After 30 years in the ministry, I think I finally get it now. For years I have been trying to figure out why it takes two years to teach confirmation students the meaning of grace. For, no matter how many times you write the word grace on the chalk board and make them recite John 3:16 and Ephesians 2:8-9, when you ask them how we get into heaven the majority will say by being a good person. What I now get is that the Christian faith is counter cultural. What Jesus lived and taught is counter intuitive to what the culture they live in teaches them.

From day one, we learn that if we are a good little girl or boy our parents, grandparents, school teachers, scout leaders, professors, and employers will reward us, and if we misbehave we will be punished or at least not be rewarded. This kind of moral conditioning makes it terribly difficult to understand and to accept the gospel of grace that Jesus taught. It doesn’t add up. You mean that I could be a slacker and not keep my room clean, never do my homework or study for a test, get bad grades, and never go to college or get a good job, maybe even break the law and end up in jail, and God will still love me and accept me by grace? See what I mean? Even a third grader will tell you that this is not fair. There are two basic kinds of religion in the world: religions of merit and religions of grace. Religions of merit are the easiest for us to understand: we keep the rules, work hard, and God will reward us with happiness in this world and eternal life in the next. It’s all up to us; we have to earn enough merit badges and make a passing grade, and just like it is in school, we live in a constant state of anxiety, wondering if we have enough points to make the curve on Judgment Day.

The Apostle Paul was the poster child for the religion of merit. Judaism had started out as a religion of grace, but by the time Jesus came along, it had morphed into a religion of merit. The Ten Commandments had grown to over 450 rules and regulations. And the Pharisees were at the top of the heap, meticulous at keeping the rules. So Paul, at first, had nothing but contempt for Jesus’ followers who taught about forgiving enemies, going the extra mile, and turning the other cheek. After all, their leader had dined with sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes, people the law had forbidden rabbis to associate with because they were unclean and unfit to enter the temple and the synagogues. So Paul led the persecution against the early Christians. But a funny thing happened on the way to Damascus: Paul, whose given name was Saul, was knocked to his knees and blinded by a bright light. And the risen Christ appeared to him and changed his whole way of looking at the world and at God. When Saul’s eyes healed a few weeks later, he converted, was baptized and had received a new set of eyes – and a new name, Paul. And for the first time in his life, he discovered the meaning of grace. And he went on to establish churches throughout the northern Mediterranean basin and wrote several letters that shouted from the roof tops that we are saved by grace through faith, not by works lest anyone should boast. Saul of Tarsus, who had been raised on the religion of merit, became Paul the missionary to the Gentiles, who became the world’s greatest proponent of the religion of grace.

II

You want to know what grace is. Grace is when you wreck your father’s new car and when he walks through the door in the emergency room he runs over and hugs you and asks you if you are alright, instead of giving you a lecture about safe driving. When I was sixteen and borrowed my father’s car for the first time to go to the prom and locked the keys in the trunk and had to call my father at 12:30 in the morning, I knew that he wasn’t going to be happy, but I also knew that he would get out of bed and come bail me out, because he loved me and that love was not conditional on my behavior. Thanks be to God. That’s what grace is. Can I get an amen to that?

I know that I sometimes put too much pressure on my daughters to make good grades in school. But as God as my witness, I would love them just the same if they didn’t. I love them because they are my daughters, not because they behave. That’s grace. And so the big problem for Christians who believe in a God of grace, a God who loves us unconditionally is “why be good if God is gracious?” The Christians in Corinth asked Paul that question. They essentially said, “If God is gracious and likes to forgive sins, and we are human and like to sin, then why don’t we just keep sinning so God can keep forgiving. It’s good work if you can get it.

Paul went apoplectic when he heard that. He said that if they thought like that then they were about as far away from understanding grace as the Duke football team is from a winning season. Sorry Laird. And so this is how our confirmation class has figured out a good answer to the Corinthians’ question, why be good if God is gracious. First of all, we start with God; a good place to begin. According to the Bible, God is merciful and gracious and slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love (Ps. 103). He loves us like a father or mother loves their children, which is what we are. In fact, God loves us so much that created us as human beings with a mind, a heart, and human freedom, instead of robots programmed to do nothing but good. For, as orderly and predictable as robots are, they are not capable of love. And that is what God created us for: loving relationships with God and one another.

So, when sin entered the world through the first humans selfishly exercising their God-given freedom, as we saw last week in Adam’s Apple, so beautifully presented by our elementary students, instead of turning his back on his creatures, God lovingly and generously decided to reach out through the prophets and eventually and decisively through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and forgive them. Now, let’s see; so far, we have God and Grace. And since God has been so gracious to us and forgiven us for our sins through Christ, the question is, how should we feel? When someone you love gives you a really nice gift for Christmas or your birthday, how does that make you feel? It is another word that begins with G. That’s right: grateful. When people love us and do nice things for us, we are filled with gratitude. It is almost an involuntary response. I once preached a sermon on stewardship where I said that the attitude of gratitude is the bedrock of good stewardship. I thought that was kind of a catchy phrase. This week I coined another catchy word that is a synonym for the attitude of gratitude; it is gratitudinous. Someone who is gratitudinous is someone who is deeply grateful for God’s unconditional gift of grace. Do you like it? I think it might be an acquired taste.

III

But all of this begs the question, how, then, do we demonstrate that gratitude? We live a life of goodness, as a way of expressing our gratitude to God. I suppose we could give God gifts to express our gratitude. But what do you give someone who has everything? To someone who created the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars. I read once that a son was so grateful for how much his father had done for him that he asked his father how he could ever thank him. The father said, you can repay me by passing it on. I.e. love others as he had loved him. Sound familiar? Jesus made it plain that the best way we could ever express our gratitude for God’s gracious gift was to live a life of goodness, modeled after the life Jesus had lived. So there we have it. Why be good if God is gracious? Because it is the best way we can show our gratitude for the incredible gift of forgiveness God has given us. Four G’s: God, Grace, Gratitude, and Goodness. And the more grace we receive, the closer we grow to God and greater we want to do things pleasing to God.

When we start out in life we are quite selfish, preoccupied with our own safety, health, education, and advancement in the world. But when we encounter the grace of God and enter into a saving, loving relationship with God, we are transformed and we begin to find ourselves growing less and less selfish and more and more otherish. There, I’ve created another new word. And that is where our final passage in Matthew comes in. The lawyer wanted to know from Jesus which of all of God’s commandments was the greatest. And in good rabbinic fashion Jesus gave him two answers; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, your sold, and you mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Sounds rather otherish doesn’t’ it? You and I have been created so that we find our greatest meaning and joy in life in love. Paul said God gives us three great gifts: faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. Jesus told his disciples in the Upper Room, “This new commandment I leave you: that you love one another, just as I have loved you.”

Confirmands, if you remember nothing of what I have said today or what we have taught you the past two years in class, remember this: You are a child of God; God loves you with an unconditional love, a love that you cannot earn, buy, or steal --- a love that you can only receive through faith. Also remember that no matter where you go or what you do, that you can always come back here and find a friend, for this is your spiritual home, and we love you. We have helped raise you in the faith, and now we are proud as we can be that you are ready to stand before us and profess your faith and join us. You are gift to us and to God’s world. May God bless and keep you now and forever. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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