Sermon on Amazing Grace
Here is my sermon for my first day at Bowie. It is the start of a brief series on "Singing the Songs of God." I thought that would be a good way to introduce myself and what I really think is important about the faith.
The first sermon is
Sermon 6-18-06
Psalm 20:1 - 9 The LORD answer you in the day of trouble! The name of the God of Jacob protect you! 2 May he send you help from the sanctuary, and give you support from Zion. 3 May he remember all your offerings, and regard with favor your burnt sacrifices. Selah 4 May he grant you your heart's desire, and fulfill all your plans. 5 May we shout for joy over your victory, and in the name of our God set up our banners. May the LORD fulfill all your petitions. 6 Now I know that the LORD will help his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand. 7 Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses, but our pride is in the name of the LORD our God. 8 They will collapse and fall, but we shall rise and stand upright. 9 Give victory to the king, O LORD; answer us when we call.
Ephesians 2:1-10 You were dead through the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. 3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-- by grace you have been saved-- 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God-- 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
Every year the clergy have a retreat at Tanglewood Lodge on Lake Texoma. It’s a great time to get away and renew our energy and our spirit. A few years ago, several of us were sitting around after the big Tuesday night banquet, strumming our guitars and singing the good old songs. A few of us were former youth pastors, so one of the books we were using was this little green book that has lots and lots of songs. As we flipped through the book, one of the songs that we came across was one we all knew - Amazing Grace, but the book suggested that it could be sung to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun”: [illustrate] Well, that got us started. Someone made the comment that the words of “Amazing Grace” could be sung to a lot of different tunes. So we tried it. We started with some other hymn tunes, like “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” [illustrate]. Then we went on to all kinds of songs: Happy Birthday, Three Blind Mice, Rock Around the Clock, Stand By Your Man, you name it. For some of those you have to finagle the words a bit, but somehow it works. After about an hour of this silliness, it hit me that there was a profound theological significance to what we were doing.
It hit me that no matter what the tune or the beat, no matter how we manipulated the words to fit the meter, the words were always the same: Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. No matter how you sing it, God’s grace is amazing.
And that is very comforting for me. Especially today. Because, metaphorically speaking, we all sing amazing grace differently. Some of us sing loud, and some sing soft. Some sing in old gospel hymns and some sing in praise choruses. But no matter how we sing it, for all of us, God’s grace is amazing.
This passage in Ephesians wasn’t really written to just one group of Christians, with particular issues, it was written to be passed around and shared. So it cuts to the heart of the Good News: We were dead in our sins until God’s amazing grace brought us salvation. We don’t have to remain “children of wrath” because God’s grace is amazing.
The song “Amazing Grace” captures so well what this passage is trying to say. God’s grace is amazing because it saves “wretches like me.” I’m just guessing that many of you don’t think of yourselves as “wretches” as a usual thing. I know I don’t usually introduce myself that way: “Hello, my name is Martha. I’m a wretch.” In fact, there is a version of the song that changes the words to “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a soul like me.” But I think most of us, maybe all of us know in the deep places of our souls that really doesn’t cut it.
Those of our brothers and sisters in 12-step programs such as AA, could teach us a thing or two. The first step in changing from an alcoholic to a recovering alcoholic is acknowledging your problem. Being able to stand up and say, “Hello, my name is John Doe and I’m an alcoholic.” But that really is the first step for all of us. Ephesians reminds us that, “All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.” Not some of us, not many of us, not even most of us, but all of us. And the point here is that when you recognize your wretchedness, you can also recognize that God’s grace is amazing.
Now, I will say, that even those of you who are basically good people, even you might be surprised at how freeing it is to say that: “I’m a wretch” as long as you sing the rest of the song. As long as you hear the rest of the Good News. God saved you, while you were still in your wretchedness, your sinfulness, because God never intended for you to be a wretch. God intends for you to be a beautiful child of God. And long ago, before you even thought about doing anything remotely wretched, God put into place a plan to show you “immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness through Jesus Christ.”
Aren’t those beautiful words “immeasurable riches.” That’s what God wants to give you.
