SERMON                                                                                                        “Grace in Every Place”

Fourth sermon in a series,

titled, “The Ragamuffin Gospel”

1.       God’s very nature is to SHOW LOVE            .                                                       (2)

2.       Romans 8:32 —  He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will
he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?                               (3-4)

3.       God’s love is found, more than anywhere else, in the one who DIES FOR

      ANOTHER.  (see John 15:13)                                                                              (5)

4.       Our true response of worship is this:  SERVICE TO OTHERS.                             (6-8)

Excerpts from The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning
Multnomah Publishers

1)   The deeper we grow in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the poorer we become—the more we realize that everything in life is a gift.  The tenor of our lives becomes one of humble and joyful thanksgiving.

2)   We get so preoccupied with ourselves, the words we speak, the plans and projects we conceive that we become immune to the glory of creation.  We barely notice the cloud passing over the moon or the dewdrops clinging to the rose leaves.  The ice on the pond comes and goes.  The wild blackberries ripen and wither.  The blackbird nests outside our bedroom window.  We don’t see her …

      Our world is saturated with grace, and the lurking presence of God is revealed not only in spirit but in matter—in a deer leaping across a meadow, in the flight of an eagle, in fire and water, in a rainbow after a summer storm, in a gentle doe streaking through a forest, in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, in a child licking a chocolate ice cream cone, in a woman with windblown hair.  God intended for us to discover His loving presence in the world around us …

      For the eyes of faith, every created thing manifests the grace and providence of Abba.

3)   In his book, The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner writes:  “For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind that keeps the whole show going, but that there is a God right here in the thick of our day-by-day lives who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars but in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery of the world.  It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want but the experience of God’s presence.  That is the miracle we are really after, and that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get.”

      … How do we live in the presence of the living God?  In wonder, amazed by the traces of God all around us.

4)   We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground …

      Let us ask God for the gift He gave to an unforgettable rabbi, Joshua Abraham Heschel:  “Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder.  Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of Your universe.  Delight me to see how Your Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not His, to the Father through the features of men’s faces.  Each day enrapture me with Your marvelous things without number.  I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I ask only to share in the wonder of it all.”

5)   Our response to the love of Jesus demands trust.  Do we rely on our resume or the gospel of grace?  How do we cope with failure?  “Grace tells us that we are accepted just as we are.  We may not be the kind of people we want to be, we may be a long way from our goals, we may have more failures than achievements, we may not be wealthy or powerful or spiritual, we may not even be happy, but we are nonetheless accepted by God, held in his hands.  Such is his promise to us in Jesus Christ, a promise we can trust.”

6)   Jesus is saying there is a place for the impulsive and spontaneous, the lavish and impractical, the heroic and extraordinary, the unrestrained and incalculable bursts of generosity that cry out:  “It is right to give you thanks and praise.”  Yet, our gratitude to Jesus is for the most part our unsung service to those around us.  “I tell you solemnly, insofar as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).

      Though Christ no longer visibly moves among us, we minister to Him in the ragamuffins within reach.  Each encounter with a brother or sister is a mysterious encounter with Jesus Himself …… Quite simply, our deep gratitude to Jesus Christ is manifested neither in being chaste, honest, sober and respectable, nor in church-going, Bible-toting and Psalm-singing, but in our deep and delicate respect for one another.

7)   Worship is not only hypocritical but absolutely meaningless if it is not accompanied by love for other people; for in such a way it cannot possibly be a way of giving thanks to God.

8)   To evangelize a person is to say to him or her: you, too, are loved by God in the Lord Jesus.  And not only to say it but to really think it and relate it to the man or woman so they can sense it.  This is what it means to announce the Good News.  But that becomes possible only by offering the person your friendship; a friendship that is real, unselfish, without condescension, full of confidence, and profound esteem.

9)   Grazie, Signore, for Your lips twisted in love to accommodate my sinful self, for judging me not by my shabby good deeds but by Your love that is Your gift to me, for Your unbearable forgiveness and infinite patience with me, for other people who have greater gifts than mine, and for the honesty to acknowledge that I am a ragamuffin.  When the final curtain falls and You summon me home, may my last whispered word on earth be the wholehearted cry, “Grazie, Signore.”