May 6, 2018, Sermon on Grace

This weekend in worship, I preached two separate sermons. First, at the Saturday night service, I introduced the Faith5 to the congregation as it was the last night of Sunday School. You can read that message here.

On Sunday morning, I preached this more traditional sermon. The lectionary text for this sixth Sunday in Easter are 1 John 5:1-6 and John 15:9-17. Here’s the sermon:

Before we get to today’s readings, I want to recap where we’ve been the last couple weeks.

Two weeks ago, we heard Jesus call himself the good shepherd, saying the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

I talked about love involving sacrifice, laying your life down for another. Every act of love you do is a sacrifice, because it involves giving up something else you could be doing. As a follower of Jesus, you are called to engage in loving others, even when that involves a sacrifice.

Last week, we heard about the Ethiopian eunuch learning about Jesus and being baptized. He’d been excluded and treated differently, yet he was welcomed into the church, into God’s family despite his physical condition.

In Christ, all are welcome. All of us are called to repent and believe in Jesus, called to accept the truth that God loves you. God forgives you. You belong to Jesus.

We’ve talked about what love is, and we’ve talked about belonging to Christ. As you might have noticed, the entire letter of first John is really a single sermon making this point: Jesus loves you so you should love others.

We’ve been reading it ever since Easter, and he really keeps making this same point week after week. So, today’s readings continue on a similar theme. But today, we’re talking about one of the hardest theological concepts in the Bible. It’s right towards the bottom of the Gospel reading from John 15. Jesus says, “You did not choose me but I chose you.”

It sounds pretty simple, right? Jesus choosing us fits with the idea that God loves us, that Jesus has sacrificed himself for us. But this might be the single hardest thing to believe in the Bible, because it doesn’t just say Jesus chooses us; it also says we don’t choose Jesus.

Now, on the one hand, that makes complete sense. When I’m faced with moments in life where I can choose to love God and serve my neighbor and do the right thing, or where I can choose to do something in my own interest that’s not the right thing, I don’t always choose correctly.

Just as a tiny example, when I was walking down to get the mail the other day, I saw a piece of trash on the ground by the railroad tracks, and I picked it up to throw away. Good for me, right? Doing the right thing, following the first command God gave humanity to be good stewards of creation. But then, between the railroad tracks and the garbage can downtown, there was another piece of garbage, and I walked right past it. Sometimes I do the right thing, the good deed, but quite often I don’t. I hope I do more often than not, but how do you even measure that?




And that’s just one little example of literally picking up garbage, let alone the choices I make about how often I drive or how high I turn up the thermostat. Just in that narrow category of caring for creation, I can’t always choose the right thing, let alone in faith. Most of the time, I don’t even think to ask what Jesus would want me to do, let alone do it!

I want to follow Jesus. I want to believe in God; I want to keep Jesus in first place in my life, at least when I’m thinking about it. At least sometimes.

I want to choose Jesus, and sometimes I do, but I could keep going for quite a while with examples of when I don’t choose Jesus. I’m confident you could too. That’s why we begin our worship with confession, because we always have something to confess.

You did not choose me, but I chose you. That’s really good news, isn’t it?

Even when you don’t choose Jesus, even when you forget things to confess, even in all those times when you don’t even notice that you had a choice and chose the wrong thing, Jesus still chooses you.

There’s an important theological term for this idea. It’s called grace. Hopefully that’s a familiar term. We throw around this word “grace” a lot, especially as Lutherans. We sing about amazing grace, we talk about being saved by grace, we even say grace before a meal.

Maybe you don’t think of grace as the hardest thing to believe in the Bible. Maybe it doesn’t seem like a controversial theological concept. How many of you learned the song, “Jesus Loves Me” as a child? I know Jesus loves me because the Bible tells me so. Even when we are weak, He is strong. Paul says it’s when we are weakest that God’s strength is most obvious.

Grace is God choosing us. It’s a radical concept, because we really, really want to be involved. We want to influence God’s choice. Have you ever heard an altar call inviting you to choose Christ? Or maybe a tract telling you to find Jesus? All I can think of whenever I see something about finding Jesus is that I didn’t know he was missing.

I might be missing. You or I might wander away from God, but God never runs away from us.
My favorite definition of grace is an acronym: God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. All of the riches of eternal life in heaven with God are promised to us as a free gift, because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross out of love. Jesus has paid the cost of our sins, restoring the relationship with God that was broken by our sin.

As Jesus says in this reading, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” On the cross, Jesus died for you, and for me, laying down his life for us. God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. G R A C E.

Grace is controversial because we want control. At least, we think we do. Human nature is to try to be God, to try to be responsible for our own salvation, to think we can handle eating the forbidden fruit.

But grace says that salvation is beyond our reach, no matter how good we are. We’re never good enough to climb up the ladder to God. And that’s ok, because God always comes down to us. That’s grace. God chooses you.




Did you listen to the words we sang in our opening hymn this morning? I have to say, I have a love/hate relationship with Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Sometimes people complain that the words of hymns aren’t relevant anymore, or we should sing simpler songs so people understand what they’re singing. If you’re going to make that argument, this is a great song for it.

Verse 2: “Here I raise my Ebenezer.” When was the last time you raised an Ebenezer? Last night I offered the first piñata swing to anyone who could tell me what that means. Anyone here know?

It comes from 1 Samuel 7:12. The Israelites were in trouble, and God rescued them from their Philistine enemies, and as a monument to God’s saving them, Samuel set up a stone as a monument, saying “Thus far the Lord has helped us.”

The word “Ebenezer” means “stone of help.” So, raising an Ebenezer means setting up a monument of what God has done for you, to testify to God’s grace for you. It’s a powerful image, but you have to know what it means.

I love the rest of this song, though. Thinking about the idea of grace, the promise that God chooses us, listen to the words again. Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God. We wandered off from God, but Jesus, like a good shepherd, seeks us out and brings us back.

He, to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood.
Oh, to grace, how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be.

When you understand grace, you realize you owe everything to God. There is nothing good we can do apart from God.

Let that grace now like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee.

God, grab ahold of me and chain me up so I quit wandering off and abandoning you.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love.
Here’s my heart, oh, take and seal it; seal it for thy courts above.

God, bring me back when I wander away. Remind me who I am when I forget I’m your beloved child.

You can choose what you’re going to do in response to God’s love. You can choose how you’re going to use your time. You can choose what you’re going to do with your money, whether you’re going to hoard it or use it all on yourself, or whether you’re going to follow God’s instructions and use your blessings to bless others.

You can choose whether you want to love others in a sacrificial way. You can choose whether or not you’re going to show up to worship or even if you’re going to call yourself a Christian.

But you cannot choose whether or not God loves you. Even if you choose to follow Jesus, you’re going to fail. You’re going to forget.

If you’re human, you’re prone to wandering off, away from God’s fold. You can’t choose whether or not Jesus died for you. You cannot choose if God’s grace is for you, because God has chosen you.

That’s grace. Thanks be to God.
Amen