I heard about a minister who was new in a church.  He preached his first sermon and everybody said, “Well that was pretty good.”  But he came back the next Sunday and preached the exact same sermon.  Well, after church people began to talk.  They thought it was strange that he would preach the same sermon, but they let it pass because they thought he was new, maybe he’d gotten a little mixed up or thought people hadn’t been there the first week to hear him.  But the third Sunday he preached the same sermon again.  Well, some of the church leaders took him aside and said, “Son, that first sermon was a good sermon and all, but preaching the same sermon three times?”  And the minister said, “I’ll tell you what, you start doing what I said in my first sermon, and then I’ll move on to the second sermon.”           

Now I don’t want to accuse anyone here of not living in the way I’ve been preaching about, but I am going to preach, not the same sermon, but I am going to preach on the same theme as I did last week.  Sort of.  And that theme, you may remember, is grace.  Grace.  This amazing, relentless, overwhelming love that God has for each one of us, even though we’ve done nothing to earn it, we really have done nothing to deserve it.  And yet God loves us anyway.  This is amazing.  It is amazing grace.  But the next question becomes: What are you going to do with this grace?  How are you going to live your life as a result of this grace?           

I heard of a mother who took her six-year-old boy out to eat at a restaurant, and, before they ate, the six-year-old asked if he could say grace.  So he and his mother bowed their heads, and the boy said, “God is great, God is good, and we thank him for the food, and I would thank you even more if Mom gets us ice cream for dessert.  And liberty and justice for all!  Amen.”  Well there was laughter from some of the other tables nearby, but one woman remarked, you could hear her distinctly, she clearly wanted to be heard, she said, “That’s what’s wrong with this country.  Kids today don’t even know how to pray.  Asking God for ice cream!  I never!”  And the little boy overheard this, and burst into tears and asked his mother, “Did I do it wrong?  Is God mad at me?”  But as the mother held the boy in her arms and assured him that he had done a terrific job and God was certainly not mad at him, an elderly gentleman came over to the table.  He winked at the boy and said, “I happen to know that God thought that was a terrific prayer.”  And then, indicating the woman who made the comment, he said, “Too bad she never asks God for ice cream.  A little ice cream is good for the soul sometimes.”  Well naturally after all this, the mother did buy ice cream for her son after the meal.  But when he got his ice cream, he looked at it for a few moments, then he picked it up and walked over and placed it in front of this woman who had made the comment.  And with a big, innocent smile he told her, “Here, this is for you.  Ice cream is good for the soul sometimes; and my soul is good already.”           

Now this is kind of a cute little story, but I think the question it poses is very real.  How are you going to live?  How will you live?  What will it be that will flow almost naturally out of your life?  Will you be more like this woman?  Or will you be more like this little boy?  With the grace, the love, that God has bestowed on you, what will you bestow on other people?  What will it be that will flow naturally out of your life?  Will it be grace?  Or will it be something else?           

I mean, what flows naturally out of the lives of some people is so self-centered, so inconsiderate, so short-sighted.  Have you noticed?  But what flows naturally out of your life?  What flows naturally out of you, now that you are aware of God’s overwhelming love for you, now that you’ve experienced it for yourself, now that you have been grabbed hold of by this awesome mystery of grace?           

I heard about a man who was the captain of a ship, he was the captain of a ship that transported slaves from Africa to South America.  This was 200 years ago.  And I don’t want to go into all the details of slaveholding and slave trading, the details would make you sick, but there has probably never been a much more evil thing devised that one human being has done to another human being than the evil of enslaving people, and there still are places in the world where people are enslaved.  But this man was the captain of a slave ship, and a mean and mostly evil man was he.  But one night at sea, his ship was in a tremendous storm, and everyone onboard just knew that this was the end, they would never make it, they were surely lost.  But this evil old sea captain, at the lowest point of his low life, cried out to God that he and his crew and his ship might be saved.  And do you know that the ship was not destroyed, all was not lost.  And this man gave his life to Jesus and changed his ways.  Years later this man, John Newton was his name, he would write these familiar words, “Amazing grace!  How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!  I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.”           

