Costly Grace

Sermon 4 in Portraits of Grace Sermon Series

Sunday, February 3, 2013 @ FBC Cornelia, GA

Scripture

But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the Scriptures, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”^[g] 14 Through Christ Jesus, God has blessed the Gentiles with the same blessing he promised to Abraham, so that we who are believers might receive the promised^[h]Holy Spirit through faith.

Introduction to Scene

Setting:  In the courtroom of Arras

Time:  1821, 7 years after Bishop Myriel gives Jean Valjean the silver candlesticks

Characters: 

Monsieur Madeleine (The Mayor) = Jean Valjean:  After living 7 years under this assumed name, Jean Valjean learns that a person has been arrested, is assumed to be Jean Valjean, and will be sent to prison for life.  As Monsieur Madaleine, Valjean has created  a successful life as an industrialist, philanthropist, and mayor.  If he stays silent, he will be free to continue this life.  If he stands up to reveal his identity, he will be sent to prison and his factories could falter causing harm to both individuals and the community.

Scene:  Upon hearing about the trial for the fake “Valjean,” the real Valjean struggles desperately with what to do.  He races to the courtroom where the fake “Valjean” is on trial.  He sneaks into the courtroom to listen to the proceedings.  He must decide what to do.  

[I don't have a video of yesterday's song - Who am I?  However, here are several media versions of this scene at the trial in Arras.  

[Start at minute 9:15 to see the lead up to trial scene.]


Sermon

The first question this scene forces us to face this morning this:  what would you do?  The second is like it:  how do you come to a point where you make it?

By all accounts Jean Valjean is a good man.  He is highly respected – his reputation as a smart, practical and fair mayor is known throughout the region.  He is kind, generous and compassionate – after realizing how much his failure to act on behalf of Fantine impacted her life – he takes her into his hospital, he sends money to care for her daughter Cosette, and he visits her regularly – pouring his life into hers.  He is also prosperous and industrious – his factories have created jobs, raising the economic lives of hundreds.  So many people – from one dying woman in the hospital to an entire town - now depend on one man - Jean Valjean. 

There’s just one problem.  Jean Valjean is an ex-con living illegally under an assumed name.  Like many of us he has a shadow side that he fears will reveal him as a fraud and an imposter.  He has received the gift of grace, but he has not turned everything over to God.  As good as Jean Valjean is – he lives by this untruth.  Would anyone really love and respect him if they knew who he really is?

This is the question that haunts Jean Valjean every day.  It keeps him from making friends or close connections.  He remains a mystery to all who know him in the town.  He isolates himself – creating a private prison.    

Into his anxiety and fear – comes an opportunity.  A man has been arrested in a nearby town for stealing who resembles the real Jean Valjean.  He is a poor lot - the lowest of the low.  He doesn’t own anything.  He doesn’t employ anyone.  He is not respected for his good deeds. 

When the real Jean Valjean learns of the man – the trial has already begun.  Once he is convicted and sentenced in the place of Jean Valjean, the real man – the mayor – will never have to worry again.  He will be able to live his life secure in the knowledge that a person the world knows as Jean Valjean sits safely as a convict, a slave, for the rest of his life.  The fear and anxiety for the real Valjean would disappear.  He could make more money, serve more of the poor, employ more people, and improve the town and region. 

Yet – he would always be living a lie – falsity – knowing that another man lives in slavery because of him.  This is the dilemma.  As Zach sang – “If I speak, I am condemned.  If I stay silent, I am damned!”

In the end, Valjean chooses to reveal his true identity to the court.  This comes after an agonizing night – pacing the floor of his small room, racing for an entire day by horse to the place of the trial, and finally standing in the courtroom staring at the man condemned to slavery only for being labeled:  Jean Valjean.  Throughout this struggle, Valjean remembers the grace he has received from the bishop.  In the book, he actually carries the silver candle sticks with him as he travels to the trial as symbols of this grace.    

