Two weeks ago, my eight-year-old daughter, Emma, asked me a question at the breakfast table.  It caught me off guard and would haunt me the rest of the day.  It is a question that haunts me even now.

 

 

It’s a rather deep question to ask so early in the morning.  “Well, ah…yes, I have times I’ve felt that way,” I stammered through a mouthful of granola cereal.  I turned the question back on her: “Do you ever feel that way?” 

 

“Yeah, I feel that way a lot.  I’m different than other kids.  I’m not normal.  I just wish, you know, that the other kids at school would accept me.”

 

She said it so matter-of-factly.  Which made her words break my heart all the more, the way she seemed to have just sort of accepted this reality in her mind that she’s “not normal” (whatever “normal” means) and that she doesn’t fit in.

 

I remember struggling with all of these issues of identity and belonging as a kid, but it is another experience entirely to watch your own child struggle through it.  How is it that, before kids can even read and write, they’re already figuring out how to tease and exclude others, who gets invited to birthday parties and who doesn’t, who gets to join in games at recess and who gets left out, who gets to sit with you on the bus and who has to sit alone?

 

From the moment we enter this world, we are being measured, tested, evaluated, and compared with others.  As infants we are slotted into percentiles (with weight and height and even the circumference of our heads!).  In elementary school we are handed number two pencils and standardized tests to see how well we perform.  And it doesn’t get any easier from here.  Ours is a culture of performance where the pressure is on to make the grade, meet expectations, measure up and look good.  And if we’re honest, so often our harshest critic and judge is the face that stares at us each day in the mirror.  Phillip Yancey is onto something when he says that ungrace provides the constant, crackling background static of our lives.

 

My eight-year-old daughter is already giving voice to deep longing within every human heart to belong, to be accepted, to experience community with others without fear of shame or being judged.  Emma didn’t use this word, but I heard it beneath her question: she was longing for grace.

 

To be the people of God, a community centered in Christ, is to be a community of grace.   How many times do the words “grace” and “mercy” appear in Paul’s letter to the Romans?  From beginning to end, the good news of God’s grace pervades the entire letter of Romans.  Paul can’t stop talking about this “amazing grace” that so radically changed his life.  We see it here in Romans chapter 12 as well:  “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God….”  “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you…”  “We have gifts that differ according to the grace given us….”  Yes, one of the primary marks—perhaps the primary mark—of true Christ-centered community is grace.

 

But what does this word mean?  It occupies such a common place in our Christian vocabulary, a word we hear and sing often, but do we really understand what makes grace so “amazing?”  If we’re going to be a community that embodies grace, then surely it would be beneficial for us to have a deep understanding of what grace means.

 

Stated most simply, grace is unmerited favor.  In the words of coauthors Henry Cloud and John Townsend, grace is “God’s bestowing on us good things that we do nothing to gain, earn, merit or produce.”   Grace is a gift that comes from outside of us.  And it does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

 

Last Sunday we talked about how one of the major themes of Romans is this message that we are justified (or put in right relationship with God) by grace through faith in Jesus.  In Christ, God shows us unmerited favor and reconciles us to himself, forgives our sins, and gives us new life in the Spirit.  A second major theme in Romans is that this grace not only puts us in right relationship with God but it extends to our relationships with others.  It is also by grace that God creates in Christ a new community, making Jews and Gentiles brothers and sisters in the one international family of God.

 

So as we think about what it means to be a community of grace, let’s remember that this is a gift from God.  Because we have experienced God’s unmerited favor in our relationship with him, God gives us the grace to show that unmerited favor to one another.  Here’s how Paul puts it a little later in Romans: “Since God has welcomed you in Christ, now welcome each other.” 

 

To be a community of grace means that we unconditionally accept one another.  We welcome one another; affirm that anyone and everyone has a place to belong in God’s family because of Christ.  And Unconditional acceptance manifests itself in the attitude and practice of genuine love.  Let your love be genuine, says Paul.  Love one another with mutual affection, outdo one another in showing honor.  Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.  Care for the needs of others in your midst.  In chapter 14, Paul says it so clearly: do not judge one another.  This is God’s role, not yours.  You, too, will be held accountable before God.  So don’t think it is your place to pass judgment on one another.  

 

So grace is unconditional acceptance of others on the sole ground that God has accepted us in Christ.  But is that all grace is?  Remember that grace is unmerited favor, a gift that comes from outside of us.  Paul tells us in Romans 12 that we are called to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.  Grace is unconditional acceptance of who we are, as we are; and it is the power to transform us into who God wants us to be.