What are these riches? Is your bank account going to grow or your business take off? Well that is not what I had in mind. That wonderful Psalm that Mary Catherine read this morning tells us something about those immeasurable riches. The Psalm is a prayer for the king. They are praying for the king, because they understand as a people that the good works of the King, the victories of the king came only from God. And that in the end their pride, the immeasurable riches were found in God’s name.
The hymn also give us two metaphors that help us understand the immeasurable riches of God’s grace: I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.
Think about what it is like to be lost. Do you remember what that is like? Have you ever been lost? Maybe you remember a time when you were a child and you turned around one day and realized that your mother or your father was not there. You turned around and saw no one, or you saw a large crowd with no familiar faces. You felt that sinking feeling in your gut. A moment of panic. A moment when your world seemed suddenly frightening and suddenly dark. And then you heard a voice you knew, saw a face you recognized and you realized you were not alone, not left behind. Or maybe you have never been physically lost, but have felt lost within your soul. I felt that way during my time at SMU in the PhD program. There was one day in February that I just felt utterly lost. I had spent 6 weeks getting an average of 3 hours sleep a night, studying, writing papers and trying to keep up with my duties at church, as well as with my family. That day, I went to school to get an exam that would take me 6 hours to complete. I went back to the car, got in and just started crying. I didn’t think that I could do that exam. I felt completely incapable of moving forward. And then I felt God’s amazing grace, and though God’s presence was grace-filled, it was not exactly comforting. What I heard God saying to me was, “Get over it, get on with it, get the exam done and quit whining.” Grace takes many forms! But that is what I did and lo and behold, I realized that even in my despair, God had found me and given me what I needed. That sense that you’ve been found is what it feels like to experience God’s amazing grace. That sense of realizing that you are not alone is what it means to experience God’s immeasurable riches.
Now when I was a little girl, I was very blind, but I didn't know that. I got very close to the TV and mother kept moving me back. The world was an interesting place, I suppose, but I really couldn't see what was going on. I got to Kindergarten and the teacher would read the book, (this is the part I remember most) that she would read the story and then she would wave the book around. I thought, what is she doing? Why doesn't she just read it? Why does she keep stopping and doing this thing (wave paper around like book)? Well of course she was showing the pictures but I couldn't see the pictures. Her actions didn't make any sense to me. They tested me and found that in fact I had very bad eyes. We went to the eye doctor and I remember putting on that first pair of glasses. I put them on and I looked outside (it was so much like this) and I saw a tree or a bush and a bird had just flown off of it and it was moving and I said, “There are leaves on the bush!” I couldn't believe it and I couldn't believe how beautiful it was.
I didn't even know that I was blind. The actions people took made no sense to me because I couldn't see. It wasn't until I put on the glasses that I began to discover the world around me and the beauty that was there. But I also discovered that there is pain in the world. That sometimes people cry and have tears running down their faces. That sometimes people fall down on the sidewalk and skin their knees and there is blood. Or they break their arm when they fall off their bike and there is anguish and pain. I could see those things too.
When we experience God’s amazing grace, what Jesus as our Lord does is that he puts a different pair of glasses on our eyes-he gives us new sight. He enables us to see the world in a different way. The world starts making sense. And we can see all of the beauty that is there. We also can see the pain and suffering. That is when we are called to that part of the text that reminds us we are “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” That’s why we are called to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked, to visit those who are sick and in prison. We sometimes don't even see them until we experience the grace of God through Jesus our Lord and then he opens our eyes to what is going on in the world. And expects us to do something about it.
But he doesn't expect us to go out alone. With the sight comes a feeling and knowledge that God loves us and so all of the great world that God has given us, it's a gift of love, immeasurable riches. And the grace that we experience can happen, not just within the walls of this church building, but as we move out into the world. As we share God’s grace with others, we will find different ways to sing it. One of God’s children that I knew was a lovely elderly lady named Ina who brought God’s grace with her as she visited those who were even more elderly, but not as mobile. In her gentle way, Ina shared her lemon pound cake and her love. In another church is a wise young lady, now 12, who cares for her nephew, a young child who is developmentally delayed. Unlike some of the adults in his life, she pushes him and cajoles him into reaching beyond himself and doing more than the adults think. She believes in him and his ability to learn and loves him into developing fully into the person that God insteads him to be. She sings an enthusiastic song of grace and love. One of the most grace-filled moments I had last year was not in church, but out at Sid Rich Scout Ranch. I had gone on a campout with the cub scout families, about 40 people in all. On Sunday morning, we had a brief devotional by the lake and then celebrated communion together. Those families came from many different Christian traditions, some had not been in church in years and had not come to the Lord’s table in years, but that morning all of them came and we had a holy moment as God’s grace became available to all of them.
