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THE SCIENCE OF GRACE #20
YOUR CHURCH IN MY OCEAN
Today, as we close this five-week adventure called THE SCIENCE OF GRACE, I want to ask myself: are there things going on in my world – my denomination, my home church, my circle of Adventist friends, the ministry I work with – where I’m unhappy and resentful? Are there people I was a bit mad at last year, and am I holding onto that here in 2005? Are there grudges in the life of Lonnie Melashenko, where grace has not been allowed to work its way?
Earlier we told a couple of stories from a 1979 bestseller entitled Love, Acceptance, and Forgiveness, by Jerry Cook and Stanley C. Baldwin. They have a section entitled “Quick to Take Offense,” and how many of us almost have that as our middle name? Then they remind us of this verse, found in Psalm 119:165:
Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.
Hmmmm. And then Jerry leans in and makes this rather pointed conclusion:
“A person who is easily offended apparently doesn’t love God’s law very much.”
Jerry Cook must pastor a big church, because he has several associates and a number of secretaries working there. But something came up once where three of those secretaries got mad at each other. Everyone in the organization knew it; they had taken offense with each other, and the strain was being felt throughout the building. Apparently the pastor who normally dealt with spiritual scrapes and cuts like this one was out of town.
Have you ever found yourself in a thing like this, where there’s a “situation”? We all have. A simmering feud is a very real dilemma in the Body of Christ. Sometimes we let a problem just “sit.” Someone needs to seek forgiveness . . . but the weeks go by, and they just don’t. Sometimes a personnel issue is allowed to hang . . . and hang . . . and hang. Meanwhile the tension builds and spreads.
In any case, Jerry Cook, being senior pastor, decided he had to step in.
“I called the three of them into my office,” he writes. “I said, ‘I don’t care who is right or wrong. I don’t want to know any details. This is not a trial, so you don’t need to present your case. I only know that you are not relating as sisters in Christ.’”
In other words, these three believers weren’t allowing grace to rule. They were supposed to be living in the kingdom established and protected by grace and forgiveness, and they weren’t doing it. Earlier in this series, we discussed the tough reality that grace is a RULE, an unavoidable principle. If we are to be Christians, we must forgive! We have to extend grace! That’s as ironclad as in the classroom where two plus two equals four. It has to be.
And here at this church where grace was supposed to permeate the hallways, was it acceptable for enmity to invade and just sit there with its poison wafting into the various rooms and the sanctuary? No. And so Pastor Cook gave the three secretaries this interesting timetable:
“‘I’m going to leave the room. There’s a half hour left in the day for you to get this thing ironed out. I want you to come out of here loving each other. I want you to pray with one another. I want you to forgive one another. I want each of you to call me tonight and tell me that is exactly what you have done.’” And get this: “Then I left and went golfing.”
That last line might almost strike us as either amusing or a bit flippant . . . but the reality was that in the Christian faith, Jerry Cook was simply telling these three followers of Jesus how it has to be. If our living in the kingdom of grace mandates that we love each other, and forgive each other, and accept each other – then why would it take more than half an hour? And why would we want to put it off for a week or a month or a year?
By the way, he reports in his book that all three secretaries called him that evening. Mission accomplished. And no, they didn’t just force the words of forgiveness out through lips still tight with hatred and resentment. God actually gave them the miracle of FEELING the love and acknowledging the reality of grace.
Earlier we borrowed a slogan from a nearby Christian church, and it goes like this: “Grace – Everyone, Everywhere, and Every Time.” We also used the metaphor of an ocean, where we, along with our friends AND our enemies, simply bask in this mighty enveloping atmosphere where we are always accepted, always forgiven. When we sin, we immediately turn to heaven and are thankful that we are still in God’s family. When others around us sin, we immediately assure them they are still in God’s family too . . . and ours as well.
Romans chapter 15 gives us a beautiful picture of this abiding policy:
“May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of UNITY among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And please hear these next words: “ACCEPT one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.”
Let me close with one final grace illustration, and this one is most precious. Earlier we shared the heartbreaking story of a dad, David Wilkins, whose son, Monte, was killed in a plane crash off Nova Scotia in 1998.
Dr. Wilkins, by his own confession, was a very faithful, devout, loyal Seventh-day Adventist Christian. Which, as you know, is my community of faith as well. And sometimes, in our zeal for the perspectives of our own church, we begin to create mental and spiritual barriers between ourselves and others. Our church has “the truth.” Our church is the most dedicated to doing God’s will. Our church is most faithful at following God’s Commandments. Our church most clearly understands all Bible prophecies. That kind of thinking. I’m sure people in other denominations grapple with this feeling too, but today I’m just talking about how Dr. Wilkins was feeling, and how maybe I have felt at times. If grace was a mighty ocean of God’s love, we perhaps saw a reef there, or a dike, separating us from those “other” churches where we felt important truths were being neglected. For sure, our church was in the mighty deep swells of biblical fidelity, while the other denominations were just in the wading pool.
But then something very powerful happened to the Wilkins family when Delta Airlines flew the grieving survivors to Nova Scotia and bused them out to Peggy’s Cove Point. A man came up to them and introduced himself. “I’m Captain Dan Dearing,” he told Larry, and he explained that he was there just to be with them, to pray with them, to care for them and sustain them with Jesus’ love and power and grace. Well, that was wonderful, and the Wilkins immediately bonded with Dan and learned to love him. But “captain”? What was all that about? It turns out Dan Dearing was with the Salvation Army.
A bit later in that agonizing week, as the family was preparing to hike out on the rocks and have their own private little service, another minister came over. And he was a captain too! As in “Captain John O’Donnell,” a Roman Catholic chaplain. And David writes to confess how, along with many people who sit in our pews on Saturday mornings, he had never thought of Catholics as being truly part of the “Body of Christ.” But here this godly man wanted to hug his children, to share Jesus, to give comfort according to the promises found in God’s Word, to affirm their common hope in the resurrection of the dead. Together they sang: “Nearer My God to Thee,” “It Is Well With My Soul,” and “Amazing Grace,” and as they stood there together at the edge of the surging Atlantic, David Wilkins began to sense how God’s own ocean of grace and love was a more expansive thing than he had ever realized.
Later in Halifax a Christian minister named Greg McMullin spoke with power about how God lost a Son too, how God identified with the pain of the Wilkins family. And David, with his old feelings of denominational exclusivity melting away by the moment, went up to this faithful servant, this Anglican minister, and thanked him for being such a friend in time of need.
By the way, these disciples of Jesus didn’t just say a prayer, offer a hug, drop a flower into the ocean and then leave. Years later, they were still ministering to David and Janet. And David admits that he resonates now with what recording artist Bobby Michaels once said when he performed at Monte’s high school:
“Although we belong to different fellowships with differences of opinion on certain doctrines or teachings, we have parallel hearts.”
And David concludes, discovering that correct doctrines were not any longer the foundation of his faith:
“Increasingly, I realize that parallel hearts are anchored in the Foundation Rock, Jesus Christ . . . When we are in heaven with the One we love more than life itself, I’m sure we’ll discover the flaws in our theology. What none of us will doubt is that Jesus’ love for us cost Him everything. To say that His grace is amazing – which we’ll say often – still leaves a limited understanding of its grandeur.”
It’s as true of grace as it is of all mighty oceans, friend: for sure we can never see to the end of it.
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