Do you remember George Wallace? Wallace was the one-time governor of Alabama who was a staunch segregationist who stood in front of the entrance to the University of Alabama blocking the path of black students attempting to enroll. In his stance he had the full support of the Ku Klux Klan and racists across the nation. During the late 1970s he announced that he was a “born again Christian” . . . can you believe it?
How about Charles Wendell Colson . . . more commonly known as Chuck Colson? He was the Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon before and during the Watergate era. He was known as Nixon’s “hit man” because he was ruthless in getting things done. As all of the political and legal stuff hit the fan during Watergate, he became an evangelical Christian prior to serving time in prison for his admitted crimes. Can you believe it?
How about John Newton? No, he was not the long-lost brother of Sir Isaac Newton nor the inventor of Fig Newtons . . . but I imagine that we are all familiar with him. Newton was a slave ship master who was not religious by any stretch of the imagination. Having endured a violent storm at seas, upon his arrival home he abandoned his life as a slave trader and devoted his life to God’s service . . . he was “born again”! Can you believe it!
The truth is . . . neither could they. Yet they were. Each and every one of them was what we would call “saved”. They had spiritual or religious experiences that brought them into relationship with God. They were redeemed much to their disbelief. It was Newton’s famous hymn that summed it up best when he wrote these words in Amazing Grace:
Amazing grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I’m found
Was blind but now I see
The Apostle Paul puts it this way in our reading this morning: “Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy . . . the grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of who I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy . . .”
Can you believe it . . . even the Apostle Paul was one of them! Yea, our Apostle Paul . . . a mean and violent person, a relentless persecutor of the followers of Jesus, a stubborn man, an enemy of the faith. He, too, was more or less a “born again” Christian.
Well, believe it.
One of the most difficult parts of faith is being able to say and believe that “God’s awesome and wondrous being is love” and that love encompasses all for we are all sinners. We are all sinners. Remember what Jesus said to the taunting and vindicative group wanting to stone the woman . . . “let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” No one threw a stone. They understood . . . all are sinners. You . . . me . . . everyone. Which makes it remarkable that through God’s love and grace we are pulled into and offered a relationship with the Holy. Yea, even you and me.
The tough part of all of this is on our end . . . the buying into God’s grace for wretches like us. Accepting the idea that God could love us . . . desires us . . . and is willing to take us just as we are. I imagine we all have within us different ideas about the degrees of worthiness we are in God’s eyes. Think about those individuals I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon and the terrible and despicable things that they did in their lifetimes . . . things we have not forgotten all these years later. Things that still define in our minds who these people were. And, yet God welcomed them into the family . . . reached out to them in love. For us these may be people we could never embrace and welcome into our family, but God does.
Maybe it is difficult to believe that God loves us . . . sinners one and all, but God does. Maybe in our mind we cannot see the good in us beyond what we perceive as the bad, but God does. It is to that “good” in us that God issues the invitation to come into relationship and to walk the path of life in grace and love.
I think that Paul carried within him this itching disbelief that God . . . this difficulty of believing that God loved him despite all of the terrible and nasty things that he had done in his lifetime. Yet, at the same time, Paul wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He jumped at the opportunity to come into relationship with a God who was going places . . . in particular, the Kingdom of God. Paul was going to go with God on God’s mission and fulfill his role in that journey. Paul declares: “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service.”
So, it should be for us.
God is an awesome God . . . a God of love who gives it to us through a wondrous grace that defies understanding . . . defies logic. The rest is up to us to set aside our suspicions that it is too good to believe . . . that we are not good enough, worthy enough to receive such a gift. It is up to us to set aside that cumbersome baggage we judge ourselves by . . . that we allow the world to judge us by . . . to set it aside and to fall into step with the God of love and grace. Jesus shows us the way.
Let us not see ourselves through the eyes of the world, but instead let us see ourselves through the eyes of God. Through God’s eyes we are lovable . . . we are worthy . . . desired.
Really!
You and me!
Amen!
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