“…(Through Christ)… we have obtained access to this grace….” Romans 5: 1-5 

            It is 1954.  The young man – really only a boy -  is seventeen years old.  He is in the Greyhound Bus Station in Louisville, Kentucky.  He is on his way to or from some Methodist youth camp or something like that.  While waiting for the bus, he decides to get a haircut, which he can do at that time right there in the bus station. 
            The barber likes to talk.  He says his name is Polston.  He says that name is easy to remember, because it is NOT SLOP spelled backwards.
            He was right.  I have remembered that name now for more than 50 years.
            When Mr. Polston learned that I was a Methodist, he asked, “Have you experienced the second act of grace?”
            What would YOU have answered?
            I didn’t have a clue, even as to what the “second act of grace” WAS, much less whether I had experienced it.
            Mr. Polston explained that the first act of grace is justification, and the second act of grace is sanctification.
            Some people actually talked like that, in bus stations and barber shops and Sunday School classes back then, in what our children, when they were young, would have called
“the olden days”.
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            In the first part of today’s reading from the fifth chapter of Romans, some words Mr. Polston would have loved, are right there,
            “…we are JUSTIFIED by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand…” 

              “(Through Christ) we have obtained access to this grace”.  Think about those words, roll them around in your mind.  Put the emphasis on different words. 
            THROUGH CHRIST we have obtained access to this grace. 
            Through Christ WE have gained access to this grace. 
            Through Christ we have gained ACCESS to this grace. 
            Through Christ we have obtained access to this GRACE.   

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            THROUGH CHRIST, we have gained access to this grace.
            Faithful Christians have different ideas of what “through Christ” means in this passage, and elsewhere.
           I, for one, do not subscribe to the view of many earnest Christians that God in the crucifixion poured out God’s anger, God’s wrath, on Jesus, as the means of substituting Jesus for us, to satisfy God’s ANGER, and to save us from the punishment which WE deserve.
            I agree that we – and the world - deserve punishment for much that we do, and are.
           And I agree that Jesus took our punishment upon himself.
           But when I look at the cross, I do not see God punishing Jesus, or an ANGRY God pouring out WRATH on Jesus.  I see Jesus, in that experience, submitting to the cruelty of OTHER HUMAN BEINGS, and to the POWER OF EVIL, to be faithful to his calling, which among other things was to show us that GOD suffers when we fail and refuse to live the wonder-filled and meaning-filled and joy-filled lives for which we were created.
           Let me say it again.  I do not see God’s WRATH when I look at the cross.  I see God’s UNBELIEVABLE LOVE for us.  God tried to tell us, through the Law and the prophets, how much God loves us and all that God intends for us.  Finally, God SHOWED us, in Jesus.  How to think.  How to speak.  How to act.  How to BE.  And how much God loves us – enough to suffer, to take our deserved suffering upon Himself – upon GOD’s self - when we do wrong.  While we were totally undeserving, God showed us the depth of God’s caring for us and the world, through the one person qualified to be this real-life illustration.  Jesus, in that excruciating act of accepting the most brutal infliction of pain and humiliation, in letting his life blood be poured out, in letting his life’s breath be wrenched out of him, DID “bear our sorrows”.  But he also showed us GOD’s sorrows when we do wrong, when we miss the path God has laid out for us and for the world.  When I look at that agony, I see how much GOD LOVES us,  I see this is how GOD feels when we are less than we are created to be.
           It is that unbelievable LOVE which brings me to my knees, and which leaves me no choice but to open my heart to this kind of God.
           Through Christ – through God’s LOVE demonstrated to us fully in Christ – we have access to this grace.