You know, I have heard a number of things about Bowie already. One thing I have heard is that Bowie is surrounded by Meth labs, Bowie has a high incidence of child abuse. But this church decided to depend on God’s amazing grace and pray for its young people. And those young people are feeling the presence of those prayers in their lives.
There is an old story about about the great pianist, Paderovsky. At one of his concerts, the audience was gathering, waiting for the great man to come on stage. In the audience, close to the front were a mother and her young son, who had begun taking piano lessons and expressed a great love for music. The mother turned her back for just a moment and the child, seeing that beautiful piano on stage, ran up to it, sat down and began to play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” The mother was horrified when she saw her son and realized that the great pianist had just come out on stage. He motioned to her to sit, went over to the child at the piano. As the child played the simple song, Paderovsky put his left hand around the side of the little one and began to add a gentle base line. Then he put his right arm around the other side and started a running obligato. And together, the great pianist and the little child made beautiful music together.
As we begin to live out the song of Amazing Grace, no matter what the tune, or the beat we begin to feel God's arms around us, making our simple tune a glorious concerto. As we sing the simple words, they become God’s words, the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Brothers and sisters, until we learn to sing of God’s amazing grace, we are like the dead. We go through this world never seeing what is real. But God brought life to us while we were still dead. God did not wait until we cleaned up our act. God did not wait until we figured out what was wrong. God did not wait until we started being good. No, because God’s grace is amazing and amazing grace jumps in before we are ready. We were dead and God set us up there with Christ. That is amazing grace. Why? Because God wanted to show us “the immeasurable riches of his grace” God wanted to show us kindness; God wanted to show us love. God couldn’t give us these gifts while we were dead, so God had to raise us to new life, just as he raised Jesus. All we have to do is have the faith to accept the amazing grace that God offers.
The first sermon is
Sermon 6-18-06
Psalm 20:1 - 9 The LORD answer you in the day of trouble! The name of the God of Jacob protect you! 2 May he send you help from the sanctuary, and give you support from Zion. 3 May he remember all your offerings, and regard with favor your burnt sacrifices. Selah 4 May he grant you your heart's desire, and fulfill all your plans. 5 May we shout for joy over your victory, and in the name of our God set up our banners. May the LORD fulfill all your petitions. 6 Now I know that the LORD will help his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand. 7 Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses, but our pride is in the name of the LORD our God. 8 They will collapse and fall, but we shall rise and stand upright. 9 Give victory to the king, O LORD; answer us when we call.
Ephesians 2:1-10 You were dead through the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. 3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-- by grace you have been saved-- 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God-- 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
Every year the clergy have a retreat at Tanglewood Lodge on Lake Texoma. It’s a great time to get away and renew our energy and our spirit. A few years ago, several of us were sitting around after the big Tuesday night banquet, strumming our guitars and singing the good old songs. A few of us were former youth pastors, so one of the books we were using was this little green book that has lots and lots of songs. As we flipped through the book, one of the songs that we came across was one we all knew - Amazing Grace, but the book suggested that it could be sung to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun”: [illustrate] Well, that got us started. Someone made the comment that the words of “Amazing Grace” could be sung to a lot of different tunes. So we tried it. We started with some other hymn tunes, like “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” [illustrate]. Then we went on to all kinds of songs: Happy Birthday, Three Blind Mice, Rock Around the Clock, Stand By Your Man, you name it. For some of those you have to finagle the words a bit, but somehow it works. After about an hour of this silliness, it hit me that there was a profound theological significance to what we were doing.
It hit me that no matter what the tune or the beat, no matter how we manipulated the words to fit the meter, the words were always the same: Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. No matter how you sing it, God’s grace is amazing.
