"The Church God Calls Us To Be: Commitment To Grace"

Texts: Deuteronomy 7: 7-8; Acts 9: 1-9

Preached: Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost, September 21, 1997

This week The Detroit News ran an article about Ike Reese, a football player at Michigan State University. It was powerful story about the way certain individuals were helpful to him when he needed it most. A High School math teacher took him under her wing when everyone else was ready to give up on him because he had been in such trouble with the law. Reese said of her, "I will never be able to thank her enough for what her help and faith in me meant to me. I would never be at MSU playing football without her help."

Despite her support, when Reese got to MSU he still made some bad decisions. He was arrested for theft. His college career was on the ropes. He met with Nick Saban, then the new head coach. Reese had every reason to think Saban would dismiss him from the team. But at the end of the conversation Saban said he thought Reese had learned his lesson. He would be given one last chance. Reese was quoted as saying, "I knew I deserved to lose everything. But coach Saban gave be another chance. I have been a different person from that day on." People around MSU football agree.

A second chance is no small thing. It is a gift of GRACE capable of changing someone for the rest of their life. One of the best known second chance stories in the New Testament is the one we heard this morning. The second chance Christ gave Paul changed him forever, causing him to live all out for GRACE the rest of his life.

We first meet him as Saul, a zealous young Pharisee with fire in his eyes. He looks on approvingly while Stephen is stoned for his faith in Jesus. From that day on Saul makes life miserable for the early church as he rampages all over Jerusalem, "Ravaging the church by entering house after house, dragging off both men and women and throwing them into prison." (Acts 8:3)

By the time we meet him in chapter 9, he has gotten himself appointed head of the stop-the-followers-of-Jesus-movement. Equipped with subpoenas, search warrants, hand-cuffs and his own goon squad, Saul is on his way to do serious damage in Damascus.

All this comes to a halt, however, on the shoulder of a highway. It is about noon when Saul is knocked flat by a blazing light so bright it makes the sun look like a forty watt bulb. Out of that light he hears a voice call his name, "Saul." He doesn't recognize the voice. "Saul," the voice says again, "Why are you out to get me?" Saul lies there quite a while. Then, pulling himself together long enough to fake some bravado he asks, "Who wants to know?" To his horror the voice answers, "I am Jesus of Nazareth, the one you are hounding so unmercifully."

The next few minutes, lying in the dust, must have seemed like an eternity as Paul's mind whirls and his stomach ties in knots. If Jesus of Nazareth is alive, if he has what it takes to beat death and burst from a grave, surely Jesus can polish off a half pint Pharisee like Saul with a flick of his finger.

Saul braces for the worst. He is sure it's all over. He can feel the noose tighten around his neck. He can almost smell the flowers surrounding his casket. He just prays death will be swift and painless.

But punishment doesn't come. Instead Saul hears the same voice say, "I want you on my side. Instead of fighting my followers in Jerusalem, I want you to join them." It is the first in a lifetime of surprises.

The light leaves Saul with scales on his eyes so thick he can't see a lick. So he spends three days bewildered and befuddled in a borrowed bedroom. This once arrogant man, who knows so much about big, important ideas, and so many big, significant people, is helpless, led around by strangers. Finally God sends Annanias to lay hands on Saul and heal him. Annanias baptizes him on the spot. With his baptism he is given a new name. The legalistic antagonist, Saul is buried forever. The gracious liberator, Paul, is born.

Paul never forgot the sheer, lunatic joy and astonishment of what God had done. He was never the same again; neither was the world. Paul traveled the Mediterranean basin planting churches like Johnny Appleseed planted trees. Stirring sermons flowed from his mouth. New disciples populated every whistle stop city he visited. And when his sandals weren't flapping, his pen was writing. He coaxed. He coached. He cajoled. He comforted. He complained. But most of all, punch-drunk with Christ, he proclaimed GRACE.

"By GRACE you have been saved, through faith. It is not of your own doing. It is a gift of God -- not because of works -- lest anyone should boast.

Every sermon Paul preached finally came down to that one word: GRACE. It wasn't that he lacked other sermon outlines. It's just that he couldn't exhaust the first one.

The way Paul saw it, Jesus should have finished him off on the Damascus road, and left him for the buzzards. He should have been sent to hell. Instead he was sent to seek and save the lost. Paul was staggered by the idea that no matter who you are and what you have done, God wants you on the team. There is nothing one has to do or be. It is on the house. GRACE.

