Showing Grace and Love

SHOWING GRACE AND LOVE Romans 5:6-8Â Theme of the Month Intimacy and Family

Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Sharp

Lead Pastor, English Congregation Vancouver Chinese Baptist Church, Vancouver, British Columbia

Sunday Sermon for 20 June 2010

Scripture Passage Romans 5:6-8

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

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Sue Monk Kidd is a Christian story-teller and writer on the spiritual life. In one of her books she relates a time when she was telling the story of Jonah to her six-year-old Vacation Bible School class, and the children were really getting into the discussion about how they would manage to escape if swallowed like Jonah. “I’d start a fire in the whale’s stomach, and he’d cough me out!” declared one fellow, no doubt remembering the scene from Pinocchio.

“I’d stomp on his tongue till he spit me out,” said another. The suggestions grew wilder by the minute. Suddenly, one little girl spoke up: “I’d call my daddy and wait till he got me out.”

Now there’s a child who is very fortunate. She has learned to trust her dad.

One author has listed some ways to know if you are a father: • You know you’re a father if you find a Mutant Ninja Turtle in your briefcase, and you take it around the office for “Show and Tell.”

• You know you’re a father if you find a clean house when you come home from work and think you must be in the wrong one.

• You know you’re a father when you take a client to lunch and automatically ask for a booster seat.

• You know you’re a father when you put your wife in the back seat and fasten her seat belt for her.

• You know you’re a father when you keep fighting the urge to wipe somebody’s mouth with your shirttail.

(Sylvia Harney, Every Time I Go Home I Break Out In Relatives. Brentwood, Tennessee: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers, Inc., 1990, p. 130.)

This is Father’s Day. Never has there been a time when Christian Dads were needed more than today. So we honor our Dads. And dads, we are also reminded of our privilege and responsibilities as fathers.

Yet it isn’t easy being a dad. In an article in Newsweek, journalist Kenneth L. Woodward has this to say about fatherhood: “These are tough times to be a father. The media are full of stories about abusive fathers, fatherless children and deadbeat dads--and about New Fathers who are trying to do better. But in general this is an age when fathers get little respect,...” (Newsweek, June 17, 1996, p.75) Maybe that is why Father’s Day is so important. It is a yearly reminder that with all the bad press and blame being heaped on fathers, there are some good ones out there and so on Father’s day, we honor our Dads. We thank them for our life and for the love and care they have shown us.

And if our experience with our dad has been less than that, we are reminded of our need to forgive. And at the same time we take a look at our own fathering skills and influence.

So Dads how are you doing? What does the Bible and our Christian faith have to say about being a father?

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We could say a great deal, but we might start with the realization that at the heart of the Biblical story is the relationship between God and humankind. And while there are many images of God in the Bible, including God as mother-like which we looked at last month in the text from Isaiah 66:13, the dominant image the New Testament gives us is a picture of God as a loving Father.

And at the same time, we have a picture of humanity as a changeable, stubborn, headstrong, pushing the limits of their independence and free-will, strong-willed, rebellious child. And the place where this self-assertiveness and independence and that divine love intersect is the cross of Christ. The cross is a reminder that love, real love often reveals itself in the midst of pain. And this is so often the experience of parents.

As we relate this to Fathers (and mothers), we might start by saying that there is probably no greater stress or pain that a parent can experience than to be concerned about their child or their young person. They may not all be wayward, although some of us as parents may have gone through that experience with our children. But some of us know or will know that there’s no more gripping fear than the fear you feel as you wait for the telephone to ring when you know that your young person may be at risk. And young people today live in a world of risk.

If the statistics are to be believed, they are frightening.

Nearly a million teenage girls become pregnant each year; the suicide rate for teens has doubled in the past 30 years; and while violent crime among adults seems to be decreasing, teenage arrests have increased by 3,000 percent since 1950; and the leading cause of death among 15-19 year old minority youths is murder. Almost half a million students are dropping out of High School every year, and perhaps twice that figure are being allowed to graduate although they can scarcely read and don’t have the basic skills to make it in the world.