* * * * *

            WE have obtained access to this grace.  Warren Wiersbe is an evangelical Bible commentator.  In my studies, he reminded me that when Jesus walked the earth, both Jews and Gentiles were cut off from direct access to God.  “The Jew was kept from God’s presence [which was thought to reside only or primarily in the Holy of Holies in the very center of the  Temple] by the veil in the temple [just outside the Holy of Holies]; and the Gentile was kept out by a wall in the [courtyard of the] temple with a warning on it that any Gentile who went beyond [that wall] would be killed.  But when Jesus died, He tore the veil (Luke 23:45)[Remember that story in Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts of the crucifixion?]   and broke down the wall [between God and humanity, between Jews and Gentiles, between men and women, and between any of us and God or each other] (Eph. 2:14).”  Warren W. Wiersbe, “Be Right” (a commentary on Romans), 49-50.
 
         Nothing can separate us from God’s grace.  Not a veil just outside the Holy of Holies, which only one priest could pass through and then only on a very special occasion.  Not a wall keeping us Gentiles on the outside even of the sanctuary.  

     Not any other human being who tries to stand between us and God, and who tells us if we
don’t believe, and act, as he or she does, we cannot be real children of God.

         Not any power of evil.

         Not our own doubt, or fear, or guilt, or sense of unworthiness.

         We – all of us, and just as we are here today – have obtained access to this grace. 

* * * * *         

            Through Christ, we have obtained ACCESS to this grace.  
 
            Wiersbe reminds us again that “In Christ, believing Jews and Gentiles  have access to God (Eph. 2:18, Heb 10:19-25); and they can draw upon the inexhaustible riches of the grace of God…”  Ibid.

            We have ACCESS to God’s grace.
            We do NOT have CONTROL OVER God’s grace.
            God is not “on call” as our servant or slave.
            We do not and cannot COMPEL God’s grace by any words, or acts, or thoughts, or attitudes, or rituals.
            But we can put ourselves in the arena where God’s grace usually manifests itself.

           Reading the Bible, being open to the Spirit of God speaking to us through the words of Scripture.
           Praying, and not just telling God our wish list, but being quiet long enough for God to speak to us, to comfort us, to renew us, to guide us, to show us how our lives can help others.
            Listening to and hearing the Word truly preached or taught.
            Taking Communion, and being open to the miracle of the Living Christ really being with us and in us, as we join in this hallowed ritual of the Church.

        When the miracle of God’s grace does not happen, these traditional “means of grace” can be dull. They can be boring.  They can be as dry as the desert.
            But when God’s grace touches them, and touches us as we engage in them, they come alive.  In those times, we experience miracles.  Genuine peace.  Power over our own lives.  The frightening but life-giving Presence of God.  A one-ness with Christ, with each other, with all believers in all times and places, and with all of humanity. Confidence in discerning  what we are to do with our lives.  A view of what God is doing in history, notwithstanding the headlines and fears and doubts of the day.

        Sadly, there are some for whom the traditional means of grace seldom come alive.  Has God excluded them, or forgotten them?  No.  For them, and for all of us some of the time, God provides other means of access to grace.
            In Matthew 25 Jesus tells us about an entirely different agenda for access to grace.  Feeding the hungry.  Giving something to drink to the thirsty.  Inviting strangers in.  Providing clothes for the naked.  Visiting the sick and those who are in prison.
            Many for whom the traditional means of grace have not come alive for a long time, have found a self-authenticating meaning and power in these simple acts of service.  Not in doing these things for recognition.  Not in doing them to work their way into Heaven, or to pay a debt to God or to someone else.  Not in doing them for any reason other than that it feels good and right to do them, it feels like what God, what Jesus, wants us to do.

            Mother Teresa went for long periods of time without sensing the presence of God through the traditional means of grace, if what we read about her after her death is true.  But she remained faithful in her service to those who were desperately poor, and sick, the least and the lost.
            God provided her with access to grace enough to sustain her and to make her a model for others, through her imitation of the humility and self-giving life of Jesus.

            One of our own, who questions at times whether he is even a believer, has been provided access to grace in his tireless and self-giving work with Habitat for Humanity.  Though he may at times doubt his own faith, God’s grace allows many of us to see him as one of God’s genuine saints.

            And God provides us at Peace with this kind of access to grace in our support of Habitat, in the Beth-El ministry to migrant workers, in our work with disaster relief, and in our involvement with the hopeful homeless in the Family Promise ministry.