How do we live our lives in the face of such costly grace?  How do we come to a point in our lives where we are able to make such hard spiritual and ethical choices?

There were many reasons for Jean Valjean to not reveal his true identity:

·         The comfortable life he had built would be gone – he would go back as a galley slave.

·         His factories would fall into disarray, men and women and families would all be affected.

·         His town could be left with inferior leadership – leading to a poorer standard of living.

·         All of the schools and hospitals he ran through his generosity could close – what would happen to all for the people who depended on him?

Let’s face it – there are many in our world, our town, and even some here – who could find even more reasons to rationalize the choice to be silent – the ends justify the means right?

If there are this many reasons not to reveal his lie – there is only one reason to:  It is the right thing to do .  As the recipient of costly grace – he could not send another man to serve his sentence in his place.  He could not deny another grace when he had received so much. 

Costly grace costs us our lives!

John Walker says this about what happens when we accept the grace of Jesus:  To follow 
Jesus means we abandon all or we abandon Jesus

This is exactly the point Paul makes to the Christians in Galatia as they struggle with grace. 

In chapter 3, Paul builds an argument on the importance of grace in our lives.  In the first 5 verses he appeals to the Spiritual experience of the Galatians.   In v. 3-4, Paul says: 

“3After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? 4 Have you experienced so much for nothing? Surely it was not in vain, was it?

The grace of God was enough when you accepted Jesus – why do you need to cheapen it by adding something too grace.

Then, Paul appeals to the scripture to show the importance of grace.  He reveals from scripture verse to scripture verse – how Abraham’s blessing included the Gentiles – the non-Jews – as well who followed Jesus through faith. 

In v. 13-14 – Paul demonstrates the cost of God’s grace.  “Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing.”

On the cross – Jesus endured the curse of the law – the curse that we have to be perfect, 
be right, not fail – it is the curse that falls on all lawbreakers – because we are all lawbreakers.  His execution carried out the curse.  That is why Paul mentions this verse from Dt. 21:  “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”^[  Paul wants to show the Galatians – and us – the horror of the cross.

By hanging on the cross – Jesus endures this curse that belongs to you and me.  Jesus endures it on our behalf. 

We are redeemed through the costly grace of Jesus on the cross.  We cannot make an end run around the cross.  Our only way forward is through the cross.

Paul then tells us the results of the cross – because of the cross - God has blessed the Gentiles with the same blessing he promised to Abraham.  The blessing and the call of Abraham in Gen. 12 now belongs to each of us who choose to accept the gift of costly grace into our lives.  Through this gift we receive the Holy Spirit. 

How does being a recipient of this costly grace – lead us to making the right decisions?  How do we come to a place in our life where as the Apostle Paul says:  “My old self has been crucified with Christ.[e] It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me?”  Would we ever be able to give up our comfortable, easy, good life – for the life God calls us too?  Are we willing to sacrifice our lives for the sake of God’s kingdom?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer says – this is the cost of discipleship.  This is how Bonhoeffer puts it: 

“When we are called to follow Jesus we are summoned to an exclusive attachment to his person. The grace of his call bursts all the bonds of legalism. It is a gracious call, a gracious commandment. It transcends the difference between the law and the gospel. Christ calls, the disciple follows: that is grace and commandment in one.”  As I have said many times – the gift of salvation and the call to mission are one and the same. 

There is a huge difference between being a disciple of Jesus and being a church goer. 

•        A church-goer measures success on how often he or she shows up to church.  The more we come, the better Christian we must be.
•         A disciple measures success by how much of his or her life he has given away for the sake of God’s kingdom.
•         A church-goer measures success by comparing their lives to others – I’m better than that person – look how much money I give or how many times I show up to church.
•         A disciple measure success by comparing their life to the life of Jesus – “Does my life mirror his in the world?”
•         A church-goes measures success by all of the good things they do or bad things they don’t:  I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I serve in the soup kitchen or on a committee at church, and I’ve never been in jail.
•         A disciple measures success by abandoning his or her life to Jesus – knowing that service, worship, Sunday School, or good work are empty if I’m not sold out to Jesus. 