And then there is a lot of self-abuse, self-loathing, even hatred. Whether it is smoking, drugs, alcohol or sex, it is a risky world out there without getting in to all the new dangers opened up by the web and social-networking.

And although I think that most of our youth don’t fit the demographic for most of these statistics, it is still clear that it’s a scary world out there for young people; and it’s a scary world if you are a parent of a young person. Many times, it’s a matter of waiting and being concerned. You worry because the damage young people can do to themselves and others can have long-term, lifechanging effects. It’s especially hard when you really love your children. We know that real love makes us vulnerable and with that vulnerability often comes pain. Loving parents would gladly lay down their life for their son or daughter. But that is not usually an option. You can’t substitute your life for theirs. You can teach them, pray for them, guide them, try to be there for them, but they are out there on their own. And so you wait. Just like God waits.

God, Jesus tells us, is like a father of a boy who takes his inheritance to a far country and spends it in riotous living. Back home his father waits and worries, paces the floor, hoping and praying.

There’s nothing else that can be done except wait. God is a waiting parent, Jesus told us, waiting for his stubborn, I’ll-do-it-myself-thank you child to come home.

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A woman lay dying of AIDS. The visiting priest tried to comfort her, but to no avail. “I’m lost, “she said, “I ruined my life and every life around me. Now I go painfully to hell. There is no hope for me.”

The priest saw a framed picture of a pretty girl on the dresser. “Who is this?” he asked. The woman brightened. “She is my daughter, the one beautiful thing in my life.”

“And would you help her if she was in trouble, or made a mistake? Would you forgive her? Would you still love her?” asked the priest.

“Of course I would!” cried the woman, “I would do anything for her! Why do you ask such a question?”

“Because I want you to know,” said the priest, “that God has a picture of you on His dresser.”

Do we believe that? That God loves us, even if we mess up our life? Do we believe that God is there, ready to forgive and receive us when we turn to him?

I read of a man who frequently dreamed that God ran after him with a paper in his hand. All his life he ran from God, because he believed that paper contained the warrant for his arrest. After accepting Christ as his savior and committing himself to Christ as the Lord and the focus of his life, the man said that now, looking back on his dream, he realized the paper wasn’t a warrant for his arrest, but a pardon for his sins. It depends on what kind of God you have. The God Jesus revealed to us is a God who patiently waits for his wayward children to come home.

A lot of damage can occur in a family. Parents can be hurt. Children can be hurt. But there is always hope where forgiveness is present. John Aurelio, in his book Colors! (Crossroads;1993, p.

133), gives us a beautiful picture of the forgiveness of God. It’s an imaginative story based on the first chapters of the book of Genesis.

On the sixth day, God created Adam and Eve. On the seventh day, as God was resting, they asked Him if he would give them something special to commemorate their birthday. So God reached into his treasure chest and took out a sacred coin. Written on it was the word “love.”

On the eighth day, Adam and Eve sinned. As they left the Garden of Eden, they asked God for an assurance that He would not abandon them.

“You have the coin,” he said.

“But, the coin says love,” they answered. “We have lost love. How will we ever find it again?”

“Turn the coin over,” God said.

On the other side of the coin was written the word “forgiveness”.

Aurelio goes on to say that there is no love without forgiveness and no forgiveness without love.

They are the two sides of the same coin.

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From time to time we hear of a father who has said to a child, “You are no longer my child.” But that can’t happen with God. I hope it doesn’t happen with any of us who are parents. Where love dwells, there must be forgiveness. And that includes fathers as a well as mothers. And sometimes it is harder for fathers to forgive and express that forgiveness because of the way we have been brought up or trained or shaped/distorted by a cultural pattern that sees love and forgiveness and caring and showing our caring as weak and unmanly. But that isn’t Christian. If you are a follower of Jesus you are to love as he loved and that means being vulnerable, forgiving, caring.