 

My grandfather was a huge Johnny Cash fan.  So when the movie Walk the Line hit the theaters, even though he hadn’t been to the theater in ages, he asked my brothers and me to go with him.  One of the most powerful scenes in the movie is when Cash has hit bottom with his drug addiction, and June Carter and her parents quarantine him in their cabin (which is secluded in the woods) where he can get sober.  June’s father stands guard with a shotgun outside the cabin so that when Cash’s drug dealer comes wandering around, he chases him off like a stray dog digging in your trash.  After several days of tossing and turning, and enduring all the tremors and hellish torment of being weaned off an addiction, Cash comes through it a new man.  My favorite scene is a conversation between Cash and June, after the worst part of is over:

 

“You’re an angel.” Johnny says to her, his eyes moist.

“No, I’m not.”  June says sheepishly.

“You’ve been here with me.”  Johnny says.

“I had a friend who needed help,” June replies, “You’re my friend.”

“But I’ve done so many bad things,” Johnny says with his eyes cast down in shame.

“You’ve done a few, that’s true,” June won’t lie.

“I just hurt everybody I know,” Johnny’s voice cracks, the tears now flowing.  “I’m nothin’.”

“You’re not nothin’.” June looks him in the eyes.  “You are not nothin’.  You’re a good man.  And God has given you a second chance to make things right, Johnny.  This is your chance, honey.  This is your chance.”  

 

And then June leans in and embraces him.  It’s a powerful picture of grace--God’s grace coming to Johnny Cash through the friendship of June.  He couldn’t break free from his addiction on his own power.  He needed the grace of God, which then was extended through a community who loved him enough to not just forgive him when he messed up but provided him what he didn’t have and needed in order to change.

 

Too often we understand grace only as forgiveness and acceptance but fail to understand it means giving others what they are unable to give or get for themselves.  Here’s another example of what I mean by this.

 

David struggled with a weight problem and looked to food as a source of comfort and a way of avoiding deeper issues in his life.  He felt convicted that God was calling him to make some changes, and so he began a weight loss regimen and asked the two other guys to meet with him regularly to hold him accountable.

 

As time progressed, David kept gaining weight instead of losing it.  He would meet with his two friends and confess his failure, repent, receive forgiveness, and commit to doing better.  But what his friends realized is that, if David was going to change, it wasn’t a matter of him trying harder.  To give David grace was to love him and accept him, even when he failed his diet plan, but it went further.  They knew that David needed resources beyond himself—resources ultimately only God can give—that might be extended through their relationship with him.  David needed their unmerited favors.  David needed them to give him what he was unable to produce himself.  So they set up a structured plan, got him connected with additional resources, and over time David was able to overcome his eating problem. 

 

Grace is about both unconditional acceptance and giving people what they need to become who God desires them to be.  It is where unconditional acceptance meets accountability and generosity.  It is a culture of asking, “What do you need that we can give you?” And then the community gives what is needed or supports the person to go out and seek it.

 

Here’s the thing: none of us has all that we need within ourselves but we need God’s grace in community.  It’s no wonder, then, that Paul speaks about spiritual gifts as “gifts of grace.”  We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

 

Not only has God put us in right relationship with himself and bound us together as his family; God gives gifts of grace for the purpose of building up the body and supporting one another.  Paul offers a sampling of seven gifts here, and he speaks of others in 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4.  Paul is very clear that the purpose of these gifts of grace are not to create competition or generate pride but to supply one another with what we don’t have on our own and need.  So we’re called to develop and use our spiritual gifts (and we all have at least one) for the common good of the community.

 

To be a community of grace exposes the modern myth of autonomy—that we are self-sufficient, independent and fully capable on our own.  No, Paul says we are very much dependent upon one another as a single community--one body with many parts.  How liberating it is to know that you and I don’t have everything we need to be transformed and flourish on our own but that we have been given brothers and sisters in Christ who extend grace to us by using their gifts to provide what we need!

 

Each of us finds our meaning and function as part of his [Christ’s] body.  But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe wouldn’t amount to much, would we?  So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t (The Message, Romans 12:4-5).

 

“Dad, do you ever feel like you don’t belong?”   Let me pose the same question to you: Do you ever feel this way?   The good news of the gospel is that God has made it possible for every single one of us to belong!  By God’s grace, when we put our faith in Jesus, we can now belong to God and to each other as a member of the body of Christ.  A community of grace where differences are not a liability and source of embarrassment but a true asset and the occasion for celebration!  For in our beautiful diversity in Christ, we are stronger together than we could ever be on our own!

 

“Therefore, let those who have had the privilege of living in a common Christian life with other Christians praise God from the bottom of their hearts,” writes Dietrich Bonheoffer.  “Let them thank God on their knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brothers and sisters.” 

 

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