Grace in Creation
Grace in Creation
Romans 12:4-8
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; he exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.
No word is more fundamental to the Christian vocabulary than “grace.” God loves and God gives. No doctrine has been more reduced by the Church than this one. I have heard people say only Baptists get to heaven (a strange place heaven would be); God will not hear Jewish prayer (every book in the Bible was written by a Jew); Catholics all go to hell (Mother Theresa and Saint Francis, too); Gandhi is in hell (a little Hindu who quoted Jesus on non-violence and acted more like Jesus than most leaders during the twentieth century). It seems that those who sing “Amazing Grace” the loudest are sometimes those most likely to put limits on grace.
Our culture says that people should get what they deserve, but Jesus speaks most often about grace. All of life is a gift which begins with the creation of the world and our own conception. God gave us a world with all we need to thrive; “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” Genesis 1:31 On the personal level “…we don’t choose where we are born, we don’t choose our sex, we don’t choose our skin color, don’t choose our IQ, we didn’t choose our parents and, what is worst, they didn’t choose us; they took what they got.”1 All the important “stuff” of life is a gift. Those who succeed and claim to be self-made may have been given more energy, skill, intellect or less disease (mental or physical) than those who fail. Gifts, rather than hard work, explain why some people could practice forever and never be good at music, sports or math, etc. while others achieve tremendously with much less effort. I do not wish to diminish the importance of human responsibility, but I do want people to understand that since I had no hand in helping my father choose my mother or talking my European ancestors into coming to the United States, much of my life is pre-ordained by the Creator God.
I was born in Waynesville, NC to Baptist parents, so I didn’t choose to be Baptist; my parents took me to church. If I had been born in New York, I might have been Catholic, or in Palestine, I might have been Muslim. No matter where we are born, we are children of God. Since we know that Jesus died even for his enemies, we know that he loves us all even if we have no earthly idea who He is. Grace is available to everyone everywhere. Those who don’t know about grace live lives that are filled with fear and dread. Some see God as an overbearing parent who is always displeased with them, threatening to send them to hell. Some seek to prove their worth through competition with their neighbors. They live their entire lives feeling that they are not good enough, rich enough, powerful enough, safe enough, or smart enough. Grace says that God accepts me; now I can accept life as a gift. I have been given the gift to speak – I can put thoughts together in an order that can lead to understanding, and I have pretty good timing in speech. But I cannot spell, no matter how hard I try; I have no ability to repair equipment – and that is God’s fault, too.
Problems arise when we begin to take credit for our gifts. We say that we are successful because of our own efforts. We become prideful, feeling superior to others who have not achieved. We become greedy, trying to profit all we can from the use of our gifts. We are envious of those who have more. We lie and cheat to look better to the world. We might even kill to take away the gifts of our neighbors. We are always on guard to protect our place.
Grace says that all you have is a gift. If you can make money, it is a gift; use it to help your neighbors. If you can teach, it is a gift; if you can speak, it is a gift; if you are a physician, it is because you have a gift; if you are a scientist, you have a gift; if you are strong or athletic, it is a gift. Together, all our gifts can make for a better world.
When we see life as a gift, we are able to be thankful. We are able to share without worry or feeling at risk; after all, everything belongs to God. The Church exists to proclaim grace.
1 Thought attributed to Will Willimon.