Well, it might have something to do with us talking about grace.
You know, today the chapter that we're going to kind of use as the bouncing point for the
sermon today from the sermon series at church called Tov.
Tov means goodness.
And this series is all about forming a goodness culture that resists abuse, resists abuses
of power, especially for us in church.
You're going to see this everywhere you go.
But for us, the point is to focus in on what can happen in a church.
But as we move in that direction towards grace, I did want to ask if there are any fans of
seven-layer dip?
Anybody?
Seven-layer salad.
Oh, the healthier version.
Good job, Becca.
So any guesses how old the seven-layer dip is, around what year it came out?
Get the shuffleboard out.
Nice and loud.
What?
70s.
Any other guesses?
50s.
See, we have some people that lived near the 50s, in or near around the corner of the 50s.
And so they probably remember certain versions of this.
Research shows, this is very important research about seven-layer dip, that it was first broadly
published as a recipe in 1981 in Tucson, Arizona.
But there is an earlier version that precedes it in California in 1978.
The joke I deleted and I'm now putting back in is that, see, I have a couple things in
common with seven-layer dip.
We're both born in 78.
We have lots of layers.
Can anyone name all seven layers?
No, I'm not gonna ask you to.
No, no, no.
Yeah.
Ogres are like onions.
I won't test you, but it's refried beans, guacamole, sour cream, salsa, cheese, tomato,
and black olives.
And of course, depending on your region or how you were brought up, you maybe use lettuce
or green onions or jalapenos or whatever it is to your liking.
Now, if you love something like a seven-layer dip, maybe you have your favorite layer.
I asked Alex how many layers belong in a dip, and he said, one, just the cheese, right?
So some of us probably have a favorite layer, and maybe for some of us, we would like seven-layer
dip if we just removed one of them.
Maybe we don't like the beans because of later.
Maybe we don't like the tomatoes.
Maybe we don't like the salsa or black olives.
You don't hate dip.
You just don't like that particular layer in your dip.
So this is my just creative way of bringing it back around to grace.
What if grace has layers?
And what if a community, if a church doesn't always walk with as much toveness, with as
much goodness as it could because we don't like all the layers?
Because we don't like all the parts that are built in to what grace is and can be.
When McKnight and Berenger wrote about grace in their book, they described it in seven
parts, what I'm calling seven layers.
And they're not all easy.
They don't come naturally to us, especially when considering what some of us have been
through, what some of us have experienced.
But they all work together.
So let's go ahead and dive in.
I'm going to be referencing a bunch of scriptures throughout this passage.
So today we're not going to stand for only one, but let's go ahead and pray and center
ourselves, center our minds and our hearts for paying attention to what God might say
to us today.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the scriptures and we thank you that we can still learn from
them and learn from you.
And I pray that whatever you have for us today, that it would stick, that it would become
a part of the framework of our faith, that our faith would become stronger as we become
more like your son, Jesus.
Your name, amen.
I know this series is based on the book, A Church Called Tove, but I do not know how to
talk about grace without talking about Brennan Manning.
I just don't know how to do it.
Somebody wrote about grace like Brennan Manning.
So you're going to hear multiple quotes from him today, starting with this one.
He said, do you believe that the God of Jesus loves you beyond worthiness and unworthiness,
beyond fidelity and infidelity, that he loves you in the morning sun and in the evening
rain, that he loves you when your intellect denies it, your emotions refuse it, your whole
being rejects it?
Do you believe that God loves without condition or reservation and loves you this moment as
you are and not as you should be, because none of us are as we should be?
This grace at every layer and every level, that God loves you, that's grace.
Every layer of it has God's love.
He forgives you from corner to corner, from top to bottom.
That is the grace of God.
This is how God forgives and works completely and lavishly.
Humans, on the other hand, how we forgive and offer grace reminds me a bit more of Mike
Tyson.
He said when asked about preparation for a certain fight, do you have a plan going into
this fight, Mike?
He said everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
For humans, grace exists beautifully in the abstract.
It sounds like a great idea, a great plan.
C.S. Lewis said it this way, everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has
something to forgive.
The real work of grace is not easy.
So the first layer of that grace is God.
God is the one that has grace to offer in the first place.
Theologically speaking, here's a theological term for your day if you are looking for that.
It's called provenient grace.
Provenient grace is this concept that grace always comes first.
There is nothing that you can do, think, or be that grace did not come first.
It's just the reality of who God is.
Grace is always before Psalm 145, 8 through 9.
The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.
The Lord is good to all.