At the timberline of Mount Shasta, in California, lives a remarkable tree -- the Shasta Fir. In its early life it looks more like a twisted bush. The heavy snow pack, which at the timberline reaches a depth of twenty feet or more during the winter, batters and presses the young tree, twisting and gnarling its trunk. Each winter it struggles to survive.

Finally, however, a winter arrives when the tree is tall enough to poke through the snow pack. From that day on it reaches skyward, its trunk straight as an arrow. The unique beauty of the Shasta Fir then becomes visible in the summer, when you can see both the twisted, oddly shaped portion of the lower trunk; and the majestic, vertical reach of the upper trunk.

When Paul looked back on his life, he saw himself for what he really was. To use his own words, he was "the worst of sinners." He was a legalist, a killjoy, a braggart who claimed to have mastered God's law. He had twisted salvation into a human achievement. Saul was at the center of his own life.

On the Damascus road Jesus Christ came into the center of Paul's life, and he began to grow tall and straight. Little by little, the forgiven person became forgiving. The person who had been bowled over by love became loving. The legalist became a liberator. The one who had tried so hard to produce works pleasing to God found God was now producing delicious fruit in his life; fruit like, "Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."

Paul was far from perfect and he knew it. He agonized over the fact that, "The evil things I don't want to do, I end up doing; and the good things I so desperately want to do, I don't do." But then GRACE would grab hold again and Paul would celebrate, "There is therefore now condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

Paul's gratitude over the second chance God gave him, and his passion to help others hear the same liberating Good News, energized Paul and kept him going. The beauty of what God had done in his life, and the joy of seeing other lives, once twisted and gnarled, growing straight and tall into the fullness of Christ, energized Paul and held him in its grip.

One of Fellowship's core values is a Commitment To Grace. Throughout scripture, and especially from Paul, we learn that, although no one is deserving, God freely showers all people with love and offers everyone salvation by GRACE, through faith; therefore GRACE and acceptance pervade all we do.

William Willimon tells the story of a lifelong friend who hit bottom. He fell from his prestigious perch as a successful lawyer into the depths of alcoholism. It was a hard fall. But by God's GRACE, he was drawn into A.A., admitted his powerlessness, and turned to God for help. He returned to his Christian roots and has learned to daily ask Christ to help him stay sober. In talking to Willimon, he said, "You would be surprised what I have learned about God." "Like what?" Willimon inquired.

"So many words I have heard all my life in church have suddenly become real to me. Christian slogans, things I thought of as clichés, have become real and blindlingly true."

"Like what?" Willimon continued to press.

"Like being 'born again.' That is what God has done for me. I am 'born again.' And 'You can only find your life by losing it.' When I lost my life God gave it back to me again. Through the pain that came from hitting bottom, I have finally met God."

"And who is the God you have met?" Willimon wanted to know.

"God is a tough, tender, relentless, loving, gracious friend, who lifts us up when we are down, helps us when we can't help ourselves, and gives us a second chance when it is the last thing we deserve."

God's GRACE in Christ is Fellowship's message. Our God of the second, third and many chances after that, is the God we are privileged to share. Christ, who met Paul on the Damascus Road and gave him a fresh start, calls us to be, "An accepting community, centered in Christ, focused on people." Our God, who lifts us up when we are down and helps us when we can't help ourselves, calls us to be a congregation where GRACE and acceptance pervade all we do, so others are drawn to make a life-changing commitment to God through Christ.

When we, like Paul, yield to Christ's loving embrace, we find God's GRACE to be a transforming power. We are "crucified with Christ, so it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." The Holy Spirit begins the life-long process of helping us grow up into the fullness of Christ. Our lives become GRACE filled.

Have you ever attended a beginners' dance recital? Have you ever watched an one of those old movies where Fred Astaire spins Ginger Rogers around the dance floor? Have you noticed your reaction? Watching the first one, you hope the dancers do well, but you will applaud, no matter what. Watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, you want to get up and dance.

There are two dimensions to GRACE. The first involves our worth to God. We know our dance with God is little better than a third grade dance recital. But, because God is a God of GRACE God loves us and applauds us anyway. We are grateful.

The other dimension of GRACE involves a life so yielded to God's embrace, so transformed by God's love; so disciplined yet so free ~ it makes others want to dance with God as well.

Because Paul never forgot the incredible joy of God's GRACE on the Damascus road, he couldn't quit telling people about a God who gives people a second chance.

Because Christ was the center of Paul's life, his mind was transformed, his will was conformed and his life was formed into the fullness of Christ. And when people saw the possibilities of a life so fully yielded to Christ's embrace and so transformed by God's GRACE, they wanted to get up and dace with God right along with him.