BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD

Scripture: John 9:1-17, 35-41

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.

Ephesians 2:8

INTRODUCTION

I have heard it said many times, and there was a time when I would have said it myself. Here is a man, struck down by unforeseen tragedy, struggling to survive, and looking at him we say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Here is a woman, trying to raise six little children on a welfare check, doing odd jobs in the neighborhood with no other visible means of support, and looking at her, we say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Here is a child, born with a disability, unaware as an infant of the barriers that will surely have to be faced on down the road, and looking at that child, we say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Here is an older person, afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease, holding on for dear life as the sands of time drop through the hour glass of daily living, and looking on, we say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” And here is an entire village of people in the Sudan, caught in the cross-fire of war, facing starvation and wondering if there is any hope for them or for future generations, and we look at their suffering and say, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

I have heard those words said many times, and there was a time when I would have said the same myself. But I don’t say that anymore, and this morning, I want to tell you why.

More than one hundred years ago, a shoe salesman named Dwight L. Moody was converted to Christ in Boston, and became one of America’s best-known evangelists. Moody did many wonderful things during his life, devoting his energy and leadership to the Sunday School movement, the YMCA, to founding the Moody Memorial Church, the Moody Bible Institute and the Moody Press, all in Chicago, and the Mt. Hermon and Northfield Schools in Massachusetts. I admire his skill, I have been inspired by the sermons he preached and I am convinced that God used that man in a mighty way to communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ to help change the lives of thousands of people.

But theologically, I also think that Dr. Moody left behind one statement which has been more of a hindrance than a help to the cause of the kingdom. After he preached a sermon one night in Boston, a man in the congregation came forward whom Moody described “with a painful face and sunken eyes who was weeping as he said, ‘Dr. Moody, I am an exile from my family, have drunk up and gambled away $20,000 during the past six months, I have no coat to wear, no friends to talk with and no place to call home. If there is hope for a poor sinner like me, I should like to be saved.’” (From 6000 Windows for Sermons, by Elon Foster, Baker Book House, 1953, page 364)

At that moment, turning to one of the church leaders standing nearby, Moody, with sadness in his voice, is reported to have said, “There but for the grace of God go I.” The evangelist went on to help that man, who became, as Moody described him, “One of the most earnest Christians I ever knew.” And that is the good news in this story.

But before long, Moody’s statement, “There but for the grace of God go I,” began to catch on and to circulate around Boston, and eventually it was repeated by many others across the country. All these years later, we are still saying it today.

Even so, I want to tell you this morning that theologically, emotionally, spiritually and biblically speaking, I think Moody was wrong. He didn’t mean it intentionally or unkindly, and yet if we think about it carefully, that phrase is not only confusing – it is actually contrary to the gospel.

Why? Because the words, “There but for the grace of God go I,” imply that God protects some people from trial, trouble and tragedy, while others seem to be left out, short-changed, punished or cast aside, because they have done something wrong or because it is by God’s design.

Barbara Brown Taylor, our Episcopal priest friend in North Georgia, has written that “’But for the grace of God go I’ can be one of the cruelest things we ever say because that phrase assumes the absence of grace in another’s life.” (“Giving in To Grace” by Barbara Brown Taylor, The Living Pulpit, January-March, 1995)

A cartoon the The New Yorker Magazine depicts the situation this way: a forlorn looking man, down on his knees, is gazing up toward heaven and praying, “Possibly due to a technical error, I seem to be getting someone else’s comeuppance.”

II.

Well, that’s the way people living in the first century thought about God and their own situation. In the ninth chapter of the gospel of John, we can almost overhear the disciples and Pharisees saying to themselves, as they looked at the man who had been blind from birth, “There but for the grace of God go I.” The disciples put it this way in their question to Jesus: Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? (John 9:2) You see, they believed that God’s grace actually by-passed people who had sinned, that God punished them by sending affliction into their lives. They were certain that someone, somewhere, somehow had done something wrong to cause the man to be born blind.

Now that might sound like ancient superstition to you, but I have known people who were convinced that God withheld His grace from them because of sinful things they had done.

A man in New Jersey once told me that his heart attack was God’s way of reprimanding him for an affair which had happened early in his married life. A woman I knew in North Carolina believed that her migraine headaches were the direct result of God’s displeasure with her drug experimentation as a teenager. And a mother in Pittsburgh is haunted by the fear that her kleptomania as a young sales clerk, from which she has been cured, is the reason why her daughter was caught cheating on a test in school. She even quoted from the Bible to explain what had happened: Psalm 109, which she knew by heart – May the iniquity of their fathers be remembered before the Lord, and let not the sin of their mothers be blotted out.

