Grace Enough For Charlie Brown

Grace Enough For Charlie Brown
-The Graceful Kingdom of God-
Ephesians 2.1-10;II Peter 3.18

Looking back over the last three Sundays I’ve notice how the subject of the kingdom of God has repeatedly come up. A few Sundays ago, the sermon was about running after peace (1 Peter 3.8-12); it very well could have been subtitled “The Peaceable Kingdom of God.” A couple of Sundays ago, the sermon was about the end of all things and with that we acknowledged that announcing the end of all things was really a way of announcing the beginning of God’s kingdom (God’s kingdom is here and now). And last Sunday the sermon was about how the Kingdom of God is spacious and how the host of the great banquet invited in all who could not heal (save) themselves (Luke 14.21).

Last Sunday’s sermon, in particular, was really a sermon about God’s gracious invitation extended to people who are broken and needy, broken and needy people that know their sin and great need for forgiveness.

Today, I sense the need to carry on with the theme of God’s grace and God’s graceful kingdom.

I have in mind Charlie Brown from the Peanuts cartoon strip. Charlie Brown is the cartoon proverbial everyman; he’s the opposite of Superman. In fact, he’s a mess: he’s already bald as a child and apparently owns only one t-shirt that he wears over and over in every cartoon strip he’s in.

There’s a one particular Peanuts cartoon where he approaches Lucy at her 5-five-cent advice booth. She says to Charlie Brown:

“Life is like a deck chair; on the cruise ship of life, some people place the deck chair at the rear of the cruise ship so that they can see where they’ve been. Others place their chair at the front of the ship so that they can see where they’re going. Which way is your deck chair facing?”

Charlie Brown dejectedly replies, “I can’t even get my deck chair unfolded.”

I often fill like Charlie Brown. When life gets out of hand and the future is so distant and the past continues to linger and when the now is unpredictable we need God’s grace.

The more we live, the more we realize that life is not organized or as predictable as we once might have thought that it is or hoped that it would be. At our most honest moments we realize how weak we are and how fragile and complex life and this world is.

Christianity is for people who are know that their lives are messy and broken.

Christianity is for all the Charlie Browns who know that they are undone and can’t get it together.

In order for us to receive God’s grace we have to know that we are desperately in need of God’s grace and that it’s something that is able to transform our lives.

Grace transforms, it doesn’t merely cover up our mess; it requires that one is honest and desiring to be a graceful person toward others and all of God’s creation in return.

To receive God’s grace we must first know that we desperately need God’s grace and that we are a broken people who cannot save ourselves alone. Paul wrote:

1-As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2-in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3-All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4-But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5-made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

God’s grace gently and persistently pursues us.

Anne Lamott writes of her conversion experience in her book, Traveling Mercies. Just prior to her conversion she was an utterly defeated alcoholic and drug abuser. Just prior to her realization of Christ loving her she had had an abortion and was severely bleeding. she remembered her conversion this way:

After a while, as I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my [dead] father, whose presence I had felt over the years when I was frightened and alone. The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there--of course, there wasn't. But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.

And I was appalled. I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends, I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed utterly an impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, "I would rather die."

I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn't help because that's not what I was seeing him with.

Finally I fell asleep, and in the morning, he was gone.

This experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was just an apparition, born of fear and self-loathing and booze and loss of blood. But then, everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in. But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever. So I tried to keep one step ahead of it, slamming my houseboat door when I entered or left.

And one week later, when I went back to church, I was so hungover that I couldn't stand up for the songs, and this time I stayed for the sermon, which I just thought was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials, but the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape. It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling--and it washed over me.

I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God's own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there for a minute, and then I hung my head and said, " . . . I quit." I took a long deep breath and said out loud, "All right. You can come in."

So this was my beautiful moment of conversion. (Traveling Mercies, 49-50)

We must know that we are a broken people and that we can’t help ourselves alone in order to receive God’s Grace.

We must surrender to God’s grace and surrendering to God’s grace means that we realize that our lives no longer are our own but they belong to God.

Paul continues:

6-And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7-in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8-For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God

What does that mean, it is the gift of God?

In the Greek it means a present. But it’s like a birthday or Christmas present; it’s a sacrificial offering; it’s a costly and sacred gift of life.

I thought of an earthly comparison that might help us relate to how sacred and special God’s gift of grace is:

When I was doing hospital chaplain work (cpe) I spent a lot of time with heart patients. One time I made a visit with a man who was recovering from a heart attack. Most of the time my conversations with heart patients involved gratitude for life and a realization that everything in life is fragile and that things in their life, specifically their health and way of life, had to change. This man, however, felt that his heart attack was an inconvenience and gave no hint of any need for grace or changing his way of life; all he could think of was his list to do at the office.

I knew another heart patient; in fact, she was heart transplant patient. She was in her early 20’s and she knew how precious and fragile life is. She received her new heart as gift of grace.

Grace is something that you treasure and that you allow to transform you.

Grace is something that you let wash over you and fill your life.

Grace is God’s sacrificial gift, Jesus, that he lavishes on those who know that they are broken, undone, messy, ruined, sinful, and who desperately want a new lease on life, forgiveness for their past and a living hope for their future.

Paul continued:

9-not by works, so that no one can boast. 10-For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

The Latin, and eventually English, word poem originates from the Greek word used here for workmanship.

People washed in God’s grace become God’s poem.

U2 has a song entitled grace:

Grace
She takes the blame
She covers the shame
Removes the stain

It could be her nameGrace
It's a name for a girl
It's also a thought that changed the world
And when she walks on the street
You can hear the strings
Grace finds goodness in everything

Grace, she's got the walk
Not on a ramp or on chalk
She's got the time to talk
She travels outside of karma
She travels outside of karma

When she goes to work
You can hear her strings
Grace finds beauty in everything
Grace, she carries a world on her hips
No champagne flute for her lips
No twirls or skips between her fingertips

She carries a pearl in perfect condition
What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things

Grace makes beauty out of ugly things

There are two lines that strike me in that song:

1. She travels out side of Karma. Grace is underserved and it doesn’t play by the rules of karma. Karma is getting what you deserve and grace is getting what you don’t deserve. We’d be in deep trouble if Karma were our final Judge.

2. Grace makes beauty out of ugly things. When it comes to humanity all that God has to work with is ugly and messy lives. God’s saves sinners. God forgives evil wicked people. God’s grace makes beauty out of ugly things, because that’s all he has to work with. We are sinners and sin is not beautiful.

Grace transforms and doesn’t allow us to remain ugly or in the ugliness of sin. Peter says, “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and forever! Amen.

There is grace enough for you and Charlie Brown; there is grace enough for the most sinful and wicked of us; there exists grace greater than all of our sin.