Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
A long way from home, a long way from home.
I vividly remember the time when I first became aware that God loved me, God loved me just for who I was, not for who I could be or I should be.
I was a fairly anxious child, always trying to get things right and to do the right thing. In hindsight, I know now that perhaps just a little of that came from my parents being very busy and very worried about the world; and I caught that worry well and truly. I would cry myself to sleep most night worrying about all sorts of the things—the end of the world, whether I would be a better person tomorrow; and I didn’t really have a sense of being loved and feeling secure.
It was at an Easter Camp that somehow the message was given and I finally received it, that God loved me, not for the future and for my potential, but just because, just because I was me, a creature of God’s good creation.
It is the very nature of God to have grace, to be gracious, to offer God’s self generously and without reserve to the creation that God has so lovingly made. The very act of creation is an act of God’s grace.
Before we know anything about God, God has already been at work in our lives—creating us, forming us, shaping us.
In Psalm 139 (NRSV), we read:
13For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. 15My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
All things come from God; and everything we know has its origin in God.
The Psalmist is Psalm 8 (NRSV) wonders at God’s interest in human beings in the context of the wonder of creation:
1 You have set your glory above the heavens… 3When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; 4what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? 5Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour. 6You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet…
The word “grace” comes from the Greek word charis meaning gift. Grace is not simply carrying yourself with style; nor is it overlooking something that might otherwise have bothered you. Grace is the absolute, unprovoked, unconditional generosity of God. God creates us, God reconciles us and God makes us holy through absolutely no effort of our own. God is above all things, and beyond all things and precedes all things in God’s great works of creation, redemption and sanctification—making us, liberating us and sustaining us as God’s people.
Now just as we understand there to be only one God—in 3 persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer), so we also understand grace as one thing—the very nature of God—but we also think about it having 3 forms.
We think about God’s grace as being:
1. Prevenient (i.e. making and preparing the creation including us);
2. Justifying (i.e. accepting and saving God’s wandering creatures, us,); and
3. Sanctifying (i.e. sustaining and continuing to form us as the people of God for God’s mission in the world).
In this talk, we’re focussing on “prevenient grace”, but remember there’s only one grace, the very nature of God—we just like separating out the different ways in which that grace is at work in our lives.
The word “prevenient” comes from the Latin praevenire meaning “to come before”. God made us in God’s image for relationships. Just as the very nature of God is relational—to be in communion in 3 persons; so it is part of our very created nature to long and yearn for relationship. And the only satisfactory, fulfilling relationship is the one that we have with our Creator, with God. In this respect, we can talk about human beings as being “the glory of God’s creation” because we understand ourselves to be made particularly for relationship with God. And in that, we are also the hope of God’s creation—the hope of God being in relationship with the creation. God’s utter desire is to be in relationship with God’s creation and particularly with humankind, with us.
God’s grace comes before everything because grace is the very nature of God. Before we know God, God knew us. Before we fail God, God loved us. Before we honour God, God creates and awakens us for relationship. Everything we have comes from God; and everything we know has its origin in God. We have been gifted with all this through the graciousness of God—God’s utter, unprovoked, unconditional desire to share God’s self with us.
I remember when I was perhaps most fully able to accept just that—to accept that everything we have is God’s gift. I’d been working with a distance theological education college for nearly 7 years and the last 2 had been absolutely horrific in terms of workload—first as I oversaw the establishment of the postgraduate programs and then as I took on the role of Acting Principal. I was offered a preferential interview for the role of Principal and just before I was due to get on the plane to go to it, I realised that I could simply not sustain the intensity any longer. Taking on the role of Principal would be detrimental to my health. So I got on the plane to tell the interview panel that I couldn’t take on the role even if they decided they’d like me to continue. Of course, that left me with no place to go—I was looking at no job. I knew that I was too burnt out to even think about a congregational placement at that time; and I wasn’t really sure that anyone outside the church would want me in the state I was in. During the middle of that year, I had put in an application for the position of Lecturer in Liturgy & Theology at United Theological College in Sydney, more for my own sense of thinking about future possibilities than any real intuition that this was the job for me. I had already been knocked back on positions from the theological college in my own Synod. And then the position was offered, and Russell said to me, “This is the perfect role for you.” It was pure gift; and it helped me to understand those difficult final years at in my previous position as pure gift because of what they gave me; and it helped me to look back on so many parts of my life and say, “Even though I did not know it, God was there in my life and in the life God’s people.” Everything I have comes from God; and everything I enjoy or not, love or not, appreciate or not, has its origin in God.
Grace is utter good news for us. God created us. God loves us. God wants us to be in relationship so much that God is prepared to even enter God’s own creation in the person of Jesus (but that’s for another talk and someone else to tell you about). As creatures made in God’s image by God, we too are literally programmed for relationship—it’s in our “DNA” as human beings. And we are particularly created for relationship with God who will do all that God can to enable that relationship—all that God can except taking away our free will, our free decision to be in relationship with God. God will never force God’s self on us, because coerced or forced relationship is not relationship at all. God treats us with utter respect as unique and independent beings, despite the fact that God created us especially for God.
And this is God’s covenant with us. God created us for relationship. God promises us to always be open for and indeed enabling our relationship with God.
We are not alone,
we live in God’s world.
We believe in God:
who has created and is creating,
who has come in Jesus,
the Word made flesh,
to reconcile and make new,
who works in us and others
by the Spirit.
We trust in God.
We are called to be the Church:
to celebrate God’s presence,
to live with respect in Creation,
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus,
crucified and risen,
our judge and our hope.
In life, in death, in life beyond death,
God is with us. We are not alone.
Thanks be to God.
(The United Church of Canada, General Council 1968, alt. 1998)
God’s covenant with us begins in creation; is present throughout human history, fully revealed in Jesus Christ; and present with us now through the work of the Holy Spirit. It is utter, unprovoked, unconditional gift—the eternal nature of God—God’s grace.
So, where do we get this wonderful gift? It’s not ours to buy or solicit, to beg or bargain for. God’s grace is fully revealed in the unique revelation of Jesus Christ, but it’s always with us; it’s encoded in our nature as God’s created beings, God’s creatures. And there are times when we just might catch a glimpse of just a slice of it as we confront the wonder of God’s good creation in the cycle of the seasons, of planting and growing and harvesting. And there are other times when we just might catch a glimpse of just a bit of it as we participate in Christian community, in the body of Christ, caring with and for each other. And there also may be those times when we are comforted, or challenged, or changed and we will know that it is God at work in our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit, working personally in us and interpersonally through others.
But it will never be something that we think we have brought about. It will never be something that we think we’ve earned or deserve. It will never be because of something that we could or should be. It will always be because of who we are and whose we are: God’s much loved, much sought, fragile, frail, glorious creatures—the ones that God wants so much to be in relationship with.
But mostly, of course, we will only recognise this truth in hindsight, as we look back on our lives and discover that God was there all along, even though we did not know it.
An anonymous writer in the Methodist tradition in the late 19th century expressed it this way:
I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew
he moved my soul to seek him, seeking me.
It was not I that found, O Saviour true;
no I was found of thee.
Thou didst reach forth they hand and mine enfold;
I walked and sank not on the storm-vexed sea.
‘Twas not so much that I on thee took hold,
as thou, dear Lord, on me.
I find, I walk, I love, but oh, the whole
Of love is but my answer, Lord, to thee!
For thou wert long beforehand with my soul;
Always thou lovedst me.
The only question left is “What is your response?” to this previous, gracious gift.
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