The Power of God's Grace

            When Jonathan Edwards preached his renowned sermon in Northampton, Massachusetts that was called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God people in the pews got up and fled the church in terror.  Edwards eloquently spoke about God holding all of humanity over the pit of a fiery Hell by a spider-web thin strand that could break at any moment.  What people mostly miss about this sermon is the point.  Edwards was talking about God’s Grace:  that marvelous safety net that has been provided to all of us by the love of our God to keep us safe even and sometimes particularly from ourselves.  God’s Grace is an incredible benefit to all of humanity because, of our own volition, we would consign ourselves to the depths of Hell.  That is what those parishioners missed, and what many of Edward’s biographers have missed in that tremendous sermon.

            John Newton, the Anglican priest who was a former slave trader got the point exactly when he looked back over his life and repented of the way that he had taken slaves from their African homeland and deposited them in the New World, where their labor was used to their detriment.  He composed the wonderful hymn Amazing Grace to speak of the way that God redeemed his life from his past.  

            God’s Grace is what was operating when Abraham was told by God that he would be the father of many nations and that Sarah would give birth to a son.  When Sarah heard this news, she laughed behind a curtain and hoped that God wouldn’t hear her laughter.  The reason was that she was over ninety and Abraham was one hundred.  She was also barren and the idea of having a child seemed to her to be the most ludicrous thing that she could think of at that moment.  But God’s Grace was certainly operating and in the course of time, Sarah and Abraham became the parents of Isaac, which wonderfully means laughter.  Indeed, Abraham became the father of many nations and kings did indeed come from him.  God’s Grace is that incredible force that we hardly ever see, but which works in our lives to bring us gifts of unspeakable beauty.  We don’t often even know that it is working.  It takes faith to see it and hope to make it evident. 

            In my own life, I have felt God’s Grace work in my life a number of times.  When the television station that I was working for went bankrupt in the early seventies and I was without a job, I called my rector who arranged for me to meet the bishop and we talked about my going to seminary.  Somehow, all of the ruts in that road were easily achieved and I got my seminary education and became an Episcopal priest.  When I look back on all that went on during those three years, it seems as natural an event as I could imagine, although there were many, many problems and conflicts that we encountered.  God’s Grace is what got us through all of it. 

            When I had a large menengioma in the left frontal lobe of my brain, and was lying of the operating table waiting for the skilled surgical staff to remove it, I remember thinking that I had no idea how this was all going to come out, but that I knew that whatever it was that was going to happen, that I was going to be all right.  I meant that.  Even if I did not survive the operation, I knew that I was in the hands of the God who loved me beyond all else.  It was God’s incredible Grace that I was aware of and counting on at that moment. 

            When Jesus spoke to his disciples about what was going to happen in his life, about his crucifixion and eventual resurrection, he frightened them.  Peter took him aside and told him that what he had told them just had to be wrong.  Jesus told Peter to get behind me, Satan you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.  Jesus was talking about how God’s Grace was operating in his own life, the Grace that would lead to his resurrection even after the evil of the crucifixion had occurred.  Like the parishioners in Jonathan Edward’s church, the disciples missed his point, as do most of us when we read these words in Mark’s Gospel. 

            The point is that God loves all of us infinitely.  God’s care, offered by what we call Grace, will get us through all of the things that this life brings to us.  God’s Love is our refuge from all of the evil that this world projects.  We need not fear, no matter what comes.