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Larry R. Hayward
March 21, 2004
Fourth Sunday in Lent

The Several Faces of Grace
II Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 21:1-3, 11b-32

Many years ago I heard Fred Craddock, one of my longtime teachers, draw a distinction between different types of grace found in the Bible, between several faces of grace.

One face, he said, is grace extended to me. The grace of God is given to me; God welcomes me home when I am lost.

The hymn nearly every Christian knows sets this grace to music:

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.[1]

This is the grace in which we recognize — sometimes after the fact —

That we have gotten ourselves in trouble
That we have gone down a wrong path
That we are in something way over our head
That the waters in which we swim are much too deep
That we have, in other words, become lost

And that it is only by the hand of God that we have been saved.

"Wretched man that I am!" Paul writes. "Who shall deliver me from this bondage to sin and death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"[2] Christ shall deliver us from our bondage to sin and death!

The grace of God extended to me is the grace of the prodigal son, the Jewish teenager who leaves home, squanders his prematurely-gifted inheritance on something called "loose living," is forced to take the only job available to him — feeding pigs, finds himself so hungry he eyes the food he feeds to pigs, then, only then, picks himself up and returns home, and is received into the open arms of his waiting father who proceeds to throw the most lavish party the village has seen in years.[3]

I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

The grace of God extended to me.

II.

A second face of grace is grace we extend to someone else. This is the grace of the father in the parable.

The father's face turns white as his son demands his inheritance early.

The father goes to the place where he stores his official papers, takes them out, makes an appointment first with the estate attorney, then with the investment counselor, liquidates whatever he has to liquidate in order to hand over whatever share he had planned his younger son to inherit upon his death.

The father watches as the younger son packs his bags, takes posters off his wall, leaves clothing at the front door to take to the Thrift Shop.

The father watches as the younger son walks down the gravel path, turns left, disappears at the end of the road.

Then the father engages in the most difficult activity in which any parent ever engages: he waits.

He waits for his son to turn around.
He waits for the mail to bring a card or
letter from his youngest child.
He waits for the phone to ring.
He checks his e-mail every time he passes his PC.

Then one day, one month, one year, one decade — we know not which — a figure coming up the driveway in the middle of the day turns out to be

Not the postal worker
Not the UPS delivery man
Not the white-gloved Marine

But the figure with the familiar gait of the child

Whose bedroom has not been disturbed
Whose closet has not been touched
Whose mail has piled upon the table next to the entry hall.

The father then puts into life what Tobias Wolff calls "the most beautiful words ever written or said: 'His father, when he saw him coming, ran to meet him.'"[4]

If the first face of grace is that given to me when I have been lost but now am found, this second face of grace is that I give to someone else who has been lost but now is found.

III.

A third face of grace Craddock finds in the New Testament is the most difficult grace. This is the grace God offers someone else, particularly someone who has hurt me.
Craddock paints a picture of this grace.

Thirty-something woman
Struggles to open the doors to the sanctuary
During the first hymn, after the ushers have already taken their places on the back pew.
Eight year old at her side, Gameboy in hand.
Four-year-old holding pew pal at her other side.
She's never on time for church,
Never on time for anything else,
And she's just given up being on time for anything anymore.

Later in the service an altar call.

Minister invites forward anyone who feels called to repent, receive forgiveness, be baptized.

From the back of the church, the thirty-something woman watches as strolling up the center aisle is the overweight human being she put through medical school, with the twenty-two year old whom she last saw one afternoon in the bed whose sheets she had laundered that morning, the two of them walking down the aisle, hand-in-hand, tears streaming down their faces, to the welcome arms of the minister who smiles as if he has another notch to carve into his ever expanding totem of converts.

Her son lifts his eyes from his gameboy, and the woman thinks to herself: "I'm supposed to celebrate because they are being baptized."[5]

This is neither the grace that happens to me nor the grace I bestow on someone else. Rather, it is the grace that happens to someone who has hurt me. It is the grace the elder brother must decide whether or not to affirm as he stands outside his father's house, shovel in hand, overalls covered in mud, and sees the silhouettes of people dancing pass in front of picture window and smells the fatted calf[6] wafting from inside the home he has cleaned that very morning.

Tell me: "Would you go into that party?"

The grace of God to someone who has hurt me.

IV.

It is sometimes humanly possible for us, like to prodigal son, to come to our senses, tire of envying pig food, and return home.

It is sometimes humanly possible for us to look up, see the prodigal coming up the driveway, run to meet him.

But it is not humanly possible to walk into that party and celebrate the free, undeserved, unmerited, unearned, un-worked-for, unconditional, unprobated grace given to someone who has hurt us and shamed us and humiliated us and kept us from having a life that has any time for celebration with friends,[7] let alone any time for friends, period.

It is simply not humanly possible to celebrate God's grace for someone else, particularly when that someone else has hurt us deeply.

And yet:

From now on [Paul says], we regard no one from a human point of view…if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation…[8]

It is not humanly possible to celebrate grace bestowed on someone who has hurt us. But "in Christ" we regard no person "from a human point of view." In Christ, all things are "made new."

I can only speak by analogy what it means to be "in Christ" and to do that which is not humanly possible.

I remember as a child hearing the story of a woman in our city who unloaded groceries from her '54 Chevy while her daughter played in the driveway behind the car. Suddenly, the rolled backwards and trapped her daughter beneath its wheels. The woman dropped her groceries, halted the car's backward roll, lifted the car off her daughter's crushed leg, saved her daughter from further injury.

After the woman realized what she had done, she passed out.

When she revived and spoke to the police a few minutes later, she said: "It is as if some force from another world came over me, led me to lift the car off her legs, enabled me to do what is not humanly possible."

"A force…from another world…led me to do what is not humanly possible."

"In Christ…In Christ we regard no one from a human point of view."
"In Christ…God has given us a ministry of reconciliation."

"A force…from another world…In Christ …led me to do what is not humanly possible."

Amen.

1 John Newton, "Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound," The Presbyterian Hymnal: Hymns, Psalms, and Spiritual Songs (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990) #280. go back
2 Romans 7:24-25 RSV. go back
3 Luke 15:11-24. go back
4 Tobias Wolff, Old School (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 195. go back
5 I heard Fred Craddock tell this story at sometime in a sermon in the 1980s or 1990s. go back
6 Luke 15:25-32. Notice that the parable ends with the elder brother standing outside the party, deciding whether or not to go in. go back
7 Luke 15:29. go back
8 II Corinthians 5:16-19. Italics added.go back

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310 Fifth Street SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org