He has compassion on all He has made.
Manning says this, this vulgar grace is indiscriminate compassion.
It works without asking anything of us.
It is not cheap, it is free.
Grace is sufficient even though we huff and puff with all our might to try and find something
or someone that it cannot cover.
But grace is enough.
He is enough.
Jesus is enough.
We may not always feel like we deserve God's grace or that someone else deserves God's
grace.
But that's not how grace works.
Grace takes no tickets or tallies.
Grace is indiscriminate compassion.
Grace is something that God has for everyone.
And that grace is meant to do something.
It's meant to redeem.
Ephesians 1, 7, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance
with the riches of God's grace.
Second layer is redemption.
Now over the course of 2000 plus years, well 2000ish years of Christianity there's been
a lot of versions of what that means.
Again another theological term for you.
How redemption works or is offered to humanity is called an atonement theory.
I won't ask you to repeat it.
And there's a lot of them.
They're called theories because even after 2000 years we still aren't really sure exactly
how it works.
Does that make sense?
2000 years later, we have a lot of them.
Here's a few.
There's the ransom theory that says that Jesus died to pay ransom to the devil.
To free us from the evil clutches of Satan.
There's the satisfaction theory that says Jesus died to pay God off, to pay the debt
that our sins creates between us.
There's penal substitutionary atonement.
That says Jesus doesn't just die to satisfy the debt of our sins, but he dies in our place
to suffer the anger and wrath of God toward our sinfulness.
Here's another few.
Christus Victor.
Jesus dies to defeat the power that sin has over us.
Because he rose from the dead, he is the victor over death.
The scapegoat theory.
This one is one of the most recent views.
It says that we are forgiven because Jesus died in our place not to bear God's wrath,
but ours.
He's not simply a sacrifice, but he is a victim of our violence.
Lastly, and probably the oldest, is called moral influence theory of atonement.
It says Jesus' atonement for us isn't boiled down into only his death and his resurrection.
It's his whole life.
All of his teachings, all of his life, every example is meant to show us how to live like
him.
And his death.
His death is meant to be the last straw that pushes us to see that we need to change.
The perfect son of God lets himself die in our hands.
How can we live with that?
Should that not cause us to want to change, to be influenced by his very life?
Will not the Holy Spirit convict our hearts and work every day to morally influence the
decisions that we make from moment to moment?
For me, there's lots of churches that believe in and emphasize the first three.
For me, I live from a mixture of those last three.
No matter how you think it works, or how it really works, imagine we'll find out someday,
the point of every theory of atonement is that redemption is because of God.
Redemption is from God, because God is gracious.
So first, God offers grace, then God gives redemption.
And when both of those are present, third, the giving and receiving of the gift of grace
creates a bond between the giver and the receiver.
Paul wrote in Ephesians 2.13, but now you have been united with Christ Jesus.
Once you were far away from God, but now you have been brought near to him through the
blood of Christ.
And this bond, it cannot be broken.
Paul writes in Romans, neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present,
not the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation
will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.
And Jesus said it himself, my sheep listen to my voice.
I know them and they follow me.
I give them eternal life and they will never perish.
No one can snatch them out of my hand.
My father who has given them to me is greater than all.
No one can snatch them out of my father's hands.
I don't know your favorite kind of super glue, but nothing is stronger than the bond between
a human heart and the love of God.
We might be tempted to think that this is where grace should end.
God has grace.
God gives redemption.
We're bonded with God.
That sounds like a complete transaction, doesn't it?
But God grace isn't stagnant.
Grace is a fertilizer.
Grace is active.
Grace grows.
In the fourth layer, grace leads to action.
It doesn't mean that we act to receive grace.
It means that we act because we've received grace.
John, the youngest disciple of Jesus knew this when he wrote, we know what real love
is because Jesus gave up his life for us.
So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters.
If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother and sister in need, but shows
no compassion, how can God's love be in that person?
Dear children, let's not merely say that we love each other.
Let us show the truth by our actions.
If grace bonds us with God, then grace leads us to act like Jesus, to offer grace to others,
to give redemption and bond with them, to act with grace and generosity and sacrifice
toward them.
Remember last week, talking about empathy, the scriptures tell us to no longer think
more highly of ourselves than we ought, but to think of each other as better, to serve
each other.
That's true of everyone.
But especially God and the writers of the scriptures want us to be aware of how we treat
each other in the community of faith.
Because in the fifth layer of grace, we find out that God by his grace has made us family.
God has made us siblings.
