Grace on Top of Grace

Lamentations 3:17-26

17 You have removed peace from my life; I have forgotten what prosperity is.[a] 18 So I say, “My strength is gone as is my hope in the Lord.”19 Remember my affliction and homelessness—wormwood and gall! 20 My mind keeps reflecting on it, and I become depressed. [b] 21 This is what comes to mind, and therefore I have hope: 22 Because of the Lord’s gracious love we are not consumed, since his compassion never ends. 23 They are new every morning—great is your faithfulness! 24 “The Lord is all I have,”[c] says my soul, “Therefore I will trust in him.”25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the person who searches for him. 26 It is good to hope and wait patiently for the Lord’s salvation.

Ephesians 2:1-10

1 You used to be dead because of your offenses and sins 2 that you once practiced as you lived according to the ways of this present world and according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now active in those who are disobedient. 3 Indeed, all of us once behaved like them in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of our flesh and senses. By nature, we were destined for wrath, just like everyone else. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love for us 5 even when we were dead because of our offenses, made us alive together with the Messiah (by grace you have been saved, 6 raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly realm in the Messiah Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might display the limitless riches of his grace that comes to us through his kindness in the Messiah Jesus. 8 For by such grace you have been saved through faith. This does not come from you; it is the gift of God 9 and not the result of actions, to put a stop to all boasting. 10 For we are God’s masterpiece, created in the Messiah Jesus to perform good actions that God prepared long ago to be our way of life.

Psalm 40:2

“I waited patiently for the Lord and He heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out to the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.”

John 1:15-18

15 (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.”’) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son,[a] who is close to the Father’s heart, [b] who has made him known.

HOMILY

Grace is one of those words we use often in church…. indeed, so often that we sometimes forget how radical it really is.  We say grace at the table. We sing about grace in hymns. We close our prayers with grace.

And yet, when grace actually shows up in our lives, it rarely arrives neatly wrapped. Grace usually comes unexpected, undeserved, and often disguised.

The psalmist says, “I waited patiently for the Lord and He heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out to the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.”

Notice what the psalmist does NOT say. He does NOT say, “I climbed out.”  He does not say, “I pulled myself up by the bootstraps.” No No No. He says, “God drew me up.”  That my dear friends is what grace is.

Grace is not God helping us do what we are already capable of doing. Grace is God doing for us that we cannot do for ourselves—especially when we are broken, stunned, or out of strength.

That is why Amazing Grace, written by John Newton, continues to speak across centuries.

That hymn did not arise out of John Newton’s cerebral musings. Those words came from his heart; out of the deep anguish of his soul that understood he should have died at sea. He knew he did not survive the angry waves of the sea out of his own merit, but because of God’s mercy and God’s love. 

Remember the 3rd verse of Newton’s hymn: “Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come, tis grace has brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home”.  When we speak those words, we are not subscribing to some theory. We are singing our personal testimony.  We are not speaking out of our heads; we are glorifying God out of grateful hearts.

Grace meets us where we are, but it never leaves us where it finds us. The Apostle Paul learned this when he begged God to remove his thorn in the flesh.  God did not remove the thorn.  Instead, God said, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

God’s grace is not always dramatic. God’s grace is not always flashy.  But God’s grace is always sufficient. God’s grace is always the right kind of grace and the right amount of grace to meet us where we are in the present moment.

I learned what Saint Paul learned……not from a book……. but from an experience which I did not choose.

Years ago, I was involved in a near-fatal car accident on I-64. Nearly every bone in my body was broken. It was the kind of wreck where survival is not assumed. There came a moment when my body simply could not do what bodies are supposed to do. I could not move. I could not protect myself. I could not even pray.

And yet—I was held. Held by first responders.  Held by surgeons and nurses.  Held by people praying when I could not pray. Held by a God who did NOT say, “Get up and prove your faith,” but instead said, “Be still. I’ve got you covered.”

For some time, I thought grace was what saved me from death. But here is what time and healing taught me: “Grace did not only save me from death. Grace saved me through weakness.”

Grace stayed after the crash. Grace stayed through surgery, recovery, and uncertainty. Grace was present not in the absence of brokenness, but right in the middle of it.

And only later did I realize something else—something especially fitting for Trinity Sunday. You may recall that from time to time, I close our worship service with Saint Paul’s Trinitarian benediction:

“The love of God the Father, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all, now and forevermore.”

Those words are important to our faith because they articulate in Trinitarian language how grace actually works.

The love of God the Father is the source of grace—His love creates us, His love claims us, and love His love refuses to let us go.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is incarnational love; Christ’s love enters our suffering; Christ’s love bears our scars. Christ’s love that meets us not above pain but in the middle of it.

And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is love that stays with us—love moving through human hands, through hospital rooms, through whispered prayers, and through long recoveries.

Lying broken after that crash, I was not living on a theological slogan. I was living on grace. The Father’s love did not abandon me. The Son’s grace met me in my suffering. And the Spirit’s fellowship surrounded me—through people, presence, patience, and time.

Grace, I now understand, is the circulating life of the Trinity itself, flowing from the Father, embodied in the Son, and carried to us by the Spirit.

That is why grace does more than forgive our past. Grace sustains our present. Grace draws us into God’s own life for the future.

A contemporary song puts it simply: “All of grace is my story. All the way from earth to glory Since by grace he lifted me from sin and woe. Living grace he has extended, as on him my heart depended. And he’ll give new grace when it’s my time to go. Grace has not yet discovered. Grace not yet uncovered. Grace from his bountiful store, Grace to cross the river. Grace to face forever. There’ll be new grace I’ve not needed before.

The Christian journey is not a straight line from faith to glory. It is a winding road of beginnings again and again—each one carries us by grace.

Grace is what gets us up in the morning when grief still lingers in the house. Grace is what allows us to forgive when resentment feels justified. Grace is what whispers, “You are not finished,” even when our bodies, our relationships, or our plans go South.

So, if today we feel strong, grace is teaching us humility. If today we feel weak, grace is already at work in us. If today we feel like we have survived something we shouldn’t have survived—it is doubtless because we have entered the fellowship of grace. 

We are not walking this journey on our own strength. We are walking it in the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. And thanks be to God—that is enough.  Amen.

Pastoral Prayer:   Gracious and merciful God, we come before you not because we have earned your favor, but because your grace has already found us. You meet us where we are—with our strengths and our scars, our gratitude and our unfinished faith. You lift us when we stumble, forgive us when we fall short, and carry us when we have no strength left of our own. Teach us to live as people shaped by grace—quick to forgive, slow to judge, humble in our success, and hopeful even in our suffering. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ restore what is broken within us, the love of God surrounds us, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit sustain us in every step of our journey. We offer ourselves to you again, trusting not in what we hold onto, but in the grace that holds onto us.