Grace, Love & Fellowship¹

As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Almighty One, we worship you in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds. Come to us now through this time, so that we might worship you more fully. If these words are not Your Word, may they be forgotten and come to naught. But if they be Thy Word, may they adhere to our hearts, forever transforming us from glory into glory, into the creatures you would have us be, Thou who art our Rock and Redeemer, Amen.

Open now your ears and your hearts to hear The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in II Corinthians. II Corinthians 13.11-13. The Grass withers, the Flower falls, but the Word of the Lord endures forever…Thanks be to God.

The final sentence of II Corinthians is one of the most famous lines anywhere in the Bible. It is so famous, in fact, that many people who hear it, or even say it regularly, may not realize its origin, or where it can be found. It has become a regular benediction in the history of the church. I say it regularly. Because it is one of the most beautiful phrases in all of scripture, but not only so. The grace of Jesus, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all sums up so much of what being a Christian is all about; it draws the focus firmly on to the God we know in and through Jesus and the Holy Spirit; and it take the practical and the theological and combines them together in an elegant blessing. No wonder it is so popular.

The danger with something so popular is that we already know it, and therefore we let the words wash over us and forget what they mean. Let’s not do that. Especially today. We celebrate you graduates today. And this is our wish for you, not only as you head on to the rest of life, but always. The grace of Jesus, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all, now and forever. So, since it is our wish for you, let’s slow down a bit, and not just go through the motions with it.

Being a Christian starts, of course, with grace. Paul rings this bell again and again throughout his letters. Being a Christian isn’t about duty. It isn’t about morality. It isn’t about the right way to organize your life, or the best way to organize society. It is about grace. And not only the grace of God that comes to you, but also about the grace of God that flows through you. Which is to say, if you are in this for duty, or for morality, or for the right way to organize your life, or for politics, then you aren’t touching the divine. But, if you are a Christian because the grace of God flows to you, it will flow through you, to others. Being judgmental is not letting the grace of God flow through you. Seeking justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God is.

Behind this grace, offered to us in Jesus, and illustrated by his giving his very life for us, is the love of God. God’s love is not simply one aspect of God’s character. It is the very essence of who God is. In I John we can read, “God is love, those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” This Judeo-Christian idea and belief in a God of love as the only God stands out as different from most other views of God, ancient or modern. The ancient pagan world certainly didn’t believe in a God of love. Some of the gods and goddesses might show love, of a kind, for certain people, but that world was full of the anxiety that comes from a fear of unknown superhuman forces that are not loving, but are capricious, malevolent, and in need of being pacified or placated. There was not the thought of a single God whose driving force was love.

Not really surprising, though, since the experience of life that people generally have is not one of total and complete, unmixed and unmitigated happiness. Therefore, people think, if there is one God who created the world, most people who think about the world regularly conclude that this God can hardly be loving. But what Judaism clung to as hope, and what Christianity announced as fulfilled at last, is the belief that the one God who made the world was a totally loving God, who would demonstrate this love by acting within the world, at enormous cost to himself, to put everything right at last. In realizing that our loving God did in fact do just that, and in meditating on such business, the early Christians found themselves in a new kind of spirituality, an intimacy of trust like that of children with parents, a warm security of knowing that they were loved with an everlasting love. That is what Paul means by “the love of God,” and is a pretty good thing for you to remember as you head off into the world, graduates.

Those who are grasped by this love, who have the grace of the Lord Jesus in their bloodstreams, are thereby joined together in a family which the world has never seen before. It is a family called to share a common life, a partnership, association, participation, sharing, communion, or even interchange as well as the familiar fellowship. Interestingly enough, this fellowship between Paul and the Corinthians has been under serious strain. But Paul has not given up just because of that strain. He and the Corinthians have worked on their fellowship through letters, visits, reports, sorrow, joy, despair and hope. Because Paul believes that God’s own Spirit is at work both in his life, and in that of the Corinthians that he cannot let them go, cannot walk away and found another church somewhere else, cannot simply bask in the happy relationship he enjoys with his beloved Macedonian churches, but must work things out, must let partnership, participation and fellowship have their full expression.

In this section, this beautiful benediction, Paul provides an astonishingly brief yet complete picture of the God in whom Christians believe. Though he separates the trinity, into distinct modes of being, while doing so, he also unites them, so that we see one God in threefold form.

So, because it is graduation Sunday, and because I get to stand here in the pulpit and give you more advice, especially on what we learn from 2 Corinthians today, here it is. Live in the grace of Jesus Christ. That is what being a Christian is about. God is love, those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them. And lastly, you are part of this family. Kayla breakfast. Like it or not, you are part of this family, this Christian family. Through your baptism you have been adopted by God into the family of God. Nothing you can do could ever change that. Amen.