Grace - A Meditation on the Attribute of God for the Wesley Foundation

Grace is one of those things that I don’t think that I will ever fully understand in this life. Last time I preached at Wesley it was on the topic of justice, and I made the comment that we want justice for other people, but grace for ourselves. But as I reflect back on that comment, I’m not sure we even know what grace is even though we want it.

There are many stories told about grace. Karen Blixen in the mid 1900s wrote a story entitled “Babit’s Feast”. Its become a classic tale, even being made into a movie that you may have seen. The story goes something like this – Babette, a woman who had lost her husband and daughter to war, showed up on the front porch of two sisters who were well-off one evening, with a simple note reading, “Babette can cook.” The sisters didn’t have any money to pay the stranger, nor did they really want to try her cooking, for she was from a different country, but they decided to let Babette stay in exchange for doing chores around the house.

Time passed, and for 12 years Babette worked for the sisters. One day a letter came announcing that she had won 10,000 francs in the lottery of her home country. The sisters tried to be happy, but their hearts were heavy for they knew that Babette would be leaving soon.

This letter corresponded with the timing of the sisters planning a party to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of their Father’s birth. Babette came to them and said, that since she had never asked them for anything in all the years that she would like to ask them for one thing now – to cook them a French meal for the party. The sisters agreed.

Over the next few weeks lots of items arrived for the preparations. The day of the feast, the entire town arrive and all ate. After the dinner the sisters found Babette and thanked her for the meal, saying that they would miss her when she returned to France. Babette then told them that she would not be returning to France, for she had spent every part of her money on the feast.

It took me a long time to wrap my head around where the grace was in this story until I came to understand that grace comes from the Greek word “ charios” which means gift. Grace is a generous gift of goodness, kindness, salvation, or blessing, that we can never deserve. Babette spent every bit of her money on a feast for people who paid nothing for it. She gave everything for them.

God’s grace is even more lavish then the grace that Babette showered on the town’s people. God’s grace is infinite. Grace cannot be earned – it is free of charge and has no strings attached. The parable that shows that God’s grace is endless is the Parable of the Lost Son, also known as the Parable of God’s grace. Even if we turn our backs on God, God has still given us the ultimate gift – God’s very self in Jesus Christ. God also gives us other graces – the ability to know right from wrong, the ability to seek and receive forgiveness, the choice not to give us what we deserve, and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives to name a few. But like the Father in the passage God always welcomes us back, no matter what we’ve done. In this particular parable, the son treats the father about as horribly as one can – by requesting his inheritance now, he is essentially telling his father that he wished that he was dead now. Yet even though the son said this, disgracing his father, and then spent his father’s wealth on thing that were not honorable, the Father still welcomed him back. Not only welcomed him back, but rejoiced with a party. The son could not earn the grace and love of his father – they were freely lavished upon him, just as God’s grace and love is freely lavished upon us.

Even though we cannot earn God’s grace, we must try to respect it. Another way to say this is that we want to love lives that reflect God’s grace to others.

Some of you may know the story of John Newton, the man who wrote “Amazing Grace”. Newton owned slave ships in the 1700s. One day while making a journey with the salves, he came across a great storm that lead to his conversion. Following that, and as he penned the song about his experience, he decided that he could not keep God’s grace to himself while denying others their freedom, so he got out of the slave trading industry.

How have you experienced God’s grace in your life? And how are you showing God’s grace to others? Remember that nothing you have done can block you from God’s grace, and none of the grace you’ve received is yours to keep and not share.