“GRACE TO BE RECKONED WITH”
Acts 2:1-8,12-21
The Reverend Jim Lockwood-Stewart

Pentecost was a Jewish festival before it became associated with the birth of the Christian church.   Fifty days after Passover, the Jewish people gathered for this harvest related observance.

That’s what Jesus’ followers were doing when the holy spirit came upon them … as we heard a few moments ago.  It was dramatic … It was life changing … spirit like a powerful wind … spirit like tongues of fire resting on each of their heads.  There was ecstatic speech in varieties of languages.  It was one dramatic time.

It became known as the “birthday of the church” not just because those present became aware of the Spirit in a way they had never experienced it before.  It became the “birthday of the church” because it was the moment when Jesus’ followers really realized that they still had work to do.

They had been followers … helpers … waiting for words from their teacher and leader.  But now decisions rested upon them.  What happened next would depend on their discernment, their understanding, and their dedication.

Pentecost is an appropriate time to remind ourselves just what we followers of Jesus set loose in the world today are called and sent to do.

Most, but not all of you, know that last July I retired from active pastoral ministry after 41 years.  As I have made that transition I have thought about the beginnings of my theological education … what I was like then … what I have learned since.  I entered the School of Theology at Claremont in the fall of 1965 after my graduation from UCLA that June.  You remember 1965?  The Vietnam War was raging and Civil Rights struggles were at the forefront of the moral agenda. In those days we were dealing with … war … and racism … hmm.  

I entered seminary with the idea that the most important thing about the church was its capacity to convene people who could witness and organize for justice and for peace.

At the opening convocation that fall, the keynote address was given by Claremont’s Professor of Preaching, Dr. K. Morgan Edwards.  I remember being a little disappointed.  The title of Dr. Edwards’ address was “Grace: The Dominant Note in Preaching.”

I thought it was kind of weak.  After all … given the tumult of the times, shouldn’t the dominant note be prophecy … and challenge … and justice and peace?

But no, Dr. Edwards said the most important word … theme … reality … for that time, and any time … was Grace.

I’ve come to realize how little I understood about the power of Grace as I began my preparation for the ordained ministry.  Much to my surprise, it turns out that Prophecy and promise, compassion and justice, nurture and challenge all are rooted in God’s Grace … grace that holds us and sustains us and transforms us.  Grace that’s not just a warm feeling, but a powerful force.

Last week during worship and then during the Adult Class we heard some of the experiences of members of the Epworth community who attended the United Methodist General Conference in Ft. Worth, Texas.  Two who had participated in the Conference mentioned how they found themselves viewing those with whom they adamantly disagreed as enemies, and realizing how easy it was to slide into an attitude of contempt.   As I listened to them I thought of a prose poem by Percy Hayward titled “I believe in Loving Goodwill.”  He wrote,

I cannot escape it.  
Sometimes I try to evade it.  
I choose it at a distance, and for other people, and for tomorrow.
I like to think I have chosen it when I have not.  
I sometimes rail against the war makers and imagine that by hating them I have created peace.  
I flare out against people who do not treat other races justly and forget that I feel toward them the same superiority and contempt that they have toward others.
But I cannot escape the imperial demands of loving goodwill.  
It marches straight upon me from the heart of the One whose sublime prayer has challenged the centuries … “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”       
So I believe that loving goodwill is the one disruptive, terrible, and redemptive power in the world.  
It stands quietly, waiting for its chance, and then it goes far and deep.  It is the continuous and last bar of judgment to which the thoughts and purposes and acts of all people must come.  
I believe in loving goodwill!

Grace is God’s love, forgiveness, and reconciliation, offered freely, abundantly, and unceasingly.  Loving goodwill is our appropriate response.  Grace is love that is there before we even know we need it.  Grace is love that compels us into compassionate service. Grace is the universal promise of love that can never discriminate. Grace is love that gently and powerfully sustains us and holds us into and through our last breath.  Grace is at least as powerful as a mighty wind – at least as cleansing as tongues of fire.

If there were only one thing we in the church could do, it should be to claim for ourselves and to share with each other and a hurting world, the assurance of God’s inexhaustible Grace.  It turns out Dr. Edwards was right … Grace is the dominant note … not just in preaching, but in living.

Grace means that no matter how often we fail, or get it wrong, God still loves us, and welcomes us, and puts us to use.  When we think we’ve failed completely, God scoops up all the broken pieces and gracefully mends us together again.  God never gives up on us.  God uses whatever it is we have to offer.  No capacity is too slight to be of use.  No gift is too small to be acceptable.  God is here today … each day … every day … claiming, accompanying, celebrating, challenging … and always and above all … loving us into wholeness.

Last week author Anne LaMott was interviewed by Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report … In addition to saying that Sunday School teachers get special seats in heaven … right by the dessert table … and that Dick Cheney is going to heaven … and will be seated next to a Muslim … she said that her favorite bumper sticker was one she once saw in Texas that said, “God loves you exactly the way you are, and (he) loves you too much to let you stay like this.”

We just can’t get away from that kind of love.  It won’t leave us alone.  It calls us to be instruments of loving goodwill … wishing and working for the well-being of all of God’s children.

At the General Conference … where the legislative majority reaffirmed exclusionary language related to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer persons … one of the buttons that advocates for a truly open and inclusive church began to wear had … written on a purple background … the words … “All means all.”

Well … “All does mean all … and the sweeping power of Grace with which we must finally reckon is that “all” means the parts of the all we don’t like as well as the parts of the all whom others judge.

“Loving goodwill” may, indeed, be the standard, the “bar of final judgment.”  As Mother Theresa of Calcutta said,

Each of us has a mission to fulfill, a mission of love.  At the hour of death when we come face to face with God, we are going to be judged on love; not how much we have done, but how much love we have put into our actions.

We can’t get so caught up in what we do that we forget to care for how we do it.
 

Pentecost reminds us that we live surrounded and held by God’s love and that we are invited to live as instruments of God’s grace …  a love and a grace … that accepts us exactly the way we are … and loves us too much to leave us this way.  Amen.