Taking Our Stand on Grace

Posted on June 6, 2023

by Linda Rex

June 18, 2023, Proper 6 | After Pentecost—Earlier this week, I was talking with a friend about our mutual struggles and difficulties in life. Lately we both have had some real challenges which have reminded us of our need for our Lord’s compassionate love and grace in our everyday lives. During this season of ordinary days on the Christian calendar, all of us have an opportunity to take our stand on the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, fully embracing the gift of intimate relationship with our Father through Jesus in the Spirit. This enables us to weather in healthy ways the buffeting winds of suffering, conflict, and offense we experience day by day.

In the gospel passage for today, Matthew 9:35–10:8, Jesus gathered together twelve followers, gave them authority to heal diseases and cast out demons. And he sent them out to share the good news with the lost sheep of his people, to care for the sick and afflicted, while living an ordinary, everyday existence in their midst. The message he gave them to share was that “the kingdom of God is here.” What did Jesus mean when he said “the kingdom of God is here”?

In my youth I recall hearing many a sermon talking about the kingdom of God, but always in a future sense. I remember being told that a kingdom requires a king, and this would be Jesus Christ. I also heard that a kingdom requires an area for the king to rule, and this would be the earth, when Jesus returns in glory, and establishes his kingdom once and for all. I vaguely remember some hints about him reigning in our hearts, but that was well hidden under the emphasis on the coming kingdom of God when Jesus returns in glory.

In reality, we find the kingdom of God wherever God is, for our God as Father, Son, and Spirit reigns over all he has made. And his reign is a spiritual reality, even though we as human beings so often live in opposition to or in ignorance of it. When the incarnate Christ stood there in the presence of those people and said, “the kingdom of God is here,” he was speaking the truth. For those who stood in the presence of Jesus Christ were standing in the presence of God in human flesh, the One by whose word all things were created and were being sustained even in that moment. To say “the kingdom of God is here” is to say that in Jesus Christ, God is present and real, and has brought us into loving, gracious relationship with himself in spite of our rejection and crucifixion of him. The Son of God, the king Jesus, allowed nothing to come between us and God, but brought us home to the Father, and sent the Spirit for our salvation.

Even now, as the Spirit is present and at work in this world and in our lives, we are in the midst of the kingdom of God. We live in opposition to it, or we embrace it. We deny it or we acknowledge it. There are only two possible responses to the spiritual reality of the kingdom of God present in Jesus Christ by the Spirit—and it is important that we come to terms with our own personal response to this reality. And it is equally important that we share this good news with others.

That the kingdom of God is present and real is the message Jesus gave his followers to share with everyone they met. He told his followers to pray that God’s kingdom would come and God’s will would be done here on earth as it is in heaven. Today, as the Spirit lives in and through believers, we begin to see glimpses of the kingdom of heaven at work in this world, becoming a reality in our ordinary lives. We can ignore this, resist this, or participate in this reality. God gives us the freedom to experience the results of our choice.

When we look at all the difficulties and struggles in our everyday lives, it may be hard to believe that God’s kingdom is present and at work in this world. This is understandable. But, look at it this way. One day we will experience supreme joy because the kingdom of God has arrived in its fullness; all suffering and struggles will be over, and all tears wiped away. In the meantime, we experience a divine joy and peace in the midst of our suffering and struggles. Our ordinary existence becomes extraordinary when we recognize and live within the reality that this is not all there is—there is so much more going on that what is merely seen and touched.

What we need to realize is that we are held in the grace and love of God in Jesus Christ by the Spirit even now. We are never alone. We are not powerless any longer, but have been given the presence and power of God to overcome anything that threatens to destroy who we are as God’s beloved children. We are given the capacity to care for others, to fight evil and disease, and to minister to the lonely, forgotten, and excluded. The reason we take our stand in grace is because the kingdom of God is here, present in the person of Jesus Christ by his Spirit. We have nothing to fear, for in Christ, our relationship with our Father is secure, our place in his kingdom is assured, and our future will be full of everlasting joy. Hallelujah!

Heavenly Father, today we pause in humility, asking for the grace to see, acknowledge, and participate fully in your kingdom even now as your beloved children, to recognize and submit to Jesus as king of all, and to allow your Spirit full reign in our hearts and lives. Enable us to take our stand on the grace we have in your Son, as your Spirit floods our hearts with love, through Jesus our Lord. Amen.

^1-2“Since then it is by faith that we are justified, let us grasp the fact that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have confidently entered into this new relationship of grace, and here we take our stand, in happy certainty of the glorious things he has for us in the future. ^3-5This doesn’t mean, of course, that we have only a hope of future joys—we can be full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles. Taken in the right spirit these very things will give us patient endurance; this in turn will develop a mature character, and a character of this sort produces a steady hope, a hope that will never disappoint us. Already we have some experience of the love of God flooding through our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us. ^6-8And we can see that it was while we were powerless to help ourselves that Christ died for sinful men. In human experience it is a rare thing for one man to give his life for another, even if the latter be a good man, though there have been a few who have had the courage to do it. Yet the proof of God’s amazing love is this: that it was while we were sinners that Christ died for us.”     Romans 5:1–8 PHILLIPS

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