Sermon 3 in Portraits of Grace Sermon Series
Sunday, January 27, 2013 Preached at
FBC, Cornelia
Scripture: Galatians 2:17-21
17
But suppose we seek to be made right with God through faith in Christ and then
we are found guilty because we have abandoned the law. Would that mean Christ
has led us into sin? Absolutely not! 18 Rather, I am a sinner if I rebuild the
old system of law I already tore down. 19 For when I tried to keep the law, it
condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so
that I might live for God. 20 My old self has been crucified with Christ.[e] It
is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body
by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do
not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us
right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.
Portrait of Grace: Fantine
Arrested/Fantine Dying
Scene: Fantine has been arrested for prostitution by
Inspector Javert. She confronts Monsieur
Madeleine in the police station. After
this arrest, Fantine becomes very sick and stays in the Mayor’s hospital. The last part of the scene occurs in the
hospital. As Fantine dies, she sings to
her daughter Cosette.
**I'm thankful to be able to show a video of the actual performance of the scene from Sunday's worship service. Thanks to Carrie Trotter for videoing the scene].
[A special thanks to Zack Smagur and
Jane Marie Price for sharing their musical and dramatic talents with us
today. Both Zack, senior, and Jane Marie,
junior, attend Habersham Central High School where they have been involved in
the choral and drama programs. Both
also frequently perform in productions presented by the Habersham Community
Theatre. We know God has great plans for
both of them!]
Sermon
This scene
reminds of my friend Ricky in high school.
To officially confirm my geeky status in high school, Ricky and I had
conversations about grace around the table in the lunchroom. We just didn’t call it grace.
Here’s what
Ricky would tell me: “I can do whatever
I want on Friday nights – drinking, parties, hanging out with girls. You see, this is how the whole Christianity
thing works: I can do whatever I want
and then simply confess my sins. I
believe Jesus is my Savior so I am good to go.
God forgives me and I go on to next weekend. It’s that simple.”
“No, no,
no,” I tried to argue. “It’s more than
that, really. God wants more from
us. God desires our hearts and our
lives. Being a Christian is not a
one-time event – not rituals or hoops we jump through to get God to do what we
want.”
I still
remember this conversation and the ones that followed. Ricky forced me to go to my Bible, to listen
to the ancient stories, to learn what God really wants from God’s
children. Since those days I have found
Ricky’s argument to be more prevalent in churches and within the Christian
community than I ever imagined back in the day of parachute pants and REM. Not that anyone comes out as forcefully and
transparently as he did in high school. Instead,
we glimpse it in the ways we live. We
believe one thing in our heads, but we live another way with our lives.
 |
| Dietrich Bonhoeffer |
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer labeled this reality “cheap grace” in his book The Cost of Discipleship back in 1937. Bonhoeffer wrote with the experience of the
Lutheran church in Germany during the 1930’s as his background. He had watched the soul of the church
disappear as nationalism of the Nazi party overwhelmed the purpose of the
church. The purpose of grace as the
foundation of a relationship with God was lost in the fog of church and country. Here’s how Bonhoeffer described Cheap Grace:
“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness
without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion
without confession, absolution without personal confession,” says Bonhoeffer.
“Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace
without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
Reflecting
on Cheap Grace - John Walker (Costly Grace: A Contemporary View of Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship)
says –
Cheap
grace is the arrogant presumption that we can receive forgiveness for our sins,
yet never abandon our lives to Jesus. We
fall into the trap of cheap grace when we join my friend Ricky in embracing
God’s forgiveness without the necessary repentance. When we repent – we stop going one direction
and choose to go in the opposite.
When
Jesus forgives someone, he say, “Your sins are forgiven, now go and sin no
more.” Cheap grace instead justifies the
sin instead of the sinner and says: Everything
is forgiven, so you can stay as you are.
As Ricky said to me: “After I
confess what I’ve done - I’m good to go for next weekend.”
To move
away from cheap grace – we must attempt to recover a true understanding of the
mutual relationship between grace and discipleship.
Let’s look
back on this scene from Les Miserables and the Letter to Galatians for examples
of cheap grace.
After Jean
Valjean receives the gift of grace – two silver candle sticks – from the bishop,
his life changes. The hatred and
bitterness and hardness that defined him before were gone. This gift allows him to become a new
man. In many ways he reinvents himself. He becomes an industrialist. He transforms a community by his hard
word. He tries to do good. He starts a school and a hospital for the
poor. He treats his employees
fairly.
Yet, as
Fantine sings – he fails to see her. His
failure to act on her behalf leads to her life of deep suffering and pain. He had received grace from the bishop, but
when she begged for grace from him – to let her keep her job – he failed to
bestow it.
The grace
the bishop offered Jean Valjean was costly – the price of all of the silver in
his home. Yet, when Fantine begged for small
grain of grace – Jean Valjean failed to even give her the time to hear her at
the point of her need.
We heard in
the amazing singing of Jane Marie – the suffering and pain this lack of grace
caused – in the same way we have in the weeks before – the wonder and amazement
in Jean Valjean’s life when grace was extended.