So it wasn’t only ancient superstition which caused them to ask that question: Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? The sad truth is that people are still asking that question, still haunted by that same question today.

III.

I thank God that Jesus answered the question, once and for all, and I hope that you will hear Him speak to you now, as He spoke to those people long ago, when He said: It was not – it was not that this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in Him. (John 9:3).

My friends, that is a theological mouthful! And I take it to mean that Jesus believed His Father in heaven did not send the affliction, did not cause the blindness, did not want to punish that man or his family…but rather, that God could reveal, would make manifest, wanted to show His love and grace through the healing process which was about the take place. So Jesus put clay on that man’s eyes, sent him to the pool of Siloam, where he washed his eyes clean, and the Bible says that he came back seeing everything!

The more I read the New Testament, the more amazed and dazzled I am by the healing power of Jesus. He was able to do things that no one else on earth has ever done. And today, He is still channeling His healing, helping power through doctors and nurses and hospitals and intricate surgery and magnificent machines that help restore sight and revive hearts and renew bodies and make us healthy and whole once more. That is the miracle of modern day medicine, and Jesus Christ is at work in the midst of it all.

But the real miracle of this gospel story and the message it offers to us today is this: “God’s grace is not dependent on nor conditioned by what we are or what we do.” The late Hugh Thomson Kerr said that. God does not withhold His grace from those who have sinned. Jesus Christ said that. And only by God’s grace can we be saved through faith – it is not our own doing, it is a gift…” The apostle Paul said that (Ephesians 2:8). Which means, when we add it all up, that by the grace of God we are forgiven, cleansed, and restored to a right relationship with Him through the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the bottom line for us as Christians, and that is what we continue to proclaim here at the corner of 16^th and Peachtree, as we seek to be and to become a Community of Grace.

CONCLUSION

Now we could end the sermon there, call it a day and head home for lunch. But one final question lingers in the 9^th chapter of John, and the question is this: “Once we have received God’s grace, then what does God want us to give in return?

The obvious answer, of course, is gratitude, and that was surely the case with the blind man in this story. He was grateful, he gave God the praise and shouted out for joy, “Once I was blind, but now I can see!” And so it is for you and for me. Once we have received the grace of God, what does He want us to give in return? Gratitude. That’s the obvious answer.

But there’s another answer in this story, and it is the one I want to leave with you this morning. The Pharisees, when they saw that the man had been healed, did not rejoice, but rather cut him off and cast him out. Why? Because it appears that they cared more about their rules and regulations than they cared about him. Jesus had broken the law by healing on the Sabbath Day, so those religious leaders rejected both the healed man and the Healer himself. And Jesus looked them right in the eye and said that it was they who were blind.

Have you figured it out yet, the final answer to the question “What does God ask of us in response to His grace?” Together with our gratitude, He wants us to share that grace with others.

Those who have been hurt and are suffering need someone to care about them. Instead of looking on and saying, “There but for the grace of God go I,” we need to get involved as grace givers. Some people are in trouble through no fault of their own, like the lost boys of Sudan who are now refugees among us, and they need someone to come alongside them. Others have brought pain and sorrow upon themselves by letting harmful habits run rampant and getting into all kinds of addictions. If we open our ears and eyes, we can hear their cries for help. There are those who see themselves as victims and dwell on their afflictions, like the hypochondriac who died at the age of 98 and had inscribed on his tombstone, “I told you I was sick.” Even though we have our reservations, God has called us to reach out and touch them too.

And there are poor people, unemployed people, lonely people, battered and broken people across this city, nation and throughout the world who are waiting, hoping and praying that someone will come to help, to heal and to love them back into life once more.

When we see them, or hear about them, we Christians cannot afford the luxury of standing by at a distance and saying, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Because we, all of us, belong to God’s family, He loves each one of us no more and no less than the next, and He expects us to reach out to one another, just as Jesus did, with the healing power of His amazing grace.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,

That saves people like you and like me.

Once we were lost, but now we are found,

We were blind, but now we can see!”

My Christian friends: all that we are and all that we have received has come by the grace of God. That is His gift to us. What we say and do as we share God’s grace with those in need – that is our gift back to Him.

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.