Grace to Lead Me Home

Sermon as preached at Evington 9/16/12 and Lambs 9/23/12


Scripture: 1 Peter 4:1-11

The hymn Amazing Grace will forever be tied to service in my mind. This may seem pretty odd, since the hymn’s lyrics are much more about conversion than they are service; they are much more focused on oneself, rather than others. Still, I will always treasure this hymn as a hymn of service, because of one of my own experiences in service.  In 2006, a year after hurricane Katrina had devastated the gulf coast of America, the church I grew up in sent a team of members down to Gulfport, Mississippi to help with recovery and rebuilding efforts, and I was fortunate enough to be on that team. When we got there, even a year later the area was still in shambles. There were beautiful antebellum stairways that lead to nowhere, McDonald’s and Gas station signs, but no building, and even a small fishing boat that had washed up about three blocks inland. Our church had the pleasure of helping our a man named Leo. Leo had lost just about everything in the storm, and teams had been helping him throughout the year fix his house. Our main task was fixing the walls and cleaning debris from the yard. Due to the damage to his house, Leo had been living in a small FEMA trailer for over a year, he did plumbing work whenever he could get a job, but most people in the area were like him and plumbing was the least of their worries. One day during the middle of the week, Leo and his brother wanted to show us their gratitude for the work that we were doing. Although they did not have much, they cooked us a wonderful Cajun feast including jambalaya, shrimp Gumbo, and Crawdads. While we were eating and resting in the shade, Leo and his brother began to sing, and what did they sing? Amazing Grace. The sound bellowed from  the depths of their souls, while both they and all who heard fought back the tears. Here were two men, completely devastated by one of the worst hurricanes in US history, they had lost almost all they had possessed, but here they were singing from their souls about the Amazing Grace of God. At that moment I felt as though those words were just as much coming from my soul as it was there. I was no longer just a Christian trying to do something nice for someone else, but I myself was one was with Leo and his brother. The Amazing Grace was not just the grace that they received by having Christians come and help them, but it was also the grace that all of us there received, being forever transformed in our lives. In that moment I realized that service was also a very personal endeavor.

            So this may not be what many of you expected to hear from me when talking about service. After all in the prior sermon series I have taken many practices that are very personal to us and told you that the focus needed to be on others. When talking about prayer I talked about how we need to pray with and for each other. When talking about worship, I talked about how it was important that all members of the body be present. Even when talking about giving last week, I talked about how it is not about us but about God. Now, I’m talking about service, something that is so obviously not about us, and I’m making it personal?! You must think that I am doing this just to mess with your minds, but I assure you I’m not. My goal is to present these topics in ways that we may not have thought about them before.

            And that is why I really like this scripture passage from 1 Peter for talking about service, because it too is not your typical passage about service. In fact, Peter’s discourse on service is not until very late in this passage. This passage actually starts off with Peter talking about us and our own actions. As was the case when we discussed James and prayer, Peter here is making a differentiation between what is of this world, and what is of God. He says, “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same intention (for whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin),²so as to live for the rest of your earthly life no longer by human desires but by the will of God.³You have already spent enough time in doing what the Gentiles like to do, living in licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry.” Peter is telling his fellow Christians that if we want to be followers of Christ, then we need to actually follow Christ. We need to act with the same intentions of Christ instead of acting as the Gentiles do in the world. He lists for us a laundry list of some of the crude actions that many Gentiles are participating in, including lawlessness, drunkenness, and giving in to our passions, and tells us that if we want to be true followers of Christ then we need to lead this type of living behind.

            So how does this help shape the way in which we view service. How do our personal morals have anything to do with helping our fellow neighbor? If we view this part of Peter’s message simply as a list of rules for our lives, as a checklist of things to avoid, then we are severely missing the point of Peter’s message, and the link to service will in fact make no sense. We need to look at what Peter is really saying in this passage. Peter’s first two verses gives us all the clues we need to understand what is at the heart of his message. Let’s look at it one more time, “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same intention (for whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin),²so as to live for the rest of your earthly life no longer by human desires but by the will of God.”  For Peter, the crux of this passage focuses on becoming more like Christ. It focuses on making our will become more in tune with the will of God.

