OT: Genesis 12:1-9
NT: Romans 4:13-end
Gospel: Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
Responding to God’s grace
I know that some of the children here are in the middle of their GCSE’s Grace and Rebecca, and we hope that they do their best I think Linda has said that by this week the worst is over. I am sure it has been a stressful time in their households, for parents and for those who are teachers too. I remember taking my exams, and some fo you will remember your children going through them too. It is great to think that the children have reached this level of maturity to take GCSE’s – learning things that we never could understand – I remember the day when my Dad said – I cannot help you with your Maths, it is beyond me. Dad worked with statistics all his life, and could help at first, but got to the point where all he could do was stand back and encourage – I am sure that is how many parent’s feel, and I know that there is a certain pride in what the children have achieved. Some children will achieve very good grades and go on to further education, some may not do so, all that matters is that they make the best of what they have.
Now cast your mind back to the day you first either went to school, or took your children to school, how did you feel – a great sense of apprehension – you had to leave your child in the hands of others – you had to admit that their education is better served by others teaching them. It is a hard thing to do, but it is necessary. Education is a process of many steps, lots of foundation work, then lots of building blocks, building upon building, until at last the children are ready (hopefully) to take GCSE’s A levels degrees and beyond. Now, suppose that I turned up at your child’s first day at school and presented them with the GCSE paper in English and Mathematics that Grace and Rebecca have just been sitting. Suppose I said, this is the sort of thing that your child will be aiming at in 11 years time. You would be scared, and very worried – how on earth is my child going to learn all that? Thankfully that is not the way that Education works. You get told what you need to know – every term now we get a summary of the learning goals for Matthew and Hannah – what they will be learning, what the school expects at the end of the term – one stage at a time, but it is very clear that the school is working to a plan, albeit that the plan is not revealed to the children or the parents until they need to know it – it is a matter of trust – trust that the school knows what it is doing, the education process will work, they will take account of the individual needs of a child, and that over time, the child will learn to the best of their ability, if they co-operate with the process.
How are children chosen for education – on their merits at 4? I know we do have testing in schools and that is quite a controversial subject at the moment, but testing is only to provide benchmarks and guidance as to how it is going. There is no testing of ability at 4, all have a right to free education up to the age of 16 or beyond. It is not even that you are tested at 11 to see whether you can go on to senior school, there may be tests to see which school, or streaming into different ability sets to aid the education process when you are there, but you have a right to go forward in education at least until 16.
You are not chosen for education up to the age of 16 on the basis of merit, or on what you have done, or on how well you respond to education, you are just chosen because of who you are – a child living in this country. Here is nothing a child has to do to earn the right to education – that right has already been won for you by campaigners and politicians and it is now enshrined in Law – the 1944 Education Act, and other legislation. Education is in one sense a gift that comes to all, not something we have to earn by our own efforts.
Now let us think for a moment about our lives – did we ask to be born? No. Did we do anything to deserve to be born. No. Did we have to earn our parent’s love? No. Of course we have to try to learn from pour parents and do what they say, as they guide us, but their love is not conditional upon our obedience is it? No. Love and acceptance as part of the family is the parents’ gift to their children.
Now we are children of God. God has loved us from the beginning, we are created in love for relationship with Him. As the psalmist says,
Ps 139:14-15
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your 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.
The love of God freely given before we were born – do we earn that love? No. Is that love ever going to be dependent on what we do? No. It is just there. It is God’s choice of us based on his love. As Paul writes in Ephesians 1:4 he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.
God’s love and his choice of us, purely on his love that comes before anything we do. This choice of us can be summed up in one word – what is that word? It’s Grace
Grace; grace means God’s acceptance of us, purely on his unmerited favour, just as a child is accepted by its parents on its unmerited favour. It is loved because it is one of the family. Our response to that love and grace is one of joyful obedience, but discussion of that response is perhaps for another day. What I want you all to realise and get hold of today is that you are accepted and loved by God by grace. He loves you – he loves you- he loves you. You are special to God, you are unique, and there will never be another like you, and you have been created for a purpose and a plan that God has just for you. We’ll come to the plan a bit later, but for the moment, just hold on to the fact of God’s grace.
Maybe you are saying to yourself, but I’m not good enough for that. You are in one sense right – you are not, neither am I, neither is anyone. The bible makes that clear – In Romans (3:23) Paul writes
For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; That is what sin means – missing the mark, missing the target – we all have every one of us, there is no hope for us if we are to be accepted on our merits. But thanks be to God, we are not accepted by God on our merits, but on the merits of Jesus Christ who has died for us – the passage goes on “they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,”
Accepted by grace as a gift, God takes the initiative – he makes our acceptance his problem not ours – we are accepted because of all that Jesus Christ ahs done for us on the cross – in dying in our place for our sins, by his resurrection from the dead, showing the victory over sin, we are accepted by the unmerited favour of God in Christ. The technical term is prevenient grace – in Latin pre means before, venio means to come- prevenient grace is grace that comes before anything we can do to deserve it.