Jesus isn’t looking for good or nice from you or me.  The kingdom of heaven has higher standards than that.

John walker puts it this way:  Jesus commands that you abandon your life so that he can fill you with his own life.

Oswald Chambers on July 2 puts it this way:  “Men pour themselves into creeds.  And God has to blast them out of their prejudices before they can become devoted to Jesus Christ.”

As we make this shift from church-goer to disciple – our mind begins to shift to kingdom thinking.  We begin saying - “I submit to Christ’ instead of ‘I agree with Christ.” We abandon our current life and followed Jesus into a new way of thinking and behaving. We will no longer automatically decide things based on common sense. We will ask Jesus to give us his wisdom. We will be taking specific steps to follow Jesus because we cannot take these steps without Jesus.

This is how a person ends up saying to the judge as Jean Valjean does in the novel: 

“Gentleman of the jury, let the accused go.  Monsieur le president, arrest me.  The man you are looking for is not this man, it is me.  I am Jean Valjean.”

It does not happen because we are church goers – it happens because we are followers of Jesus.  This is costly grace.  It is not common sense.  It is obedience. 

These were not merely words on a page or a way to sell more books or gain a little fame for Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Many of us here know the rest of the story – but let me share it one more time. 

In the 1939 – after years in the underground church movement in Germany – pastor and Professor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hustled out of Germany to America for safety.  He stayed only a few months.  Like Jean Valjean on the journey to Arras – Bonhoeffer struggled with a moral, ethical and spiritual decision while in America.  Should he stay where he is safe and secure to lead Germany when the war is ever over – or should he return and face the dangers of an illegal life on the wrong side of the Nazi government?  He wrote these words to this host, Reinhold Niebuhr. 

“Such a decision each man must make for himself. Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and therefore destroying our civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose; but I cannot make that choice in security.”

Bonhoeffer returned to Germany the same year, becoming a spiritual leader of the underground resistance inside Germany.  He was arrested in April of 1943 – weeks before he was to wed.  He spent the next two year in several prisons around Germany.

On Easter Sunday morning April 8, 1945 – Bonhoeffer led a Easter worship services for the prisoners around him as the Allied forces made their way to Berlin.   

Payne Best, a British secret service agent, described the moment like this: “Pastor Bonhoeffer held a little service and spoke to us in a manner which reached the hearts of all, finding just the right words to express the spirit of our imprisonment and the thoughts and resolutions which it had brought. He had hardly finished his last prayer when the door opened and two evil-looking men in civilian clothes came in and said: “Prisoner Bonhoeffer, get ready to come with us.” Those words “come with us"—for all prisoners they had come to mean one thing only—the scaffold. We bade him good-bye—he drew me aside—"This is the end,” he said. “For me, the beginning of life.”

A doctor who witnessed the hanging said this:  In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”

Remember the words of apostle Paul:  My old self has been crucified with Christ.[e] It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”  

Here are the words Bonhoeffer put on paper just a few years before this event: 

“Costly grace is the grace of Christian discipleship. It is costly because it calls us to follow. It is costly because it costs our very lives. It is costly because it condemns sin. It is grace because when we are called to follow, the call is to follow Jesus. It is grace because although it costs our life, it is also the source of the only true and complete life. And it is grace because, although it condemns the sin, it justifies the sinner.”

Costly grace calls each one of us to come follow Jesus.  Don’t settle for a life of just being a church-goer.  Come, follow, Jesus. 

The same question haunts at the end of this service – as it did at the beginning.  When we are faced with a moral, ethical and spiritual decision – like the one faced by Valjean or Bonhoeffer – what will you do?

It begins with a simple decision that leads to a life of joy – Choose to follow Jesus!  Amen.