And as 1 John says—If that is how God loves us, that is how we should love one another. And fathers, you can begin to help your children learn this by modeling it before them in the home.

James W. Moore tells about a little boy who got into trouble one day some years ago. His name was David Leroy Dykes. He grew up in a small town near the Sabine River in Louisiana. His dad, who owned the grocery store in that little town, had saved money for years, and the family had just purchased a brand new 1928 Buick. It was their prize possession. Even though David was only eleven years old at the time, he loved to drive the car around in the yard. He would move it from one shady spot to the next in the yard of the old home place.

One morning, David’s mother announced that she needed to take some clothes to the cleaners.

“I’ll move the car around front for you, Mom,” said David, and then, quick as a flash, he was out the door before his mom could protest. David was so excited as he rushed to bring the car out of the garage that he forgot to close the car door, and as he backed out, the open door smacked against the garage, the door ripped completely off and fell with a sickening thud to the ground!

Can you imagine the scene? David had knocked the door off their brand new car! His mother was not happy!

David’s dad arrived home just in time for supper. David chose not to eat that night. Somehow, he just didn’t have any appetite. Instead, he stood sheepishly out of sight, just outside the door of the kitchen, and listened as his mother told his dad what had happened. David was braced and ready, expecting the worst; but to his amazement he was surprised by his father’s response: “Well, you’re right, Ruby. The car is precious to me, but not as precious as David. Just as you said, he didn’t mean to do it. He was trying to help. We can get the car fixed. The main thing is that no one got hurt. He’s our son, and he must feel awful right about now. We just need to love him through this.”

You might like to know what happened to David. He grew up to become one of the great preachers of the 20th century, Dr. D. L. Dykes. When Dr. Dykes used to reminisce about that episode, he said: “Mom interceded for me, and Dad forgave me. The way my parents responded that day touched me more deeply than I could ever describe. I learned from them that day something of what God is like. I learned from them that day the meaning of grace—and it is, indeed, amazing.” (Some Things Are Too Good Not To Be True, Nashville: Dimensions for Living, 1994) Let me ask you: Do your children know about amazing grace because they have experienced it in your family?

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As I think about this story, it shows not only love and grace, but also understanding and sensitivity. Do you know how your children feel? What pains them? Troubles them? Concerns them? Are they learning from you about grace and love, understanding and forgiveness, openness and acceptance?

There is no greater challenge than being a parent. And if you are estranged or separated or living in tension with your child it is a painful challenge. No feeling is as helpless as that one. If it is your fault, you need to take the initiative to seek reconciliation.

We wait, and we pray, and if necessary, we forgive. And out of it all, we discover on a smaller scale what God goes through with each of us. The Apostle Paul summed it up in our lesson for today: “6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8, TNIV) That sums it all up—God’s love for us. Grace—Amazing grace. A Father’s love.

Reflection Questions 1. Do you think that it is tough be a father today? If so, why? What resources are available to help fathers?

2. What was/is your experience with your father like? In what ways can you thank God for him? If your relationship with your father was/is less than ideal, in what ways can you pray for him? Forgive him?

3. Do you think that young people live in a riskier world than you did when you were growing up? If you are a young person, what challenges, dangers, difficulties do you face?

4. Can you relate a time when all you felt like you could do for your child was to wait and pray? How did it turn out?

5. Do you feel that you really believe that God loves you, even if you mess up your life?

6. What are your thoughts about John Aurelio’s story of Adam and Eve? Do you agree that there is no real love without forgiveness and no forgiveness without love? Have you experienced that in your life?

7. If you are a parent, do you feel that you know how your children feel? What pains them? Troubles them? Concerns them? If you are a young person, do you feel that your parents understand how you feel? What are you doing to help them understand?

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8. If you are a parent, do you feel that your children are learning about grace and love, understanding and forgiveness, openness and acceptance from you and your household? If you are a young person do you feel that you are learning about grace and love, understanding and forgiveness, openness and acceptance from your parents and home life?

9. What questions, thoughts, reactions do you have about this sermon?

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