Do you understand this – because it is very important that you do. We can look at our Christian lives, rather like the child at their first day at school, wondering how we are ever going to pass our GCSE Maths paper. I’ll never be able to do it, I will just fail, and then we can think, my teacher won’t like me if I do not succeed, If I do not try, then I cannot fail. We are sometimes put off trying by the fear of failure, the fear of rejection. We can be like that in our Christian lives can’t we when we encounter something we do not quite understand, or know about, or we see someone doing something and we say, well I could never do that, pray in public, preach, what happens if I failed? We have to be very clear that our acceptance in the Christian life is not on what we do, but on who we are in Christ, beloved children of God. We are called to a life of growing in the Christian faith, to a life of maturity as Paul puts it, or fruitfulness – you are the vine we are the branches – then we’ll grow in your love then we’ll go in your name. Our growth is all of grace, and in cooperating with our teacher – Jesus, through the Holy Spirit.
How were you called into a life of faith? Was it on your merits? On your intellectual gifts? On your good works? NO, it was on God’s grace wasn’t it?
Look at our bible readings today – Abraham called to a life of faith, of obedience, and God makes a covenant with him.
1 Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
Where is the part of this passage that Says that Abraham deserved this? It is not there. It was God’s grace. This what Paul is writing about in our second reading
13 For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith.
14 If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void.
15 For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.
16 For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us,
Do you believe in God – do you deserve this faith, do deserve the love of God? Yes or No? No. Then you and I are descendants of Abraham who did not deserve his faith, but responded in faith to God’s love and grace. The promise rests on grace
Now what does this mean for us? Does this mean that because it is all of grace that we can just sit back and rest? No it does not – to use our schools analogy again, your have the right to a free education, but to get the best out of it you have to engage with the process. Everyone has that right, but only those who co-operate with it will benefit. If you decide that having learned to read and write and add up, ( 3 R’s) that is all you are ever going to learn, then there is very little any teacher can do with you. They can say to you – there is a whole world of learning out there for you, if only you can apply yourself to it, but they cannot make a child learn. Little by little as a child grows up and goes through school, there will be lots of lessons and experiences which give the child confidence to go on to the next step, until eventually they are ready to take their GCSE’s, A levels, degrees, or whatever. And from there of course, enter the world of work to make the best use of the talents and gifts that they have. It is the same in the Christian life too. We are all learners. We have all been accepted and loved by grace, but God then wants us to co-operate with Him in learning how to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, to grow in our relationship with Him. This is a gradual process, of learning, of receiving the teaching, with the Holy Spirit our guide , helping us to understand the bible, leading us in prayer, guiding us in our choices in life. We have other teachers too – in the church, our brothers and sisters in Christ, and dare I say it, your vicar and the preachers in our church. We in leadership are here to serve you, but we are also here to teach – this is what God has placed us here to do, as well as pastor, and all the other things. Your growth in the Christian life will depend on how well you co-operate with the process, just as a child’s process in education will depend on how well they co-operate with the process. We can at any time say – I do not want to grow any more, just as a child has the right to leave school at 16 and come out of education, but as many are saying now, this is a tragedy for some- the Government are trying to make it illegal to leave education before 18 – whether or not this is right in practice, we can only applaud the sentiments behind it. We should never stop learning or growing in our Christian lives. We are accepted and loved by grace, but our growth depends on our response- our co-operation with the Holy Spirit in our relationship with Jesus. In our gospel reading Matthew the tax collector was chosen by grace, not on merit – but he was then called to respond as a disciple of Jesus – come follow me.
What does this mean for us now here today? I believe it means that as Christians we have to hold these two matters of grace and response in tension. We have to be fully committed to the understanding of grace – God’s choice of us, purely on his love. But then we have to be committed to our response to that grace – a commitment to a life of discipleship, a life of learning, a life of obedience and trust, a life of service. Paul puts it like this, “we love, because He first loved us.”
We can look at the life of Jesus, the life of the great saints, the lives of Christians we know about and think_ wow, I’ll never be like that. And you are right, you won’t. But that is not what God wants for you, He has called you by grace to be you. And he want you as you, to grow and become the Christian he wants you to be. We could remain as children – like the 4 year old who looks at a GCSE paper and says this is not for me, I’ll never get to this level. This is of course not the right attitude – we must instead commit ourselves to the process of learning and discipleship and trust that God will enable us and teach us to do the work He has called us to do. His gift is grace – our response is co-operation and trust
So how will you respond to God’s grace in Jesus. Thanksgiving, yes for his glorious grace, unmerited favour, but then think on our response- the call to discipleship.
YOU ARE THE VINE, We are the branches, Keep us abiding in You.
You are the Vine, We are the branches, Keep us abiding in You.
Then we’ll grow in Your love, Then we’ll go in Your name,
That the world will surely know That You have power to heal and to save.
O dearly, dearly has He loved!
And we must love Him too,
And trust in His redeeming blood,
And try His works to do.