First John 3, 1, see what love the father has given us that we should be called children
of God.
That is what we are.
That doesn't mean siblings always get along.
That doesn't mean they always agree.
It doesn't mean that it's always easy.
It doesn't mean that all the same power dynamics, the same temptations to control and use each
other just disappear.
They don't.
Families can be dysfunctional, difficult, even God families.
Brennan Manning wrote, in a healthy family, you know how love is defined.
It's clear, has boundaries, it's attainable.
Unfortunately, in a shame-bound family, love is a moving target.
One day it's this and one day it's that.
That's when you're sure you got it figured out, you discovered you don't.
The aim of grace in church, the body of believers, is to be a healthy family where love is easily
attainable because it's offered for free.
Because grace is free.
Because our work isn't to get grace, it is to give grace.
And in a healthy church there will always be someone that doesn't know how to give
grace.
But there should and can be so many more that do.
And so they can learn.
When we live in grace as a family, layer six, grace becomes a kind of reverse power.
It's what McKnight and Beringer call it, a reverse power.
It makes love central, makes love immovable.
The target is no longer moving around the room.
It's just center, it's just what we're all standing on.
Where we were selfish, we become selfless.
Where we felt pride, we choose humility.
Where we were greedy, we become generous.
Grace levels the playing field.
Grace transforms us into equal partners.
There are no more favorite sons and daughters.
There is no one to be jealous of.
There no longer needs to be older sons angry at the father that he threw a party for the
younger son that came back because all I have is yours.
We are equal.
Eugene Peterson's translation of Ephesians 2 says this, that's plain enough, isn't it?
You are no longer wandering exiles.
This kingdom of faith is now your home country.
You're no longer strangers or outsiders.
You belong here with as much right to the name Christian as anyone.
God is building a home.
He's using us all irrespective of how we got here and what he is building.
He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation.
Now he's using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone with Christ Jesus as
the cornerstone that holds all the parts together.
We see it taking shape day after day, a holy temple built by God, all of us built into
it, a temple in which God is quite at home.
That passage is on the banner in our lobby for a reason.
Because while most people aren't going to stop and read it, because you know, like create
a traffic jam or something, grace should be the first thing you walk by.
Now not all of this is easy to hear because most of us have at least one thing that we
don't want to forgive.
One reason, at least one, that we don't want to offer grace.
Maybe we look at these first six layers of grace and we'd be fine with it or at least
more comfortable with it if we could just remove the beans.
Just remove that sour cream.
I'm lactose intolerant.
I can't, I can't do that layer.
I'll break out on a rash.
The truth is without the grace of God, without redemption, without being bonded to God by
His grace, every one of us is grace intolerant.
Having the grace of God in you is what makes you able to digest the grace He's asking you
to give.
Because we're limited in our humanness by our proclivity for sin.
But grace doesn't leave us alone just to muster what we can to live all the layers of grace
on our own.
Because the last thing, that last layer is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Holy Spirit does the work we don't know how to do.
The Holy Spirit turns enemies into friends, turns strangers into siblings.
We don't form tov on our own.
Instead, the Holy Spirit takes our limitations and liabilities, all of our gifts and ingredients,
and says we all belong in one recipe.
We may have distinct layers, but we can become one.
The Holy Spirit is able to make us a family that will flourish, thrive, and grow because
of grace, because of Jesus.
As I wind down and start to close up, I just want to share one more quote and then a prayer.
This is Brendan Manning.
He says, in the end, I want you to really dial in and hear this.
In the end, my sin will never outweigh God's love.
The prodigal can never outrun the Father.
I'm not measured by the good I do, but by the grace I accept.
Being lost is a prerequisite to being found.
Living a life of faith is not lived in the light, it is discovered in the dark.
Not being a saint here on earth will not necessarily keep you from being in that number when the
march begins.
I thought that maybe today, as we've been talking about grace and family, that we could
pray together and that maybe for some of us that this will be the first time saying something
like this, but here at the house we have something we call the prayer of belonging.
It's just a prayer that recognizes that you want to be a part of the family, that there's
nothing that can keep you from God.
So I'd love for us all to pray this together.
Oh God, our heavenly Father, I am finding I want to be in your family.
I am finding I want to belong in you.
I know I've made mistakes, I have sinned and thought I couldn't belong.
But now I believe Jesus is your son, that he died for my sins and has given me life
forever in your family.
Now I can see my mistakes and sin can't keep you away from me.
You have found me, you have forgiven me, you have told me I belong in your family.
And I believe you.
Amen.