are written and recorded by clergy and lay ministers for people who want to watch online or for ministers looking for sermon ideas. To have the latest weekly sermon delivered straight to your inbox,
“The grace of the lord Jesus Christ,
the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” It
is common practise in church meetings for those present to close the meeting by
saying the grace out loud, and to each other. (https://tauntonurc.org.uk/grace-for-trinity/)
John Wesley wrote of this prayer, “Let us study it more and more, that we may
value it proportionably; that we may either deliver or receive it with a
becoming reverence, with eyes and hearts lifted up to God.” (https://www.lords-prayer-words.com/famous_prayers/may_the_grace.html)
I would like us to do what John Wesley
commends and study the Grace more and more today by reflecting together on the
amazing grace of Jesus, the extravagant love of God, and the intimate communion
of the Holy Spirit.
Let’s begin by thinking about where
this prayer comes from. “It comes right at the end of a letter, or letters
probably, that Paul wrote to a church he founded, but a church that had turned
on him.” “It’s clear when you read between the lines that Paul had been getting
the first century equivalent of on-line abuse, that this church that he had set
up had been getting at him for being too poor, too scruffy, for working with
his hands, for not having the right qualifications.” He’s under attack and has
to defend himself but, “at the end of this long, passionate, sometimes weary
and difficult correspondence”, he “writes these simple and ageless words, ‘The
grace of the lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy
Spirit be with all of you.’”
So, “These are not just pious, empty,
words. He is saying them to people who have criticised him, hated him, attacked
him, and abused him. He is wishing the grace of Jesus, the love of God, the
fellowship of the Holy Spirit, upon those who cast him as an enemy. He says, in
a way, it doesn’t matter what you say about me or what you think of me. Your
abuse and attack isn’t going to make me anything different from the person I am
determined to be; a person shaped by God’s grace, living God’s love, seeking
fellowship, friendship, community with anyone.”
The effect of the Grace here is “to
offer us the full resources of the faith”: “When Paul wrote to the Corinthians,
he and they were both aware that they were doing and enduring some pretty
terrible things. But Paul told them that God wanted to give them the grace of
Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. That is
what God wants to do with all of us – to bless us with the gifts of the
beautiful Trinity and to show us what human life – touched by such blessing –
could really be like.” (https://tauntonurc.org.uk/grace-for-trinity/)
Let’s now look briefly at the
individual parts of this prayer, beginning with amazing grace. U2’s song called
‘Grace’ defines the amazing grace of Jesus as follows: Grace “takes the blame”,
“covers the shame” and “removes the stain”. “What once was hurt / What once was
friction / What left a mark / No longer stings / Because Grace makes beauty /
Out of ugly things / Grace finds beauty / In everything / Grace finds goodness
in everything.” (https://www.u2.com/lyrics/53)
Jesus told a story about a son who
squandered his father's inheritance (the parable of the prodigal son). When the
son returns, rather than rejecting or disciplining him, the father runs to
greet him and celebrates his return. That story gives us an insight into the
kind of love that God gives. Grace is the unmerited favour of God which finds
goodness in everything. We do not deserve the love and goodness that is freely
and unconditionally given from heaven and all we can or need do is receive it.
That is truly amazing grace.
When we understand grace in this way,
we can see why God’s love is described as extravagant. There is no holding back
in the economy of God’s love, the currency of the kingdom of God is of abundant
generosity of things that never run out. Sam Wells suggests that:
“The secret of happiness is learning
to love the things God gives us in plenty. There’s no global shortage of
friendship, kindness, generosity, sympathy, creativity, faithfulness, laughter,
love. These are the currency of abundance.
The Church of today needs to
rediscover this teaching because God gives us the abundance of the kingdom to
renew the poverty of the church. In our generation God has given his Church a
financial crisis, and this can only be for one reason: to teach us that
abundance does not lie in financial security, and to show us that only in
relationships of mutual interdependence, relationships that money obscures as
often as it enables, does abundant life lie.”
As John McKnight and Peter Block have
noted in their book ‘The Abundant Community’, we live in a consumer society
which is an economy of scarcity because it “constantly tells us that we are
insufficient and that we must purchase what we need from specialists and
systems outside of our immediate community.” Instead, they argue that “we can
do unbelievable things by starting with our assets, not our deficits. We all
have gifts to offer, even the most seemingly marginal among us. Using our
particular assets (our skills, experience, insights and ideas) we have the
God-given power to create a hope-filled life and can be the architects of the
future where we want to live.” Finding ways to thrive in our churches and
communities by releasing the gifts of all and building on one another’s assets
is a sign of the extravagant love of God.
Finally, we come to the intimate
communion of the Holy Spirit. Sam Wells and Abigail Kocher have noted “the
subtlety of the word ‘communion’: com means with and union means in – we are at
the same time with God and in God, which combines our two heavenly
aspirations.” (https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/keeping-the-feast/)
In communion God takes our lives into
the Godhead, the Trinity, and blesses us. In a Communion Service that happens
particularly when the bread and wine and money and prayers are brought to the
altar: “In that moment we each bring our different qualities, resources, hopes
and dreams to God. And then the pastor recalls the sacred story of how God took
what we are and made it what he is. And in that transformation we each receive
back the same. What this is depicting is a new society in which we each bring
our differentness to God but we each receive back from God the same bread of
life. We each have different hungers, but God satisfies them all.
And in this dynamic of transformation
we see how salvation works. God takes a simple people and their simple
offerings and gives them a sacred story and sacred actions and in the regular
telling of that story and performance of those actions they are transformed
into God’s holy people. And that’s exactly what the regular celebration of the
Eucharist is about: God taking an ordinary people and through this story and
these actions turning them into the body of Christ, God’s companions forever.”
(https://chapel-archives.oit.duke.edu/documents/sermons/Sept20TeachingEucharist-1.pdf)
As we have been exploring grace, love
and communion, notice that the Son, the Father and Holy Spirit are all involved
all the time. It’s not that Jesus is the only expression of grace or the
Father, the only expression of love. All three are one, so they are all
involved in showing and sharing grace, love and communion. We are drawn in to
the relationship of love at the heart of the Godhead where grace, love and
communion are constantly being shared and exchanged between Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. It is out of this relationship of love that Jesus comes into our
world to be with us and thereby open up a way for us to participate in the
relationship of love that is constantly being shared between Father, Son and
Spirit.
So, this wonderful prayer - “The grace
of the lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit
be with all of you” – is not simply for the ending of meetings but for the
whole of life and the whole of eternity. It is what Christianity is all about.
It is a description of the Trinity and the love that exists at the heart of all
things because it exists at the heart of God. And it is an invitation for us to
become part of that love and participate in it. So, let us, as John Wesley commends,
“receive it with a becoming reverence, with eyes and hearts lifted up to God.”
Amen.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty.
