"Living in God's Amazing Grace"
The Rev. Peter W. Marty, pastor
St. Paul Lutheran Church, Davenport, Iowa
Host, "Lutheran Vespers"

Matthew 11: 28-30
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Good afternoon, friends. The text under study for today is Matthew, chapter 11, verses 28-30. (Reads text)

One time, while attending a pastors' conference in North Carolina some years ago, I heard Fred Craddock tell a very memorable story - at least, it's one I haven't forgotten. For those of you who don't know Fred Craddock, he has taught a couple generations of pastors, preaching and the art of pastoring, at Emory University.

Craddock was at a Colorado camp one summer, serving as a sort of inspirational speaker/devotional leader. It wasn't a large camp. But as I recall him saying, when you've got all of these seventh and eighth graders running wild, they seem like triple their numbers.

Well, Fred Craddock immediately met the camp director and pastor there when he climbed out of his car, and this was an earnest man. He knew right away that this was one well-intentioned pastor-turned-camp-director. And there was one feature about this director that caught Craddock's eye in particular: That was this man's desire to make everything meaningful. He kept telling the kids during orientation about how meaningful their experience at camp was going to be that week. And it drove everyone crazy. "You know," he said, "there are some really meaningful trees out here; and the squirrels are meaningful; and even the fire pit is meaningful. It's all just so meaningful." And then he told the kids about a special breakfast that would happen on Friday, their final day at camp. This was going to be a very special breakfast. It was going to be a breakfast, he said, that would be almost like a Communion service. It was going to be really, really meaningful. "it will feel," he said, "like you're eating with Jesus beside the Sea of Galilee. That's how meaningful it's going to be."

Well, Friday morning came, and the kids all started to pour into the dining hall, and they sat down kind of awkwardly. One of the boys even got dressed up in this rather fine pair of slacks and a button shirt that his mother made him bring to camp! Having heard that this was going to be a meaningful breakfast, he thought he'd better put them on, only to have his buddies make quick laughter of him and pronounce him the first nerd ever to attend camp. But in fairness, nobody really knew how to behave, for how do you behave at a meaningful breakfast?

They all just sat there, and they kind of stirred their food around with their forks. What do you do with meaningful eggs? And what do you do when the breakfast lady scoops a meaningful scoop of hash browns onto your yellow plastic tray? It was an awkward breakfast, and they nibbled, but not much more, for here they were, sitting beside Jesus at the Sea of Galilee with their yellow plastic trays.

Finally, one kid got up, and then a whole bunch of kids started to get up, and they made this sort of mad rush to the bus, loading up their duffel bags and their sleeping bags. And the camp director just stood there with Fred Craddock, deeply disappointed that this meaningful experience had suddenly disintegrated.

And Fred Craddock's comment on that whole experience, the best I can remember, went something like this; "You know what I think?" he said. "I don't know this for certain, but I think that if that camp director had simply trusted that everything that had been sung and said and prayed that week - if that camp director had trusted all that naturally happens in relationship-building that goes on in a camp outdoor experience; if he had just put the Gospel of Jesus Christ right in the laps of these kids and let them absorb it (and not worked so hard to make it meaningful), I daresay," said Craddock "that when those kids loaded up their duffel bags onto the bus, even the most sour kid in the bunch would've said, "You know, this was incredible. This was more goodness and more life than I have ever known."

Eugene Peterson's translation of Matthew 11 in "The Message":

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly.

Grace is many things. It's both reliable and unpredictable. It supplies you with what you need, even when you're not sure that is necessarily what you want. Grace can even be meaningful! But one thing you can never do with grace is force it upon someone else. When you force grace onto someone else, it ceases to be grace, and then it becomes an agenda. This is why I'm so taken by Eugene Peterson's translation of those famous words of Jesus in Matthew 11: "Learn the unforced rhythms of grace." What a great, great line.

Jesus is admonishing all those who would follow him to get a fresh perspective on their life. Re-think what it is that you're after and what you're trying to achieve. Carry your burdens in a different way. "And for goodness' sake," Jesus seems to say, "learn the unforced rhythms of grace, for you can get away with me, and I'll help you recover your life."

And so, friends, I ask you this afternoon, are you a little bit tired? A little bit burned out, perhaps. In your own life outside of this assembly, are you tired of trying to be good, and coming up short to often? Do you ever get overwhelmed with trying to please God and help other people in a beautifully simultaneous sort of way? Are you burned out on religion Do you find it disillusioning?

Jesus says, "Come to me. I'll help you recover your life."