And that is very comforting for me. Especially today. Because, metaphorically speaking, we all sing amazing grace differently. Some of us sing loud, and some sing soft. Some sing in old gospel hymns and some sing in praise choruses. But no matter how we sing it, for all of us, God’s grace is amazing.
This passage in Ephesians wasn’t really written to just one group of Christians, with particular issues, it was written to be passed around and shared. So it cuts to the heart of the Good News: We were dead in our sins until God’s amazing grace brought us salvation. We don’t have to remain “children of wrath” because God’s grace is amazing.
The song “Amazing Grace” captures so well what this passage is trying to say. God’s grace is amazing because it saves “wretches like me.” I’m just guessing that many of you don’t think of yourselves as “wretches” as a usual thing. I know I don’t usually introduce myself that way: “Hello, my name is Martha. I’m a wretch.” In fact, there is a version of the song that changes the words to “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a soul like me.” But I think most of us, maybe all of us know in the deep places of our souls that really doesn’t cut it.
Those of our brothers and sisters in 12-step programs such as AA, could teach us a thing or two. The first step in changing from an alcoholic to a recovering alcoholic is acknowledging your problem. Being able to stand up and say, “Hello, my name is John Doe and I’m an alcoholic.” But that really is the first step for all of us. Ephesians reminds us that, “All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.” Not some of us, not many of us, not even most of us, but all of us. And the point here is that when you recognize your wretchedness, you can also recognize that God’s grace is amazing.
Now, I will say, that even those of you who are basically good people, even you might be surprised at how freeing it is to say that: “I’m a wretch” as long as you sing the rest of the song. As long as you hear the rest of the Good News. God saved you, while you were still in your wretchedness, your sinfulness, because God never intended for you to be a wretch. God intends for you to be a beautiful child of God. And long ago, before you even thought about doing anything remotely wretched, God put into place a plan to show you “immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness through Jesus Christ.”
Aren’t those beautiful words “immeasurable riches.” That’s what God wants to give you.
What are these riches? Is your bank account going to grow or your business take off? Well that is not what I had in mind. That wonderful Psalm that Mary Catherine read this morning tells us something about those immeasurable riches. The Psalm is a prayer for the king. They are praying for the king, because they understand as a people that the good works of the King, the victories of the king came only from God. And that in the end their pride, the immeasurable riches were found in God’s name.
The hymn also give us two metaphors that help us understand the immeasurable riches of God’s grace: I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.
Think about what it is like to be lost. Do you remember what that is like? Have you ever been lost? Maybe you remember a time when you were a child and you turned around one day and realized that your mother or your father was not there. You turned around and saw no one, or you saw a large crowd with no familiar faces. You felt that sinking feeling in your gut. A moment of panic. A moment when your world seemed suddenly frightening and suddenly dark. And then you heard a voice you knew, saw a face you recognized and you realized you were not alone, not left behind. Or maybe you have never been physically lost, but have felt lost within your soul. I felt that way during my time at SMU in the PhD program. There was one day in February that I just felt utterly lost. I had spent 6 weeks getting an average of 3 hours sleep a night, studying, writing papers and trying to keep up with my duties at church, as well as with my family. That day, I went to school to get an exam that would take me 6 hours to complete. I went back to the car, got in and just started crying. I didn’t think that I could do that exam. I felt completely incapable of moving forward. And then I felt God’s amazing grace, and though God’s presence was grace-filled, it was not exactly comforting. What I heard God saying to me was, “Get over it, get on with it, get the exam done and quit whining.” Grace takes many forms! But that is what I did and lo and behold, I realized that even in my despair, God had found me and given me what I needed. That sense that you’ve been found is what it feels like to experience God’s amazing grace. That sense of realizing that you are not alone is what it means to experience God’s immeasurable riches.
Now when I was a little girl, I was very blind, but I didn't know that. I got very close to the TV and mother kept moving me back. The world was an interesting place, I suppose, but I really couldn't see what was going on. I got to Kindergarten and the teacher would read the book, (this is the part I remember most) that she would read the story and then she would wave the book around. I thought, what is she doing? Why doesn't she just read it? Why does she keep stopping and doing this thing (wave paper around like book)? Well of course she was showing the pictures but I couldn't see the pictures. Her actions didn't make any sense to me. They tested me and found that in fact I had very bad eyes. We went to the eye doctor and I remember putting on that first pair of glasses. I put them on and I looked outside (it was so much like this) and I saw a tree or a bush and a bird had just flown off of it and it was moving and I said, “There are leaves on the bush!” I couldn't believe it and I couldn't believe how beautiful it was.
