Christ’s gift to all is grace and mercy

“Oh, to grace, how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be. Let Thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, O take and seal it. Seal it for Thy courts above.”

Those are the words of verse three of one of my favorite hymns, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” Long ago, I memorized the words of all the verses of this great hymn, but it is the words of that third verse that seal the deal with the Jesus of Christianity.

I grew up in a devout family that had few rules. I grew up not with rules, but with expectations. The expectations covered the entire landscape. I was to speak plainly and correctly. I walked uprightly. I was to work hard, play hard and do my homework. I was to speak kindly to all, show deference to those older than I, and welcome the new person at school and church. Truth telling was a special obligation. I have no memory of instruction about these things. Yet somehow, my parents communicated these high expectations.

These high expectations were internalized and became an essential part of my conscience. Rules can be broken and questioned. Internalized expectations are much more difficult to handle. I lived with what the Bible calls “falling short” and “missing the mark.” I found good reasons to choose to follow Jesus. Jesus certainly understood my plight. After all, he was raised by a Jewish mother and thought of God as a heavenly father. He lived with high expectations.

From childhood to elder years, I have found in my Christian faith the perfect combination — high expectations and abounding grace. According to the Bible, Jesus claimed the power to forgive sins. I have taken him up on the deal over and over again. In my understanding of Christianity, guilt is not an acceptable motivator for life. Jesus calls us to live lives motivated by love. We cannot work our way out of the pits of guilt, and punishment never puts anyone back on a right track. It is grace, mercy and forgiveness that are the antidotes for falling short and which make it possible for us to have a new and fresh start every day.

The challenge of living as a Christian in America is living a life of grace and mercy in a nation of law. Sometimes I ponder the time and energy Americans spend setting laws, revising laws, hunting down people who break laws, trying lawbreakers in courts and punishing the guilty. What a waste of time and energy. We seem to think that we can create “a more perfect union” with better laws and harsher penalties. On a larger scale, we Americans seem to believe that we can prove our ways superior by fighting and winning wars around the world.

The American law system makes no allowance for grace and mercy. The possibilities are guilty or not guilty. If guilty, we punish according to the severity of the crime. Judges do not have the power to dismiss the guilty with the pronouncement of grace.

In 1981, Pope John Paul II visited Anchorage. I was the pastor of a church in Anchorage and was invited along with other community religious leaders for an hour with the Pope.

I clearly remember the Pope’s message to us. We as clergy hold the message of mercy and dare not fail in sharing mercy with our community and the world. If we do not bring mercy, no one else will. He spoke in English, but with a heavy Polish accent. His peculiar pronunciation of the word mercy rings in my ears to this day. The Pope’s message was on target and reinforced my understanding of the Christian message of high expectations and abounding grace.

I mentioned earlier that Jesus claimed the power to forgive sin. He did more than that. He empowered others with the same mandate. He taught that we are to be agents of forgiveness. Followers of Jesus are to constitute communities of forgivers. In the Jesus scheme, grace and forgiveness are to be shared abundantly.

I sometimes eat in a restaurant that features all sorts of funny signs. One says, “If our service does not meet your standards, please lower your standards.” The Jesus of my understanding never reduced standards for anyone. He set the highest of standards when he commanded us to love God with heart, mind and soul and then topped the command with love of neighbor as a member of our own house.

Grace and mercy never lower standards. They raise standards. When Jesus was dying on a cross, he looked down at those who were killing him and spoke profound words: “Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.”

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound.

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister who lives in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.

Opinions expressed on the Faith page are the author’s and are not necessarily those of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, its staff or its parent company, Wick Communications Co. To submit a column or other news for the Faith page, send email to news@frontiersman.com, or call 352-2268.