Typically when we hear this passage of these famous words of Jesus, we think our weariness and our burdens have something to do with our physical condition, with some bodily ailment, or with some unconquerable suffering. But if you read the verses just before these verses and the ones just after this passage, Jesus seems to be as concerned with the weight of religion as much as anything else.

So far as I can tell from Holy Scripture, God's chief interest has nothing to do with our being religious. Jesus wasn't big on religion at all. He railed against the rules and definitions that people seemed to cook up every time they felt compelled to invent religion. Most religion if you think about it spells exhaustion. Why? Because it's so busy tightly prescribing conduct for other people. The harder you try to get it right, the more you seem to get it wrong. Just ask that Colorado camp counselor - the one who proposed the meaningful breakfast with the meaningful eggs and it ended in such disappointment. You cannot force grace on someone else anymore than you can make an already holy experience yet more meaningful.

Now Jesus offers, I want to suggest to you, two ideas for getting us out from under the weight of religion. First, he offers himself. "Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Someone once said that if you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person. It's true with diplomacy. It's true in reconciling a broken relationship. It's true in coaching. And as we all know from Bethlehem and Calvary, it's also true for saving the world. Jesus does not say, "Learn about me." He says, "Learn from me. Walk with me. Work with me. " He offers himself in a most generous way.

Second, Jesus doesn't offer any of us an escape from some of the burdens and wearinesses that we face. He doesn't offer escape; he offers equipment. The relief that Jesus supplies is not a vacation. The refreshment that he promises is not a new pension plan. It's a YOKE. It's a work instrument. It's a walking instrument, not a reclining chair; it's a walking instrument. Jesus, I want to say, teaches best while on the move. He always seems to be teaching en route. Other teachers may love it when their students sit behind desks. But we learn from Jesus while moving through our lives.

What Jesus offers by way of refreshment is a new way to carry life, a new way to bear responsibility, a new way to allow God to give you a better tomorrow than you could ever make for yourself. And that is truly awesome!

Jesus never asks that his disciples figure out life first before approaching him. It's a "come as you are" kind of faith a "bring your burdens along" kind of following. You're not loved by Jesus because you're worthy. You're worthy because you're loved by him. And the difference between the two is huge.

A woman once wrote to the comedian Flip Wilson years ago and wanted to know why he had purchased a bulldog for his kids. And he replied to her both seriously and a little bit flippantly, he said, "Well, it's so that every time they looked at that darn ugly face and discovered all of the love behind it, they would never take anything at face value again." Jesus sees that face of yours, sees face of mine - bags under the eyes, or a beaming bright smile (it doesn't matter) - he walks each and everyone of us into his world of unconditional love.

It's religious people who try to make conditional what Christ has already deemed unconditional. It's religion that finds grace exhausting and judgment attractive. So Jesus invites those who are weary and burned out from the weight of religion, into a life of faith. Not religion, but faith. If you're serious about faith, and you're tired of all those things you thought you had to do to get it right with God, Jesus has exactly the refreshment you need to live freely and lightly, for his spirit is a gentle spirit, and as it says right in the very next chapter of Matthew's Gospel account, he will not break a bruised reed or snuff a smoldering wick.

Arturo Toscanini, the great Italian conductor was one time having an enormously difficult time in rehearsal trying to get the orchestra to play Debussy's La Mer with the grace he intended. He couldn't get the words that would communicate with that dear orchestra on how to go play the piece with the passion he felt it needed to be played with. So, in frustration, he finally took out of his pocket a silken handkerchief, and there on the rostrum he threw it up in the air. The orchestra was mesmerized watching the slow, graceful descent of the silken square. When it finally settled on the floor, Toscanini looked at it for a few seconds, and then he looked up, smiling at the orchestra. He said, "There. Play it like that."

Well, the Good News for each and every one of us, and for this dear church that we love so much is that God sends us Jesus Christ, this One who is lowly and gentle in heart, and God says, "There, live like that. Learn from his gentleness. Keep company with him. Watch how he lives so freely and lightly. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace."

They can be difficult to learn, for as I said, not only do we have this impulse to want to force grace onto someone else so that somehow we might make their life more meaningful, but we also have this tendency to try and force grace in and around everything we expect to fit into a day, and that's a problem. But I have an idea for you to consider on learning the unforced rhythms of grace and to live in God's amazing grace more naturally, and I'll close with this idea.