            Through Christ, we have gained ACCESS to this grace. 

* * * * *

            Through Christ, we have gained access to this GRACE.

            Mr. Polston would have told us that “grace” is defined as “unmerited favor”.

            How would WE say it?   God’s giving us gifts which we didn’t earn, and which we don’t deserve.
            God gives us forgiveness.  Over and over.  “Justification”, as Mr. Polston would put it – and as the church has put it through the centuries. Justification, Mr. Polston’s “first act of grace”.

            But justification is a legal word.  It simply means being found or declared  “Not guilty”.  Is that enough?  Ask O. J. Simpson.  We can be declared “not guilty” and yet be ostracized, even hated.  That is not what God’s grace is about.

            God’s grace is about our being LOVED, and LOV-ING.  It is a deeply PERSONAL reality, not a coldly legal one.

            For the “second act of grace”, Mr. Polston would use the word “sanctified”.  We probably would say  “reconciled”, a term about a POSITIVE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP.  Beyond that, we use words such as  “transformed”, or “regenerated”, CHANGED in our VERY BEING.

            Yes, grace gives us the peace of knowing that we are forgiven, that we are “all right” with God. 
             But, as the television ads tell us, “THAT’S not ALL!  There is MORE!”

            God’s grace not only FORGIVES us.  It EMBRACES us.  It FULFILLS us.  It TRANSFORMS us. It REGENERATES us. 
            God’s grace also touches us and makes us MORALLY BETTER PEOPLE.  It makes changes in our moral character.  Many of you are better people today, and hopefully I am, too, than we once were in our  racial and ethnic attitudes.  We are not free of racism.  But we have been brought a long way from accepting and practicing it in its crudest forms.  It’s a start.  The same is true in our attitudes toward people in other cultures.  And religions.  And economic and health circumstances.

            Many of us with gray or white hair remember hating cocktail parties in our young adult lives.  We could only stand so much small talk, and then we had a desperate need to escape.  With age, and some grace, we have come to see that the purpose of a party usually is not to entertain us.  It is to honor someone else.  Our place is not to be self-absorbed and petty, fretting if WE are not entertained, but to make the effort to make the HONOREES and OTHERS glad to be there.
            And this is not just true of cocktail parties.  It is true of many areas of our lives.  Hopefully, by God’s grace, we are a little better people than we were when we were younger, making a shift from “It’s all about ME” to a genuine concern for others, even to the point of our finding genuine pleasure in doing good for and WITH others.
            Grace is making us, little by little, miracle by miracle, into the people God always intended us to be.  Tiny bit by tiny bit, God’s grace is making us over into the very image of Christ.  We don’t expect the job to be completed overnight, or even in this lifetime.  But we’re on our way, and we have a confident hope that God will COMPLETE the transformation in the life to come.

* * * * *

            As St. Paul recognized, SUFFERING frequently IS part of that character-building miracle which God’s grace is about.  I won’t embarrass any of our members by calling names on this one.  But most of us have had the experience of getting up our courage to visit someone who was seriously ill, or in other serious or desperate circumstances, only to find THEM comforting and cheering US.  God’s Spirit DOES come into lives, sometimes especially the lives of those who are suffering, to make them grace-filled vessels, spreading grace to others.  Paul was right.  God’s grace frequently DOES express itself in the progression of suffering, to endurance, to character, to a durable and near-unshakeable hope.