What I see here is grace, God’s grace, redeeming the life of this evil man, redeeming him and transforming him, so that he then began to share God’s grace with others, with the world.  Is this what we do, receive God’s grace into our lives and then share it with the world, become transmitters of that grace to the world, bestowers of that grace on others?           

There is this old story of a man who was praying, he was standing before God, and his heart was breaking from all the pain and injustice in the world.  He cried out, “Dear God, look at all the suffering and distress in your world.  Why don’t you send help?”  And God responded, “I did send help.  I sent you.”  I sent you.           

I have to tell you that the other day we were forked.  Now if you don’t know what forking is, it’s when a group of people, let’s say a Junior High youth group from a church, comes and plants plastic forks in your yard, and in the prongs of each fork is a message.  It sounds ominous, your yard full of these unsolicited messages.  Let me read you a couple of them.  “Your sermons don’t put me to sleep.”  “You guys are amazing.”  “You are awesome.”  “You’re a cool minister.”  I could just read these all day, couldn’t you?  “You dudes rock!”  And my personal favorite: “Pastor’s Rock!”  And on the back it said, “Pastor’s wives rock more!”  And then there was, “Welcome to our church.”  “God loves you!”  “You are his creation.”  “I hope you have a great day tomorrow.”  Now I know this was a bit of a prank, but it was also a bit of a blessing.  We were blessed by this.  We felt loved by this.  We felt that the grace of God was present in this, it was present in their hearts and then it was bestowed on us, it was shared with us.           

Of course, there are a lot of ways that we can share God’s grace with the world – forking is merely one of those ways.  Another way that we would like you to be considering over the next few weeks or so is by sharing your financial resources with the church, so that we might together, through this church, bless and grace and love and care for the many people and the many needs that arise in this church family.           

Today, because we have so many things going on in the service, we are only modestly remembering this as the 20^th anniversary of our wonderful pipe organ.  And we thereby remember all the financial and other sacrifices that were made to enable us to have this organ.  I saw a cartoon, “The Family Circus”, some time ago, and two of the children are leaving the sanctuary of their church.  And the little girl is saying to the little boy, “Daddy says we’ll have some good music in our church if they can find an organ donor.”  We don’t need any organ donors right now, except to say that we do need people to give from the heart, we do need people to give from this inner reservoir of grace who are now willing to share this grace with others.           

I am amazed at this story from Genesis.  This man Jacob has slept out in the open all night, and he has an experience of God, angels are ascending and descending on this ladder, and he has a revelation of just how close to him and to the world God is.  And his life is changed, his life is transformed, the grace of God has come into his life and taken over, so much so that his immediate response is to give something back.  His first response is to share that grace.  So first he builds a sanctuary where he can come and worship, he calls it the house of God, and then he determines that he will give a tenth of his income, a tenth of his wealth, a tenth of all he has to God.  “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, . . ., then the Lord shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that you give me I will surely give one tenth to you.”           

I heard about a woman who was walking along in New York City around Christmastime, and she happened to notice a young boy, maybe ten years old or so, who was standing there on the sidewalk.  And he was wearing just some threadbare clothes, and no coat, and it was cold, it was December in New York.  And he was standing in front of a clothing store, looking in at all the warm clothing.  Well, the woman walked by him at first, she was in a hurry to get home, but then she stopped, and went back, and said hello to the boy, and talked with him a few minutes, and then she asked him to come into the clothing store with her.  So they went in, and she bought him some new clothes, and a coat, a warm winter coat.  And as they left the store, this boy was so amazed at what she had done, and he looked up at her and asked, “Are you God?  Are you God?”  And she chuckled, and said, “No, I’m not God.  I’m just one of his children.”  And the little boy said, “I knew it!  I knew it!  I knew you were related to him somehow.”  I knew you were related to him somehow.