I didn't even know that I was blind. The actions people took made no sense to me because I couldn't see. It wasn't until I put on the glasses that I began to discover the world around me and the beauty that was there. But I also discovered that there is pain in the world. That sometimes people cry and have tears running down their faces. That sometimes people fall down on the sidewalk and skin their knees and there is blood. Or they break their arm when they fall off their bike and there is anguish and pain. I could see those things too.
When we experience God’s amazing grace, what Jesus as our Lord does is that he puts a different pair of glasses on our eyes-he gives us new sight. He enables us to see the world in a different way. The world starts making sense. And we can see all of the beauty that is there. We also can see the pain and suffering. That is when we are called to that part of the text that reminds us we are “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” That’s why we are called to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked, to visit those who are sick and in prison. We sometimes don't even see them until we experience the grace of God through Jesus our Lord and then he opens our eyes to what is going on in the world. And expects us to do something about it.
But he doesn't expect us to go out alone. With the sight comes a feeling and knowledge that God loves us and so all of the great world that God has given us, it's a gift of love, immeasurable riches. And the grace that we experience can happen, not just within the walls of this church building, but as we move out into the world. As we share God’s grace with others, we will find different ways to sing it. One of God’s children that I knew was a lovely elderly lady named Ina who brought God’s grace with her as she visited those who were even more elderly, but not as mobile. In her gentle way, Ina shared her lemon pound cake and her love. In another church is a wise young lady, now 12, who cares for her nephew, a young child who is developmentally delayed. Unlike some of the adults in his life, she pushes him and cajoles him into reaching beyond himself and doing more than the adults think. She believes in him and his ability to learn and loves him into developing fully into the person that God insteads him to be. She sings an enthusiastic song of grace and love. One of the most grace-filled moments I had last year was not in church, but out at Sid Rich Scout Ranch. I had gone on a campout with the cub scout families, about 40 people in all. On Sunday morning, we had a brief devotional by the lake and then celebrated communion together. Those families came from many different Christian traditions, some had not been in church in years and had not come to the Lord’s table in years, but that morning all of them came and we had a holy moment as God’s grace became available to all of them.
You know, I have heard a number of things about Bowie already. One thing I have heard is that Bowie is surrounded by Meth labs, Bowie has a high incidence of child abuse. But this church decided to depend on God’s amazing grace and pray for its young people. And those young people are feeling the presence of those prayers in their lives.
There is an old story about about the great pianist, Paderovsky. At one of his concerts, the audience was gathering, waiting for the great man to come on stage. In the audience, close to the front were a mother and her young son, who had begun taking piano lessons and expressed a great love for music. The mother turned her back for just a moment and the child, seeing that beautiful piano on stage, ran up to it, sat down and began to play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” The mother was horrified when she saw her son and realized that the great pianist had just come out on stage. He motioned to her to sit, went over to the child at the piano. As the child played the simple song, Paderovsky put his left hand around the side of the little one and began to add a gentle base line. Then he put his right arm around the other side and started a running obligato. And together, the great pianist and the little child made beautiful music together.
As we begin to live out the song of Amazing Grace, no matter what the tune, or the beat we begin to feel God's arms around us, making our simple tune a glorious concerto. As we sing the simple words, they become God’s words, the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Brothers and sisters, until we learn to sing of God’s amazing grace, we are like the dead. We go through this world never seeing what is real. But God brought life to us while we were still dead. God did not wait until we cleaned up our act. God did not wait until we figured out what was wrong. God did not wait until we started being good. No, because God’s grace is amazing and amazing grace jumps in before we are ready. We were dead and God set us up there with Christ. That is amazing grace. Why? Because God wanted to show us “the immeasurable riches of his grace” God wanted to show us kindness; God wanted to show us love. God couldn’t give us these gifts while we were dead, so God had to raise us to new life, just as he raised Jesus. All we have to do is have the faith to accept the amazing grace that God offers.