“The Journey of Grace”
Psalm 139:1-12 and Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
10/29/23
1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
7 Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and night wraps itself around me,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
(Psalm 139:1-12 – NRSV)
What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” 4 Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. 5 But to one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.
13 For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. 14 For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. 15 For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there transgression.
16 For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us, 17 as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”), in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. (Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 – NRSV)
I’ve said this before, but Paul often comes across as if he’s trying to win an argument rather than to share a timeless mystery. And when I read some of Paul’s densest and most convoluted passages, something in me recoils. I feel like I’m back in high school physics—a subject I never grasped and was able to flunk with such efficiency as to make failure look, well, effortless.
Over the years, I’ve learned that, when reading Paul, it helps to step back, as if viewing a pointillist or impressionist painting in which the individual dots or brush strokes reveal their secrets and their beauty only in relationship to the rest of the dots or brush strokes. Paul is using all those rhetorical twists and turns to say that God deals with humankind on the basis of grace. Grace is hard for human beings, though. It’s just too gracious, especially when we stand so close to the canvass that all we can see is the flaws in ourselves and others.
When standing back from Paul’s letters, and by that I mean not obsessing over each statement but looking at his work as a whole, we begin to hear him proclaiming that to profess faith in Jesus on the one hand, and then to qualify grace on the other almost inevitably leads to religious legalism. Paul’s own version of that legalism was his Pharisaism—his certainty that those who followed Jesus did not deserve a voice, or peace of mind, or even the right to live. So, he persecuted them until God intervened and made Paul a disciple of Jesus.
Paul understood that when one’s belonging in God must be proven or deserved, grace no longer refers to God’s radical gift of love. It refers to God merely withholding vengeance. That means we have to suppress God’s anger by regurgitating pious formulas. And if we have to activate God’s redemption—even if only by “accepting” it—we are saved by our action, not by God’s grace.
Now, Paul knows his audience. The Romans argue and debate, and Paul speaks that language. So, he uses complicated dialectic to engage his readers. What makes that tricky is that he’s trying to into invite them into a faith that has more in common with an artistic process than with constructing a winning argument. So, he invites them into the story of Abraham.
We referred to Abraham’s story just last week. And in that story, God tells Abraham, “Go.” And Abraham goes. He leaves his home trusting that God will guide him, accompany him, and meet him when he reaches his destination.
Even in the first century Abraham’s story was ancient, so Paul uses it as a kind of mural, a spiritual portrait. The apostle wants his readers to enter and experience the story the same way Abraham begins his journey—by faith.
When Paul speaks of Abraham’s faith being “reckoned as righteousness,” he’s not referring to a characteristic of law-abiding citizens. He’s talking about the spiritual gift of trust. While trust is a gift that cannot be earned, it does have to be learned. And practiced. Writing to Roman Christians, Paul is trying to motivate and empower them to share the stories of faith with other Romans. He wants them to say to their neighbors, Come, listen to this story about a man named Jesus. Enter it. Experience it. Trust it. There’s new life in it!
To be transformed by story rather than argument takes a different kind of openness. It takes the openness of faith.
“Faith,” says the writer of Hebrews, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) Then he, like Paul, recalls the ancient, archetypal stories of faith. In a kind of litany, he says:
“By faith, Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected the warning and built an ark to save his household…
“By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance…
“By faith, Isaac invoked blessings for the future on Jacob and Esau.
“By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God…
“By faith, the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land…” (Selected verses from Hebrews 11)
These stories story us toward an identity, purpose, and hope that formulas and arguments cannot convey.
During officer training, the most interesting discussions we have usually occur during our review of Church history. What makes us Christian is not the doctrines we profess, but the story we share. That story goes all the way back to Abraham. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all claim that story. And while each tradition takes a different trajectory, we all have to name and confess the errors and brutalities that our stories have committed and continue to commit in the name of God. Sadly, most errors and brutalities occur when we try to make righteousness a matter of principle and process instead of open-ended, love-actioned faith, that is, when we try to make faith a legalistic matter rather than God’s ongoing story of grace.
When asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus says, “‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, and…soul, and…mind…And ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Mt. 22:36-40)
Paul says the same thing to the Romans: “The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder…steal…[or] covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love” says Paul, “is the fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13:9-10)
Neither righteousness nor love can be proved through argument. They’re not academic courses to pass or fail. Because love and righteousness are about relationship, God stories us toward and into the journey of grace.
Over the centuries, the Church has, in many ways, retreated into the ways of gracelessness, the ways of meritocracy and imperial religion. That retreat has led to the church colluding with materialism and violent power. And nothing about that is consistent with the ways of Jesus.
Living by grace, dares us to commit ourselves to the unsentimental, action-oriented love that overcomes fear, that defies every institution and every voice that sows selfishness, suspicion, and division.
While our individual lives may often feel as insignificant as single dots or brush strokes on the canvas of Creation, when we live according to the ways of God’s expansive, welcoming, reconciling love, we participate in God’s power of resurrection already at work in the world. Along this path of pure grace, God is transforming all things into one. And on this pathway, righteousness weaves our garment. Joy and thanksgiving inspire our song. Compassion tells our story. And justice is the footprint we leave behind.
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