and giving the money to her. It was more than she deserved. It was grace. It is all about grace.

Children are very accepting and trusting. Unless they have been taught differently, or have been hurt or abused, children accept others openly and non-judgmentally. The disciples wanted to know who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. It was a judgmental question. It was a question of who is better than others. It is the kind of thinking we are too often guilty of. Jesus’ reply was not just about accepting children, it was to tell us that unless we are childlike, considering ourselves no better than anyone else in God’s sight, we will find ourselves in deep trouble. Today and everyday God wants a relationship with everyone, including those we too often choose to avoid, or judge to be somehow inferior to us.

Jesus put his finger on this when he urged the adults of his day to have a simple, childlike faith. In fact, he made it clear that unless we become as little children, with the transparency of trust that marks the life of a child, we cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven. We cannot understand the Gospel. This is the Good News of God's gift to us. His grace is the story of his unmerited favor. The Gospel is as simple as that—it is childishly simple.. God is love, and we are to love others as he loves us.

Every person is a child of God. Every person has worth in God’s eyes, and God wants each and every person in his kingdom. Every person has a God given purpose. We are called to try our best to help people see God’s love so they can accept God’s grace and fulfill God’s purpose. We are not to judge, and we are not to hinder anyone from coming into God’s presence because we are judgmental. Grace is received, not deserved.

For all of us who are people of faith, we know that we do not deserve God’s grace. Nothing that we can do will put us in a position of deserving God’s grace. All we can do is receive the gift that God offers to us freely. God loves us and mercifully gives us more than we deserve. Grace is received, not deserved.

God’s grace is about mercy, not fairness. God’s grace is there for the last, the lost, the least, including us. God’s grace is given to those who accept it with childlike faith. “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” That is what Grace is all about.