We Begin (And End) With Grace

Posted on January 12, 2023 by taylormertins

1 Corinthians 1.3

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

“The first thing you say and the last thing you say matter far more than everything in between.” So spoke one of my preaching professors in seminary and his advice is applicable for preachers and non-preachers alike. It is a great challenge in our frenetic and fast-paced world to hold anyone’s attention. Therefore, we must be particularly mindful of the first thing we say, and the last thing we say, in any conversation.

I have had a long-standing habit of starting Sunday worship with the same words every week: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I also use those words to start every congregational letter, every pastor’s pen, and a handful of other communications.

I do so because, as my professor noted, first things matter. And I also do so because Paul begins his letters to the various churches in the first century with a similar salutation!

Which is just another way of saying: we begin with grace.

What is grace? Grace is one of those grace churchy words that we throw around all the time and it’s not altogether clear we know what we mean when we say it.

Robert Farrar Capon defined grace as “the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding on every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears.”

In a similar vein, Frederick Buechner described grace thusly: “Grace is something you can never get, but only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about, anymore than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth. A good sleep is grace, and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace.”

Whatever grace is, it is a gift given to us by God. And, a crucial eccentricity of our faith is that we are saved by grace.

It’s not an easy thing to admit, particularly with the way that our wider culture emphasizes meritocracy at all times, but there is nothing we can do or accomplish in this life that can make us worthy of standing as justified in God’s sight. We, to use the language of the old Prayer Book, are miserable offenders. We follow too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. Even the best of our good works, whatever they may be, are tainted with self-interest, pride, and a whole host of other problems.

God is perfect; we are not.

God is holy; we are not.

We can’t earn our righteousness or save ourselves. It is by grace, and only by grace, that we are saved by God.

And, thankfully, grace is God’s first word toward us. Grace is the fuel that makes possible and intelligible the gift that is the church. Grace is what beckons us to the table with the bread and the cup. Grace is co-mingled with the waters of our baptisms. Grace is the reminder that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Grace is the beginning and grace will lead us home. Thanks be to God.

There’s No Place Like Home

Posted on January 27, 2022 by taylormertins

Luke 4.24

And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”

Most preachers have a good “first sermon story.”

There’s the tension of having gone from one side of the pulpit to the other, the expectations of all the people in the pews being somewhat responsible for the first time preacher, and the confounding hope that this call is, in fact, real.

I have a friend who was so nervous to prepare and preach his first sermon that he bought a book of “famous sermons” and decided to preach one of them rather than his own.

I have another friend who got up into the pulpit, poured her heart out, and was asked if she would consider being the next pastor of the church she had just preached in right in front of the current preacher!

I was a teenager when I preached for the first time. I felt called by God to the work and when I told my pastor he immediately put me on the schedule to get up in the pulpit. The assigned text was from 1 Corinthians about the body having many members each with their own responsibility. And afterward, I had people tell me again and again, “That’s the best sermon I’ve ever heard!”

Let the reader understand: they all lied. But at least they were kind in their falsehood.

For a long time I’ve thought about the impulse of that congregation to compliment my homiletical efforts despite the fact that it was terrible, and I eventually realized that they loved it not because of what I said, but because I was the one who said what I said.

That is, in me they were seeing themselves – they witnessed God working through one of their own. And they loved it.

And yet, Jesus’ first sermon, and the response from the gathered people, was completely different.

Jesus does all the things any good student of the scriptures would do – he takes the scrolls, reads the text, and sits to teach.

But he doesn’t offer exposition, he doesn’t give the gathered people three ways to be better adherents to the Law, he doesn’t even give them a good joke to cut through the tension of the air.

Instead, Jesus says, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing it.”

As in, “The Messiah is here and he is me.”

And the people don’t rush forward to congratulate Jesus on his preaching, they don’t offer him a position as the new rabbi in town. No, they say, “Who the heck does he think he is?”

Jesus applies the prophet’s words to himself; he is the herald who announces a transformation of grace, freedom from sin and suffering, and impossible possibility.

The people, having heard this word, demand a sign. “Prove it, you son of a carpenter!”

Jesus rebukes their desire, noting that “no prophet is accepted in their hometown.” And the sleepy little gathering of the faithful turn into a lynch mob. They march Jesus to the edge of a cliff to end his life, but he mysteriously and miraculously makes his way through the crowd and he leaves.

Jesus is rejected, not for preaching about better behavior, not for strict commands, but because he proclaims the gospel. The gospel is offensive to those who hear it because it runs counter to just about everything else in life – it is everything for nothing, it is the proclamation that we can’t save ourselves but someone can and will, it is the announcement that things are changing for good and we aren’t the ones who are doing the changing.

