The Grace of God

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
December 26, 2004

The Grace of God
Matthew 2:13-23
Isaiah 52:7-10

We’ve heard the story of Jesus’ birth
told in countless ways over the past month:
in carols we have been singing since Thanksgiving,
in movies we’ve been watching on television,
in our children’s Christmas pageant last Sunday,
and of course in our service of Lessons and Carols
on Christmas Eve.
It is a story we can never hear too often.

For all our focus on the birth of our Lord,
it is all the more amazing when we realize that
the story of Jesus’ birth can be found in only two of the gospels:
in Matthew and in Luke.
Neither Mark nor John speak of Jesus’ infancy;
they begin their gospels with Jesus’ ministry.

Matthew and Luke’s renditions are both quite short,
but otherwise quite different:
Matthew focuses more on Joseph, while Luke focuses more on Mary.
Matthew gives us the wise men, but no shepherds,
Luke gives us shepherds but no wise men.

We tend to combine the two gospel accounts to create the Christmas story.
We tend to end the story with the visit of the Wise men,
But Matthew doesn’t stop the story there.
He continues with the flight to Egypt, and the return to Judea,
with the family settling in Nazareth.
Matthew does this because his recounting of the story
assumes that Mary and Joseph begin life living in Bethlehem,
while Luke tells us that they lived in Nazareth but traveled to Bethlehem
to be recorded for the census and to pay their taxes.

In our lesson this morning we heard the awful story
that we tend to leave out of our Christmas tales:
the story of Herod’s decision to kill all the boys in Bethlehem
and the surrounding region, all the boys two years old and under.
Herod had heard the wise men talk about a new king having been born,
and he didn’t like the sound of that at all,
because, after all, he was the king,
and kings don’t like competition.

If the story of the killing of all the baby boys sounded familiar,
as though you might have heard the story somewhere else in the Bible,
then you know your Bible well:
More than a thousand years earlier, down in Egypt,
Pharaoh, the ruler over all Egypt,
grew concerned by the rapid increase in the population of
the Israelites who lived among them as slaves.
He feared that they might grow more numerous
than the Egyptians themselves
and so he ordered that every baby boy be killed.
One mother took her infant son and placed him in a papyrus basket
sealed with pitch, and hid him among the reeds
on the bank of the river Nile to try to save him.
The daughter of Pharaoh found him there
and took him as her own son.
She named the foundling child Moses.

Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt to escape Herod’s murderous army.
We are not certain how long they remained there;
weeks, perhaps a few months,
and then, as Matthew tells us, the news reached them
that Herod was dead,
and the threat to the baby Jesus was gone.

They then made their way to Nazareth
a town about 75 miles north of Bethlehem,
in the region known as Galilee,
where Jesus grew, and as Luke tells us
“the grace of God was upon him.” (Luke 2:40)
Here we find a parallel with John’s gospel where we read,
“the Word became flesh and lived among us,
full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

And that’s where we leave the Christmas story each December,
and start a new year together:
with the Word made flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ,
Emmanuel, with us.
We begin each new year with the grace of God.

If I were to ask you, what is the grace of God?
What would you answer?
What do we mean by the word “grace”?
It is a word we use in different ways:
we say grace before we eat a meal.
We say that a ballerina or a figure skater is graceful
But what do we mean when we speak of God’s grace?
Paul’s letters are filled with references to grace
but we are never quite sure exactly what Paul means by the term.
The Gentle Readers Book Club had a lively discussion about the word
at their meeting earlier in the month after they read the book
“Home to Harmony” by Philip Gulley.
Judging by some of the questions I had afterward,
there were as many different thoughts about the term
as there were Gentle Readers gathered that evening.

Gulley, who is a Quaker pastor, has written a new book
with another Quaker pastor, James Mulholland,
in which they focus on the concept of grace.
The book, “If God is Love: rediscovering grace in an ungracious world”
is a wonderful, thoughtful volume that I highly recommend.

Gulley and Mulholland help us to understand that God’s grace
is God’s absolute and unconditional love given us through Jesus Christ.
Grace is a gift given to us; it is our Christmas present;
a gift we get to unwrap and use every day of the year.
It is a gift we get whether we’ve been good or bad;
It is a gift we get, even if we didn’t put it down on our list.
It is a gift that God wants us to use,
and not save for special occasions.
It is a gift that never wears out, never goes out of style,
and is appropriate for men and women, young and old,
right-handed, or left-handed: a gift for everyone.