It has to with rethinking time, and I think it would help a whole lot if we were all Hebrew people, but since I know only a few of you have grown up in that tradition, we'll just borrow from their concept of time. When I woke up this morning, my day began like most of your days begin: There was this irritating beep on the little alarm clock that is 'way too loud. Faced with an immediate decision, I could either jump out of bed, bothered that my dream had been so rudely disrupted, or I could push the snooze button for a very unsatisfying five more minutes, which is the option I chose.

The minute I was out of bed and actually conscious, I started to go to work trying to figure out how I was going to fit everything into this day: a Grace Matters radio interview this morning, lots of conversations with all of you, the business meeting of this morning, this talk, I fly to Chicago O'Hare tonight, drive to Iowa and be ready for preaching in the morning.

Most of us, when we get out of bed, have these "to-do" lists that are running through our heads. We tell ourselves as we sit there on the edge of the bed, "Get to it; get to it." And if we're under stress we panic, which I'm sure you've found to be extremely helpful. In short, we assume, though, that everything is somehow up to us, and if there's any grace in the day, well, we've got to coerce it out of the events of the day. We've got to squeeze it, we've got to wring it out of the end of the day as we look backwards. And if it's been particularly hectic, we figure, well, it's only at the end of the day that we even have time to see if there was grace in the day.

Hebrew people have always clocked time differently. For them, as you know, evening is the beginning of the day. It was evening and morning the first day and the second day and so on. Evening is when God sets the stars in their courses, and when earthworms aerate the earth, and when carpet contractors for the Marriott Hotel lay carpeting, though they didn't finish last night....

Night time is when your body rejuvenates itself by healing that damaged tissue. It's when your sweet dreams help you and me forget about substitute motions and points of privilege and microphone number 139. The Hebrew day begins at dusk, when you're supposed to stop working - or when most of us are supposed to stop working, and you say, "So what, Peter? Well, I would suggest to you that when you remember time like this, you realize that grace begins its impact while you're fast asleep. That God is busy creating while you and I are in this totally unproductive state called sleep. Grace precedes the rising of the sun. Grace comes before that irritating beep of the alarm clock. Grace even comes before that back-up wake-up call you asked for that rings while you're in the bathroom in the morning.

As a friend of mine put it, we wake into a world we did not make and into a salvation we did not earn. Wake up into the Hebrew concept of time and you discover that everything is already in motion. The world has been working just fine without us. Our sleep did absolutely nothing to slow down God. For hours, for years, for eons God has been working. So, the second we step out of bed we're actually coming into a very, very well-established operation. The problem is, on way too many days we just ignore this long-running operation and assume grace is up to us. Somehow we've got to figure out, at the end of the day, if, in fact, it was really there.

But God's idea of grace is different. Like an ornamental grace note in music, for those of you who are musicians, that grace note is always an extra. It always anticipates the main note. God's grace beautifully anticipates the fullness of each and every one of our days. It comes to use before we ever have a chance to have a meaningful breakfast with meaningful eggs. If this church is going to live in God's amazing grace, it's people like you and me. We're going to have to take Jesus' words to heart. When he says "You will find rest for your souls," or literally "for your psyche," he is speaking as the one who can give us a new way to carry life - a more hopeful way to recover life, and a delightful way to live life that's already meaningful. Without any forcing or coercing on our part. Amen.

Let's turn to some questions for some brief moments of discussion. Perhaps as we scroll through these five or six questions you might be mindful of one that you could focus in on, and perhaps at that point small groups of you can turn your chairs and huddle.

1. Discuss the ways in which the ordinary events of your life may be full of momentous grace, and how God offers great potential through every little encounter.

2. Remember all the different ways we use "grace." Michael Jordan jumps with grace. Ballerinas - the great ones - dance with grace. I know hospitable people who embody grace. What are your favorite expressions or references when using the word grace? What is it about you that others might consider especially gracious or grace-filled?

3.  Most of us take ourselves too seriously on most days, so what do you do to try to live your life more freely and lightly.

4. If the ELCA congregation you attend or serve has an image in the wider community, is there any chance that outsiders would connect that image with the word "grace" or "gracious." And if your church is called Grace Lutheran Church that doesn't count.

5. We use the word "grace" for referencing the prayer that often precedes or follows a meal. What does it mean to call this act or behavior "grace." Maybe here you want to share a favorite table grace with others around you.

6. In an unbending society like ours that so often admires toughness, what do you personally do to communicate a gentle spirit, a kinder way and a softer touch.

(Time for discussion.)

Well, friends, since grace is endless and also meaningful, and most especially amazing, let's call our discussion here, and let's just live lives full of grace.