And we can’t stand it! When God in the flesh comes to us and offers us the greatest gift of all, we chase him to the edge of the cliff and eventually we nail him to the cross. But the Good News is that, three days later, God comes back to us.

The gospel is one of the strangest things around: God does what God does for you and me without us having to do anything in return. But that’s also why we call the Good News good.

Devotional – Psalm 30.4

Posted on April 4, 2016 by taylormertins

Devotional:

Psalm 30.4

Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.

How often are we really thankful for the people God has placed in our lives? Sadly, it usually takes a profound moment of loss or grief before we are able to recognize how fortunate we were to spend time with them. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve sat with a family while planning a funeral when someone breaks down in tears as they begin to wrestle with how shaped they were by the person now dead. It is a frightening moment when we recognize how blessed we were to have them, and their loss leaves a gaping hole.

On Saturday night I received an email from my home church containing the news that a man by the name of Bud Walker had passed away. As my eyes read over the lines in the email it was impossible to not let my emotions get the better of me as I realized that one of the greatest men I’ve ever been privileged to call my friend is now gone.

I met Bud Walker on a Sunday morning when I was 13 years old. I was responding to a volunteer opportunity from the church bulletin about learning how to run the sound system for Sunday services and Bud was going to teach me how it worked. For a month he stood behind me and looked over my shoulder as I twisted nobs and raised levels so that the whole congregation could hear the choir and the pastors, and for that whole month I was terrified of messing up. And yet, even after I passed my training month, Bud continued to stand with me at the back of the church before and after worship just to talk. I learned about his life and his family, I heard stories from his youth, and I saw what it meant to be faithful. During those incredibly formative years of my youth, I learned about God from the sermons, but I learned what it meant to follow Jesus from Bud Walker.

At the time, my experience of church was that the adults got to do their thing and the youth got to do their thing. We might all sit in the same sanctuary on Sunday mornings, but there was a clear divide between our activities. Bud never saw that divide. He was one of the first people who pushed me to pursue a calling to the ministry, and he always made me feel like I mattered. And now he’s gone.

Today I sing praises to our Lord for having placed Bud Walker in my life; I am a better person for having spent time with him. As we continue to take steps on the path that leads to following Jesus, let us not take for granted the people God has given to us. Let us find the time this week to reach out to the people who helped to shape us and, if they are no longer living on earth, let us sing praises for the time we had with them.

Devotional – 2 Corinthians 4.16

Posted on June 1, 2015 by taylormertins

Devotional:

2 Corinthians 4.16

So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.

One day I’m going to write a book about all the hilarious, remarkable, frightening, and life-giving things that have taken place during my ministry. Being a pastor is, in my opinion, one of the greatest vocations because it is a privileged responsibility. Pastors are invited in the depth of brokenness, the height of celebration, and everything in between. Some of the stories I have accrued over the last two years who never be appropriate from the pulpit, but one day I’ll get the good ones written down.

Dick Dickerson was a source of great moments. When I received a phone call about his passing away on Saturday, I gave God thanks for putting him in my life and helping me to discover what grace really looks like. But his death did not fully hit me until I announced it from the pulpit yesterday morning and I realized that I would no longer get to see his smiling face, hear his endearing laugh, or listen to one of his great stories.

For instance: When he served during World War 2 as a Quarter-Master he would lie to his superiors when requesting certain supplies saying they were for General Patton just so he could get the equipment necessary to support his troops. Or the story about how he not so subtly attempted to make conservatives out of his friends by offering them whisky only so long as they declared allegiance to the Republican Party. His life was one great story worth telling over and over.

A few weeks ago we were sitting in his apartment talking about the end. Death was not far away and Dick’s bone cancer was getting worse and worse everyday. Yet, he was completely prepared for it. He kept saying, “I’m ready for the Lord to take me.” While the pain was striking deep in his bones he kept such tremendous faith because he knew the Lord was with him and waiting to take him home.

When we lose the people we love, we are caught in a dilemma. On some level we are thankful that they are finally at peace and have gone to be with God, but at the same time we mourn losing them in our lives. Yet Dick was a witness to the kind of faith we are called to have: His outer nature was wasting away, but his faith was growing each and every day. The last thing Dick ever said to me was this: “I never knew God could love me this much.”

This week, let us reflect on what it means to keep the faith. Not a blind faith without doubt, but a willingness to see how our inner nature is being renewed even while our outer nature wastes away. Let us give thanks to God for all who have gone on before us, and pray that the Lord would give us the strength to be better witnesses for those who will come after us.