It is a gift God gives us because of his love for us;
And with a gift like that, an extraordinary Christmas present
given us every day of the year, without any thought about whether
we merit the gift, whether we’ve earned it, whether we deserve it,
Gulley and Mulholland ask the question,
why aren’t we striving to use our gift to live grace-filled lives?
A grace-filled life, according to the authors,
is one that is firmly grounded in Jesus’ two great commandments:
Loving God with all our heart, our strength, and our soul,
and loving our neighbors as ourselves.
Most of us do a pretty good job loving God with all our hearts;
where we tend to leave grace behind is when it comes to loving
our neighbors as ourselves.
Even in the church, we can be judgmental, critical,
hostile; we can even be rude, selfish, and spiteful.
Gulley and Mulholland see an unfortunate growth in what they call
toxic theology, especially among the more fundamentalist,
those who believe that they have been saved
but are convinced that those who don’t walk the same path
do not live in a state of grace.

But what does Jesus teach us?
Orthodoxy? Adherence to doctrine?
No, he sees those as problems rather than solutions.
He tells us again and again not to judge. not to condemn,
not to criticize.
He reminds us that every time we point out the speck
in another’s eye, we are overlooking the log in our own eye.
Our Lord teaches us: “The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, …for it is out of the abundance of the heart
that the mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45)

In that teaching is the formula for grace:
a good person, having been given grace by God in the person of Jesus Christ,
takes that grace out into the world,
as a loving disciple, taking mercy, and justice,
goodness and kindness
taking the light of life and love we’ve been given
in the birth of our Lord
into an ungracious, dark world.

The authors use the term, “practicing the presence of God.” (p. 103)
to describe how we can live most gracefully and graciously.
I think that is a wonderful term that we should use in all our work
our relationships in the family, our relationships in work,
our relationships here in church, and with strangers.

How can we more effectively practice the presence of God
in our lives?
What can you do to bring the presence of God,
the presence of Christ more completely
into your words, your actions,
everything you do and say?

A good place to begin practicing the presence of God
is for each of us to work to build a more gracious church.
Gulley and Mulholland describe a gracious church as
a welcoming church, an accepting church,
“… a safe place to ask questions, explore new ideas,
admit our struggles, and seek assistance.” p. 174
It is a place where we can come with our doubts, our uncertainties,
our frustrations, it is a place where we can know we can talk
freely and not feel criticized, condemned, or judged.
It is place where we can grow in grace and grow in faith.
In a gracious church, we don’t all necessarily think exactly the same way,
but we can talk and even more important, listen to one another,
as we seek to grow in faith and grace.

We are looking ahead to a new year for this church,
a year in which we can expect to continue to grow,
but we will continue to grow only if we are a gracious church,
filled with disciples living grace-filled lives.
Only if we actively practice the presence of God.

Our calling is to imitate Christ, to follow him.
to remember why he was born, why God sent him to walk among us.
He was born that we might never doubt of God’s love for us.
He was born that we might learn to follow him
and live our lives like him.
As Henry Van Dyke so eloquently put it,
“Dawn broke with the birth of our Lord and Savior.
The light is shining and we have work to do.”
And our work is to live gracious lives at work,
at home, in every place we go.
Our work is to make this as a more gracious church,
a church where people can feel God’s grace
the moment they walk through the door.

Grace is not judgment,
grace is not orthodoxy
grace is not adherence to ritual
grace is not focusing on another’s flaws and shortcomings.
grace is not even worrying about another’s salvation:
that’s God’s business, not ours.


Over the past four weeks of Advent,
we prayed “O Come O Come Emmanuel”:
and our prayers have been answered: God is with us,
for God sent us his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
In Christ, grace has come into the world,
and into each of our lives,
a gift given to every one of us.
Grace is something none of us can give,
it is available only from God.
But like any gift we received yesterday, we can use it,
or we let it languish and collect dust.

How will you respond to God’s gift of grace in your life?
What will you do to live a more grace-filled life?
What will you do to make this a more gracious world?
What will you do to make this a more gracious church?

How will you practice the presence of God with greater vigor
and more intent?
Some questions for you to ponder in your minds and hearts
as you relax today, and as you look ahead to the New Year,
a year I pray is filled with grace for each of us,
and for all of us.
Amen