            As Methodists, this is something that is part of our theological heritage. Pastor’s that are about to be ordained are asked many historic questions that Wesley himself used to ask, including, “Are you going on to perfection? Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life? Are you earnestly striving after it?” These tough question may be asked only to the ordained pastors, but they apply equally to all United Methodists. “Are you going on to perfection? Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life? Are you earnestly striving after it?” Our response to all of these questions should be a simple yes.

            Yet this task seems impossible, how are we supposed to become perfect? So let’s be clear, Christian perfection does not mean that you become flawless, it does not mean that you yourself become God; no perfection, perfection in love means that our will is aligned with the will of God. We may still fail, and we will, but it means that every action we take we take because we are trying to follow God, every decision we make, we make using that cliché line of What would Jesus do? Being perfected in love means that we have strived throughout our lives to follow habits that produce love so that when a challenge is presented before us our initial reaction is to respond in love and not hate. Christian perfection for sure is a lofty ideal, but it is one that is possible, and more so is one that we should be striving towards.

            Are we there yet?  I can’t answer for you, but I know that I certainly am not, but as both Wesley and Peter in our passage for today instruct, we should be striving towards it.  That is why we put off the things of the world, not simply because it is a checklist of moral laws to follow, but so that we may grow closer to God in our journey of faith, and likewise this is one of the reasons why service is so important. If we are striving to continuously live more like Christ, then how should we treat the others around us? Well, Peter tells us, “The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers.⁸Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.⁹Be hospitable to one another without complaining.¹⁰Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.¹¹Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever.” Constantly love one another, be hospitable without complaining, serve one another; this is how we can become more like Christ. Service is one of the primary ways in which we can become more like Christ. Through serving others, not only do we spread the love of Christ to someone in need, but we ourselves grow closer to Christ in our journey of faith. Service is an incredible means of grace.

            But do not misunderstand me, good works do not save you. This is not what we believe. We are saved through the grace of God. The wonderful grace that was given to us before we took our first breath, the grace that was given to us on the cross. The grace that lead us to Christ before we even knew who Christ was. The grace that turned us from our bondage to sin and death and made us washed new by the waters of our baptism. And it is that amazing grace that continues to transform our lives to be faithful disciples of Christ. It is only through this grace that we are saved, but it is also through this grace that we are able to become more like Christ.

            I turn once again to that wonderful hymn, Amazing Grace, and in particular to the third verse, which says, “Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come; tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.” This is a beautiful line that talks about the way in which God’s grace has already worked in our lives, carrying us through dark and difficult times. It is also a line of hope; a hope in the time in which we are able to rest with God in the fellowship of the angels and the saints. Yet when many people hear this line they forget about the here and the now. They think, God has carried me through the tough times of my life, and now that I have been saved  I can just sit and wait until God takes me home. But notice that the hymn does not say God will take me home, or God will carry me home, God will pick me up in his limousine and escort me home; no the line says God will lead me home. This indicates that between the time in which we accepted Christ into our lives and the time in which we are laid to rest, there is still a journey that we must undertake. A journey towards perfection, a journey towards become closer with God. This journey is only done through the grace of God, and we are called to respond accordingly to God’s grace. As Peter tells us, “Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.¹¹Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. Like good stewards of the grace of God; there is that word again steward. This time we are stewards of God’s grace. How do we best take care of the grace of God that we have been given? Serve one another with whatever gift each of you have received, speak as one speaking the very words of God, serve with the strength that God supplies, so that through it all God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. Service is so important to us as Christians because through it we are able to be stewards of the Amazing grace God has given us. Through service we can continue to walk onward towards perfection through the grace of God. The grace we receive and the grace of God that we show others through service truly is an Amazing Grace, and it is a grace that leads us home.