            In the movie “Freedomland”, Samuel L. Jackson plays the part of a job-hardened black Los Angeles policeman.  He feels that his devotion to his job, his long hours on the job, and his lack of time spent with his son during his son’s childhood, are what led his own son to come to be in prison now, and to be likely to be in and out of prison for the rest of his life. 
            What Jackson’s character does with that failure, and with the fact that the consequences of that failure will haunt him every day for the rest of his life, is remarkable. He chooses not to be bitter, or mean-spirited.  He chooses to use his own woundedness, the wreck of his own relationship with his son, as a way to relate to others who fail.  Jackson’s character shows both strength and compassion, as he leads the search for a young white boy whose mother, herself a suspect in the child’s disappearance, has said the child was taken in a car-jacking by unidentified blacks.
            Later, talking to a person who is in prison, and who is grieving personal failures which have wrecked a life, Jackson’s character tells the prisoner to learn from those failures, and to reach out to others in prison, to help them.  He says, “God’s grace is retroactive”.  I take that to mean that God permits us to learn even from our own worst failures, from the bad experiences and bad choices of our past, and from our own present imprisonment to the consequences of our past, to grow into compassionate people who can understand when others fail, and help them when they are having a very hard time along life’s way.
            It was remarkable to see a character in a Hollywood film speaking of God’s grace, and with such theological depth.  And the movie, though gritty, spoke a profound truth about grace to people who will never darken the door of a church.  God’s grace pops up in surprising places, to tell us that suffering CAN produce endurance, and then character, and then hope.

            Some of us see life as a glass half full.  Some of us see it as a glass half empty.  What is important is whether it is fill-ING or empty-ING, and what GOD is doing with it, WHATEVER state it is in.  Where God’s grace is recognizably at work, even the empty or near-empty glass is still a reality for which to be thankful, because God is filling it, re-filling it, or using it in its empty or near-empty state, to bless and bring hope to the lives of others.

            God’s grace is working miracles all the time in the lives of everyday people we know, and making them into vessels of grace.   Emily and I are in a book study group at Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church in Tampa.  One of the book study members grew up in a home where she experienced emotional abuse and saw her brother physically abused.  She was in a church at the time which she experienced as having strict discipline but no real warmth.  When she came to Palma Ceia as an adult, people reached out to her with a warmth, a caring about HER, that she had never experienced before.  She has tears in her eyes, when she talks about the GRACE she has experienced in that church, through the PEOPLE of that church.

            God’s grace also is working miracles in and through YOU, right here at Peace. 
            When I see people, during the Passing of the Peace, engaging in spontaneous expressions of genuine affection and sympathy, not just polite expressions of courtesy, I see grace happening which is powerful and heart-warming.
            When Pastor Elizabeth leads us in singing “Holy is Your Name” at the beginning of the Communion ritual, and I see people with tears in their eyes as they sing, and when I see them touching each other on the way down to take Communion, and when I hear their names being called – this is Christ’s body, broken for YOU, this is the cup of salvation for YOU – I see God’s  grace at work restoring the sacrament of Holy Communion to its rightful place as a life-changing and life-directing means of grace for us.
            When I see a children’s sermon, or a sermon for the adults, as an occasion for our pastor to be transparent about her own personal faith, her own personal walk of faith, I see grace at work leading us beyond staid doctrine to lives of joyful celebration.
            When I see little children comforting adults and praying for adults, I see God’s grace joyously at work.
            When I see children, in Godly Play, learning and showing reverence for the sacred - sacred space, sacred stories, the sacredness of what they say and do – I see grace at work forming Christian character which will be there to guide them for all of their lives.
            When I see people hauling nursery equipment and sound equipment, and setting it up and taking it down, week after week, so that the rest of us can worship and study more comfortably, I see God’s grace at work.  That doesn’t mean we should let them continue to do it all.  More of us need to get in on that activity, to put it on some sort of  rotation, before we burn them out.  But in the meantime, they are vessels of God’s grace for us and to us.
            When I see all these things and more, week in and week out, I know that God’s grace is at work in a quiet but wonderful way here at Peace.

            So Mr. Polston, Mr. NOT SLOP spelled backwards, after 54 years or so, I finally have an answer to your question.  YES, I have experienced the “second act of grace”.  Not all at once.  Little by little. Not all the time.  But often enough that I can say to you, and to the world, that Paul was right in Romans 5:1-5.  Through Christ, we DO have access to grace.  It is all around us.  It saves us.  It frees us.  It transforms us.  It uses us. It leads us, throughout our lives.  And, in the words of the popular hymn, it will one day lead us home.