The Pull of Grace
Rev. Ernest F. Krug, III, MD
Sunday, January 2, 2011
If you have ever wondered who Jesus of Nazareth really was–and specifically, what his relationship with the Creator of the universe is–the first chapter of John’s Gospel was written for you. But if you are like most Christians, you are still not sure that you understand it. One reason for this confusion is our confusion about who God is. We don’t understand why our all-powerful God allows innocents to suffer, and we have even less understanding of how God was in Christ. The core of the passage we read is, I believe, in verses 10-13. There, John tells us that the goal of humanity should be to receive Christ, to believe in his name, and to be transformed. For 2,000 years Christians have struggled to understand what that means. For many Christians “receiving Christ” means to be baptized and later join a church; to believe in Jesus Christ’s name is to believe that being “a Christian” is superior to any other religious identity and gives the believer a host of blessings and benefits in this life; to be transformed is something that occurs after death when one awakens in heavenly bliss. The fact is, John is not talking about any of these things. For John, receiving Christ is a result of seeing God in Christ, knowing that to be connected to Christ is to be connected to God. To believe in Christ’s name is to believe this: we have been brought into communion with God, forgiven of anything that separates us from God. We are drawn into Christ, to be Christ’s love in the world, in spite of all our shortcomings, preoccupations, and selfish desires. God then provides the power, the freedom of action, for us to respond to this awareness of Christ’s presence.
When God engages us to be Christ’s love in this world, it is not something we control. We become part of the story of God’s love transforming the world. Most of you have experienced this transformation in some way, or want to be part of it, which is why you are part of a Christian community of faith. Let me tell you about a young man who experienced transformation in a particularly powerful way.
Bryan was in his 20’s, a professional rock climber and special education teacher. He suffered an over-use injury in his elbow and couldn’t climb rocks–something that gave him tremendous satisfaction in life. As the end of a school year approached, he now faced a summer without rock climbing. So he decided to buy a bike. But he couldn’t reach an agreement with a bicycle salesman and decided to hike through Mexico. On the last day of the school year a teacher in the classroom next to his suggested that, if he got as far south as Oaxaca (in the southernmost part of Mexico), he visit an orphanage there. After a month or two traveling around Mexico, Bryan decided to check out the orphanage and met the children of Casa Hogar in Oaxaca City. He was completely engaged by their needs. What did he do? Bryan spent all of his savings buying diapers and food and when his money ran out, he returned to Connecticut to raise more money. Out of that first stop at Casa Hogar, an organization called “Simply Smiles” was born.
When I spoke with Bryan about this experience, he told me he no longer cared about rock climbing, he cared about the orphanage and began telling people about his experience there. A key part of that experience was getting to know a child with cerebral palsy named Ricardo. Ricardo was totally dependent on others for his basic needs, and Bryan’s growing relationship with Ricardo drew out of Bryan “a desire to help.” When Bryan found himself asking about Ricardo’s purpose in the world, it gave Bryan a new understanding about his own purpose: people were in the world to motivate each other for one unifying purpose–to meet needs for human flourishing. Volunteers began coming to work with Bryan. Initially, the work focused on fixing up the orphanage. And then the orphanage ran out of space, and a new orphanage was built. On one occasion, Bryan brought a load of trash to the garbage dump and noticed people living there. This led to a new plan. Why couldn’t the children of Casa Hogar serve the garbage dump community of 127 people? So, the children of the Casa Hogar orphanage gathered in the kitchen and, with help from the adults, made sack meals. The next day, a few of the children, some with wheelchairs, piled into a truck and rode to the garbage dump. Once there, these children, previously lacking food themselves, handed out sandwiches to the people living at the dump. After that, Bryan enlisted volunteers to build cinder block houses for that community of dump dwellers. As word spread about his work, he was told about an enclave of starving people three river crossings away in the jungle. Bryan visited those people and then developed a feeding program. Now each month 2,500-3,000 people come to the Simply Smiles’ food distribution site in the jungle to receive a month’s worth of food. There is much more to the story of Simply Smiles. In fact, Bryan and his colleagues have now expanded beyond Mexico and have a major project on an Indian reservation in South Dakota. However, you will need to go to simplysmiles.org to read all the exciting and remarkable work being accomplished.
Bryan does not claim to be motivated by religious fervor, but there is no question in my mind that his experience in Oaxaca exemplifies engagement with and by the God who loves us all and cares about those living at the margins of human society. With the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, the norm was no longer survival of the fittest in God’s reality, it was a commitment to the least in order that human community in all its diversity might flourish together. This is revolutionary and defies our intuitive concept of evolutionary progress. God entered our world in Jesus Christ to show us a new way. The strong and powerful would be humbled. The poor and the weak would become the cornerstone of a new humanity.
When Bryan stopped to visit the children at Casa Hogar, he met children who were disabled. They had been cast off. He found them, and they found him. Together they created a community of grace that began to look beyond its walls to help others. Children with very little began taking sandwiches to a dump site to feed those with less. This cannot be explained by a biological need to survive. It can be understood as a response to the love of Christ who taught us God’s priorities and blessed us with grace and truth to enlighten and sustain us. Furthermore, it is important to understand, as John did, that the love of Christ is not restricted to 33 years of human history some 2,0000 years ago. It has been present since the beginning of time and continues to engage those who would become children of God, in future time.
When we believe in Jesus’ name, we believe in an open future of possibilities where we can be part of God’s transformation of this world. What we see are the hungry being fed, those on the margins of society restored to community, those whose lives are restricted by pain, poverty, or oppression released to give fully of themselves to others. What we experience in ourselves is a reframing of our understanding of who God is. God is not limited to being the designer of creation. God is not limited to being the guardian of our morality through a set of rules and commandments. No, much more: God is that Spirit which pulls us into a future we create with God, a future in which God’s light and truth and grace transform a materialistic and sometimes dark world into a community in which love restores hope, and real freedom is found when we are possessed by God’s grace. A paradox–but the truth that sets us free. So, may we all be transformed and sustained by the grace and truth which came through Jesus Christ and which continues to pull us into a future transformed by the amazing power of God at work in his creation. Amen