Fantine forced Jean Valjean to rethink the cost of grace in his
life. We’ll hear that story next
week.
The apostle
Paul relates a situation of cheap grace in the second chapter of the epistle to
the Galatian churches. He wants the Galatians
to understand how easy it is to cheapen grace we’ve been given by Jesus. So - he tells them about an encounter he had the
Apostle Peter. Yes, that Peter - the
disciple, the water walker, the fisherman, the denier, the powerful preacher,
and now the great leader of the NT church.
Peter
traveled up Antioch to visit and experience the great church there. This was a special and unique church in the
New Testament. For the first time ever,
this church had both Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians living in
community together – worshipping, taking communion, eating together. This is a very big deal. Jews at this time were taught that it was
against God’s law to eat and mingle with non-Jews. Many of these Jews would have never sat down
to talk or eat or fellowship with someone they considered a pagan – completely
outside God’s law.
But here in
Antioch it happened because the Holy spirit offered God’s grace to everyone. No matter your background, no matter your
skin color, when the worship services were over, everyone was invited out to
eat together. The whole church was invited to share a Shoney’s hot fudge cake
after Sunday evening church.
This was
the thing – in Antioch – no one thought this was wrong. It was an expression of what God as doing in
them. Something new was happening – the
spirit of God was birthing a new Church – and the believers in Antioch got to experience
it. It’s no wonder, the first place
followers of Jesus were called Christians was here in Antioch. The people outside the church saw something
brand new, not Jewish or Pagan, instead little’s Christs.
Peter comes
down from Jerusalem to visit the church and he falls in love with how the
barriers and laws of Judaism have been replaced by grace. He goes to the homes of Gentile Christians,
like he did with the Centurion Cornelius.
He eats their foods and shares laughs around their tables. As a Jew, he understands, it is the grace of
God that allows this to happen. All of
the Jewish Christians enjoy their Gentile Christian brothers and sisters like
this.
Then, conflict
happens. A few fuddle duds – Judiazers
is what the New Testament calls them – throw water on the party. Some of the same folks who will venture up
into the Galatia and corrupt the churches there – show up in the church in
Antioch. These Judiazers look down their
noses at the practices of Peter and the rest of the Jewish Christians. Christian leaders can’t eat supper with
Gentile Christians – it’s against Jewish law.
To the Judiazers: To be a
Christian is to be Jewish. The Gentiles
must become Jewish to follow Jesus – the must follow the same laws.
And here, Peter
falters. Instead of standing up for the
grace of Jesus and these Gentile believers – Peter backs away in fear of the
Judiazers. He stops going to eat with
these Gentile believers. And when Peter
stops – the rest of the Jewish Christians in Antioch stop too. If Peter thinks the Gentiles must become Jewish
to be fully Christian than it must be right.
This drives
Paul crazy – and he calls out Peter – in front of everyone for this
hypocrisy. Listen to 2:14: “When I saw that these [Jewish Christians]
were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of
all the others, “Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and
are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow
the Jewish traditions”
Said in another
way – “how can you enjoy the grace of Jesus as a Jew and fellowship with
Gentile Christians then demand they must become Jewish under the law. You are enjoying grace and you are making
them live under the law.”
Or in the
words of Bonhoeffer- “this is cheap grace.”
By forcing the Gentiles Christians to live under the law of Moses – you
say the death of Jesus Christ is not enough.
You cheapen the death and life of Jesus.
Paul calls
the Christians in Galatians away from this cheap grace to the person and death
of Jesus Christ. He says in v. 21: If keeping the law
could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.
All we need
is Jesus Christ. All we need is
Jesus. We can never embrace or follow
Jesus enough. When we receive the grace
of Jesus – when we accept the 2 silver candlesticks in our lives – Jesus
demands not that we follow a few rules or rituals or do a few good deeds like
build hospitals or schools – Jesus demands our whole life. This is how Paul puts it to the Galatians in
one of the most powerful verses of scripture:
“My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I
who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in
the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Rather than
circumcision or ritual holidays or becoming Jewish – things that we can control
- the grace of Jesus calls us to be crucified along with Jesus so that it’s not
me that you see, but Jesus.
On
Wednesday, January 23 - Oswald Chambers put it this way:
“When the Spirit
fills us, we are transformed, and by beholding God we become mirrors. You can
always tell when someone has been beholding the glory of the Lord, because your
inner spirit senses that he mirrors the Lord’s own character.”
When our
lives are abandoned to Jesus – we mirror the life of Jesus to the world. Abandonment to Jesus defeats Cheap Grace and
allows Jesus to thrive in our lives.
Let me ask
you a personal question –
- Have you allowed cheap grace to thrive in your life?
- Have you cheapened the grace of God by accepting his forgiveness only to live however you wanted?
- What part of your life is God calling you to abandon to Jesus today? What needs to be crucified so that your life mirrors the life of Jesus in the world?
Reflect on
these questions as the choir prepares our hearts for communion.
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