March 10, 2024
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer. Amen.
Fear is a powerful thing. It’s prevalent in many parts of our society. Advertising and consumerism, for instance, sometimes trade on fear. The fear of missing out. The fear of falling behind. The fear of not having enough. Fear sells. And you don’t have to work hard to find instances where we’re encouraged to fear each other. Because when you get right down to it, fear is usually a manipulative tactic – something someone else uses to get us to do what they want.
In his Letter to the Ephesians this morning, Paul gets at this idea. Paul talks about the “ruler of the power of the air” – what we would call the devil. Paul highlights the human condition as a titanic struggle between the forces of good and those of evil. And in the midst of that struggle, the devil uses fear to manipulate us into turning our backs on each other. So we gratify our selfish cravings, follow dark desires, and relish irrational thoughts. Because we’re afraid.
And that fear bleeds over into our lives of faith. Paul writes “by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” The idea that we are saved by God’s gift of faith and not through works is a fundamental tenet of Christianity – especially for denominations like ours, which owe so much to the Reformation.
But many of us have trouble believing this. We have this fear that we’re not worthy of God’s love. We hope that the good things we do will appease God. Or we hope that if we can manage to summon just enough faith, we’ll be reconciled to God. But those hopes are grounded in fear. So when we hear Paul proclaiming the good news that we are saved through the faith that is God’s gift to us, we can’t bring ourselves to fully believe it. It seems too good to be true. Maybe we have trouble believing it because we’re afraid it can’t really be true.
At the root of this fear is that we’re challenged to fully define, let alone understand, the concept of grace. Grace is God’s love freely given to humanity for salvation. Anglican theology emphasizes that the gift of grace is gratuitous – it’s unearned and undeserved. Throughout his letters, Paul consistently talks about grace being unmerited forgiveness of sin.
God’s grace is freely offered. But our humanity – our limited ability to understand who God is – makes it difficult to accept this loving gift of grace. We get stuck in our consumer-centered mindset, our zero-sum vision of the world where any exchange creates the expectation of a return. Even when we give a gift, we expect at the very least a “thank you”, or more insidiously, we expect that the person who received the gift is now in debt to us. As much as we try, it’s hard to understand what it means to really, freely give.
Maybe one of the best descriptions of grace comes from Presbyterian minister and theologian Frederick Buechner, who wrote “The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you.”
And so we don’t need to live lives of faith tainted by fear. We don’t need to launch ourselves into frenzies of good works to earn God’s love and forgiveness. God is not trying to manipulate us with this gift. Paul puts the good news right there for us – “even when we were dead … by grace we have been saved”. Salvation is a pure gift from our loving God.
But. To stop there is to ignore the second part of this morning’s reading. Because after assuring us that we’re saved by God’s grace, Paul goes on to write “For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” We weren’t created to be a people whose response to grace was fear. We’re created to be a people whose response to grace is gratitude. Our gratitude allows us to be generous – to be a blessing to others with all that we have. When we embrace the gift of grace – when we live the lives that God has created us for – we stop living the fearful lie that God’s work in us flows from the good works we do. Instead we live into the reality that our good works flow from what God does in us through faith and grace.
The fourth Sunday of Lent is often called “Laetere Sunday”, or “Rejoice Sunday”. The Sunday when we rejoice in anticipation of the resurrection. Because the cross and resurrection point to the fundamental Christian claim that God does not abandon us. The resurrection expresses grace in a way humans can understand. If more giving means more love, then the complete giving that leads to death means complete love. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is God’s ultimate expression of grace.
So there is no need to fear. Just to rejoice. We anticipate the resurrection with joy knowing that it reflects the deepest reality of God’s reconciling the world in Christ. We rejoice knowing that, through the gift of grace, God is transforming our lives from slavery and fear to freedom and gratitude. We rejoice because, having received compassion and grace, we are freed to live the lives God has made us for – to share that compassion and grace in our neighbor in humble gratitude. Amen.