6/13/10                                                First Presbyterian Church

            The congregation stood up to sing an old, familiar hymn, a hymn so loved that the congregation could sing it without even looking at the words:  Amazing Grace How Sweet The Sound.  Everyone was intent on the hymn except one little four year old girl who kept tugging on her mother’s dress.  When the mother finally bent down to see what her daughter wanted, she heard this question:  “Who’s grace and what did she do that was so amazing?”

            That’s the question I want to try to answer today and I realized that one way to do this was to actually look at the words behind that hymn: Amazing Grace. 

            The first line sums up the entire sermon.  “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”  The wonderful thing about God’s grace is that He does not wait until we have our act together before He loves us, before His grace covers us, before His forgiveness frees us.    He is there in the depth of our sin, pain, and helplessness when we feel no one could possibly love or forgive the things we’ve done, the things we are still doing. 

            In his book What’s So Amazing About Grace, Philip Yancey tells the story of an addict who sold her eleven year old daughter for sex in exchange for the drugs she craved.  As Yancey explained that God loved even her with an all encompassing love, she said, “no one could love me.  I am a piece of trash and I will always be trash.  I should be killed for what I do.” 

            Yancey then asked if she would be willing to go to church with him, to learn about this thing called grace.  “Go to church” she said, “why would I ever go to church?  All they would do is make me feel even worse.” 

            Too often that’s true.  Too often you can go to church and be pounded and pounded with the guilt of your sins and how wicked and bad you truly are, how far beneath God’s grace, only at the end to be briefly assured that God does in fact love you. 

            I suppose that’s why I love the fact that we do our prayers of confession and assurance of pardon at the beginning of the service.  Believe me; I know what I’ve done wrong this week.  I know how I have failed God.  Sometimes the time for silent confession just isn’t long enough.  But I know I can go to God and tell Him everything, lay it all at His feet.  Then this wonderful thing happens:  We are told that God forgives us!  That the addict, the homeless, the abuser and the abused, the gossiper, the petty theft, even the one who thinks they have nothing to confess have been forgiven.  God has saved even a wretch like me.  It is when I know that, when I can accept that that I am truly free of the guilt and shame that binds me. 

            Friends, believe the good news of the gospel, in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven! 

            Then the verse moves on: “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.”  Notice that John Newton doesn’t say that he found Christ, he says Christ found him.  There is a world of difference between the two. 

            God’s grace is always there for us, with us, an amazing, priceless gift from the ruler of the universe handed to us all dressed up sealed with a bow.  But like any gift we must accept it.  And God would give anything to have us do just that.  God would give even His beloved Son. 

            And so one day, every day, we are given the gift, and the choice is whether we will unwrap it and have it change our lives forever.  Perhaps you’ve been asked at some point or another “when were you saved?” 

            For that person, you are not saved until you have unwrapped the gift.  Everything depends upon your response, your belief in Christ.  They would rewrite the last sentence of the first verse of our song to read, “I once was lost, but now I have  found, was blind but now I see.”  They can name the exact day and time they opened God’s gift and received salvation. 

            But Presbyterians are usually dumbfounded when we’re asked that question by a well meaning friend who just wants to make sure we’re saved.  We can’t say it was November 3^rd 1978 or any other date. 

For us, the answer to the question “when were you saved?” can best be answered  just about 2010 years ago on a hill far away on an old rugged cross, and that has been and will be the answer every day since then, for every day we need to unwrap the gift of grace and forgiveness and re-discover the reality of God’s amazing grace that gives us the ability to begin again.

For us, the last line of this verse truly is “I once was lost, but now am found was blind but now I see.”  According to Jeremiah, we have been found by God before the very beginning of the universe.  His love has never and will never depend upon what we do.  It is there even no matter what. 

So what difference does it make if we choose not to unwrap this gift?  It makes all the difference in the world.  It makes the difference between the certainty of the grace and love that covers us and the constant wondering if God could truly love someone like me. 

Now, I have to confess I wanted to unpack every verse of this beloved hymn, because each verse reveals a different aspect of grace, but some of you, if not all of you, are there saying “Oh, my God, there are five verses to this song! We’ll never get out of here!”   So I’m going to stop right here.  But I thought it only appropriate to use Amazing Grace as our affirmation of faith.  Would you please stand and sing with me hymn 280, “Amazing Grace, How Sweet The Sound.”