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Grace - a buzz word used by churches. Grace - a word with deep theological meaning on which our understanding of God is built. Grace - a word that very few of us truly understand. For the next three weeks we are going to be talking about grace, the way John Wesley did. This week we start with prevenient grace - the grace that comes before.
As United Methodists, believe that before we knew God that God has gone before us to prepare a path to the Divine. This initial grace is referred to as prevenient grace. Prevenient grace stirs in us the desire to repent, or turn around a new direction. Theologian Belton Joyner writes, “because prevenient grace from God moves us to repent, this repentance is not our good works, but God’s gracious activity in us.”. Grace is a gift that leads us to repentance. Repentance involves the realization that we cannot save ourselves as we experience sorrow for our sin. As a result of this realization repentance leads us to seek God’s help and restoration.
While some people believe that God is not involved in our daily lives, grace stands in contrast to that. Grace stands to testify that God has the plan and power to save us from ourselves. Prevenient grace takes that thought one step further - saying it is God who saves us, even when we don’t even realize that we are sinful or in need of God. In fact, we can do nothing to make God show us grace - its not because of who we are or anything we’ve done - its by God alone.
Paul understood prevenient grace, even if he never uttered that exact word. In the letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul writes that God loved us even when we were dead; it was God’s grace that saved us. Paul wasn’t talking about being physically dead, but spiritually dead. We see this every day, inside the church and out, when people walk around like the living dead - not fully alive in the love of Christ. These folks go through the motions of living, but haven’t realized yet, or not living like, God’s grace sustains them. That God’s grace is open to every sinner, even before they realize what exactly they are in need of.
Some of you know that I used to work at a women’s shelter. As one of the workers on an evening shift, it was not uncommon for women to show up at the door, a trash bag of possessions in one hand and a child’s hand in the other. Some of those women had been beaten, bruises still fresh and life sucked from their eyes. The first thing we did was treat them with dignity, showing them to their room, letting them settle in, the second thing we did was tell them about God’s love, with our words and actions. We did this because we firmly believed in a philosophy that became popular later through one of my favorite charities, Thistle Farm. Thistle Farm rescues women off of the street who have been living through selling their bodies and feeding themselves drugs to forget the shame of it all. Thistle Farms, rescues them, by giving them a place to live, restoring their dignity, and a job that heals. Because Thistle Farm, as did the women’s shelter I worked at, believes that Love Heals. Not our love, but the love of God. The love that is seen in a grace that pursues us, even when we think we are unlovable. A love that pursues every single one of us, until we realize what a gift it truly is. A grace that comes before a decision to accept Jesus. A grace that comes before we even breathe our first breath in this world.
For too long we have been living into the delusion that we can make it on our own - that we can make plans for life and make them happen. But the truth is, we can’t. Plans fail every day. Resolutions quickly fade after they are made. There is the old adage, “We make plans and God laughs.” But that’s not true. That’s not the healing love of God. No, we make plan and God gives us a gift instead. The gift of grace.
That’s a hard lesson for me to swallow as a planner, who grew up with a mother who was always early, and if you weren’t early you weren’t on time. But my plans, down to every last detail, may not be the best that God has in mind for me. They may not honor God or seem as beautiful to God as they do to me. Those times I struggle to see unpredictable grace as a gift, I remember the words of the of musical group U2, “Grace makes beauty out of ugly things”. Even our most well thought out plans cannot compare to the beauty of what God has in store for us. God’s grace to us is wild and complete. Unimaginable and alive. Its not a thing to be had, but something to live into. Paul writes of this unpredictable beauty of grace when he says that it is not by our own doing - its by God - that we are gifted with grace.
And grace truly is a gift. In the words of authors Daniel Montgomery and Timothy Paul Jones in their book Proof, “Grace is an undeserved gift - not a passing sense of comfort provided by a personal problem-solver.” The word grace comes from the Greek word charis, which means gift. But its not the gift of grace as we understand it today. Charis was given only to those who deserved it. It would be like going to the store today to buy someone a gift only to stop and say “well they don’t exactly deserve that”. It would be like a parent saying that a child has not earned a birthday gift or a Christmas surprise. That isn’t God’s gift of grace - the unmerited favor that God lavishes upon us. God’s grace delights in us and pursues us relentlessly. God wants us to gift us with something that we cannot even begin to fathom or imagine. Even though we are sinners engaged in sinful activity, God still loves us. God still is building the foundation of our life with the Divine, the foundation of perveient grace, the grace that showers us with a healing love.
As humans we may say that we show grace to people by putting up with them, or by giving them a cheap gift, or not telling them exactly what we think but that’s tolerance, not grace. God doesn’t just tolerate us. God loves us, completely. God loves us so much that God desires that we don’t stay the same. But God knows that we cannot do this on our own, so grace is given as a gift. A gift we have not earned and can never repay. A gift that leads us to simply point others to this wonderful, beautiful, indescribable gift - the gift described in 1 John as love, that we show others because God first loved us.
It is not by our work that grace is given - you cannot achieve grace like a trophy. If grace was given on merit, we would be able to boast in it, but Paul reminds us that we cannot. In the words of Paul Zahl, “Grace is a love that has nothing to do with you, the beloved. It has everything and only to do with the lover.”
God dreamed up the best gift for us before our very creation. God dreamed up the gift of grace that comes before we even knew we were in need of the love of God, a love that can lead us to be transformed through Jesus Christ. Next week we will be talking about what it looks like to accept this gift, but for today I want to leave you with this: you cannot earn grace. Stop trying. You will never be good enough or do enough to match God’s gift for you. Simply lean into the everlasting arms of God, as God reigns down on you the gift of grace. Amen.
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