Monday, July 6, 2020
Middle
East
Psalm 103:12
As far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us.
Romans 5:20
Law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
Words of Grace For Today
Look at the news of this world. People play stupid games, lying to the media, trying to turn what was not into something that supposedly was. Or they try to turn what was into something that was not. This ‘spin’, or clearly named, these blatant lies, have an immense destructive effect on us all. At the core of it all, truth is sacrificed over and over again to gain someone’s unfair advantage. Those lies always come back to bite their authors and adherents.
It is too easy to condemn those who play those games. How can they get away with the lies? What is wrong with people that they do this?
Closer to home, there are people who make such bald-faced lies, for their own advantage, sacrificing even their faith communities, in order to gain some empty advantage. How can people think they get away with these lies? How can others who participate in the lies justify what they do? Do they think that God does not see what they do? Do they think they are somehow exempt from their own judgment day before Jesus?
At home, we each live lies, little lies, sometimes big lies, with each other. We say it is to get along. We say it is necessary to keep the peace. We rationalize, justify, and hold ourselves to be correct, even when we know we are guilty as guilty can be.
I, of course, do no such thing. I am better than all that. And you either laugh at that false, self-righteous, self-justifying statement, knowing you wish it were so for yourself, or you quickly jump to judge me for lying about my lying. Layers upon layers pile up of us judging others in order to justify ourselves. There is no end, and like the Romans, under threat from others’ evil deeds we turn to more evil deeds ourselves, we ‘hire assassins’ to eliminate our enemies, until our ‘assassins are hired’ to eliminate us, and then those who ‘hired the assassins’ are eliminated, until only ‘the assassins’ are left to run everything, and when the ‘Goths attack’ there is no one to adequately defend our ‘Rome’, and we and it fall, and fall hard we do, into the dust of history that barely remembers our names or reality, either the truth of who we were or the lies we created to make ourselves into something we never were.
How can God save us from this vicious cycle of deception, scheming, lies and self-destruction?
God removes our sins from us, ‘as far as the east is from the west’. Since we understand that east and west meet on the other side of the planet, today’s image is: as far as one end of the universe is from the other (no ‘worm holes’ or time-space folds or faster than light travel allowed.)
The clarity of how bad we all are, clear and fair judgment on us all, and condemnation of us all is brought by the Law. The Law arrives and appears to increase our sins, though it only makes clear how corrupt we all are even before the Law. The weight of our sins in clear view overwhelms reality and drags us all down into the pit of hell.
Except or DOCH
God is not done with us. God brings the Law to make us all aware how hopeless we all are. Then God sent Jesus to give us his story, of love and grace, which even death cannot defeat. Jesus replaces our sins with his perfect record, again and again as we continue to sin. God does this without demand. God only tells us the old, old story of Jesus and his love. With that story God sets us free from the burden of our sins.
The more the Law clarifies and makes obvious our sins, Grace abounds even more, to set us free.
We are not absolutely free. We are free from our sins. We then can choose (again and again as Grace answers our sins again and again with forgiveness) to whom we will be slaves: to our own sinful will, owned by the Evil One, the Devil, OR we can choose to respond to Grace, by being slaves to Jesus’ will for us.
God created us to be able to choose, to choose to be slaves to Jesus, and therein to sacrifice everything we could or would claim as our own rights. We sacrifice, as Jesus did, in order that others will know God’s Grace is for them! God created us, precisely so that we could do this with every opportunity life provides to us.
Without sin burdening us, with the Holy Spirit guiding and enabling us, with Jesus’ example before us, and with God’s love overwhelming us, we can miraculously (by God’s power) actually choose and follow through with thoughts, words and deeds that allow God’s Grace to flow through us to others.
And sin has no bite in us anymore.
Such is Grace.
Until the next moment we must choose, and we choose to pretend, that of course it is not so with me, I am free from sin. And by that lie we enslave ourselves to sin once again, and God starts all over with us … and again God starts all over with us … and again God starts all over with us. God never abandons us, not even as Covid 19 increase the stress and challenges and our sins increase moment by moment. God never abandons us and God’s Grace overwhelms us.
Thanks be to God!