“All were amazed at the gracious words that came from Jesus’
mouth.”
You know how you can read something year in year out and not notice
the detail? Well that’s what happened to me when I looked at the very familiar
Gospel reading we heard today. It was that little phrase “gracious words”
which made me suddenly sit up and take notice. “All were amazed at the
gracious words that came from Jesus’ mouth.” “What does that mean?” I asked
myself. What are “gracious words”? I
wonder what you think.
Today we tend to say that someone has spoken graciously if they’ve
got a nice turn of phrase, or if they’ve managed to say something difficult or
painful in a way that’s easier for others to accept. Responding graciously to
an insult means not sinking to the level of your attacker, but finding
something positive to say in answer to them. It would be great to see some more “gracious
words” in the US election campaign!
Thinking about graciousness might lead us on to think about other
closely related words too – words like “graceful” and the word that gives rise
to them both, “grace”. What do these words mean to us? The dictionary lists
some synonyms – elegance, agility, refinement, polish.
Talk about grace and what do you think of? Maybe the kind of serene
poise of Audrey Hepburn or one of those other old fashioned, impeccably groomed
film stars. A good dancer might be called graceful too, someone who can place
every step perfectly and effortlessly.
Gracefulness is often seen as a quality you’re either born with, or
not.
But the grace of Jesus’ words in that synagogue in Nazareth wasn’t
anything to do with eloquence or elegance. The congregation there wasn’t amazed
by his clever arguments or uplifting sentiments or sophisticated style.
To understand what they might have meant when they called his words
gracious we need to dig back to the Greek and Hebrew words for grace – the ones
Jesus’ congregation would have known and used. They are charis in the Greek and khen
in the Hebrew, if you’re interested. And once you start to look, you find
those words all over the place in the Bible. Noah found grace in the eyes of
the Lord, it says. David found grace in the eyes of King Saul – at least at
first. Ruth, a Moabite refugee to Israel, found grace in the eyes of Boaz, who
ended up marrying her. The letters of Paul are full of prayers that people
might know the grace of God. We use one of his greetings as a prayer we call
the Grace – the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the
fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Some Bibles translate khen
and charis as “favour” instead of grace. It’s the word Gabriel uses
when he tells Mary she will bear Jesus. “Hail, favoured one, the Lord is
with you.” “Hail Mary, full of grace” as older translations put it.
All this gives us
a clue that for the people of the Bible, grace was much more than an Audrey
Hepburn like polish. Fundamentally, it was something that had to do with
relationships. Grace –or favour if you prefer – was something granted by
someone who had power to someone who needed their help. It wasn’t an innate
talent, something you were born with; it was something you were given. If you
found grace in someone’s eyes it meant that they affirmed you and accepted you,
supported you and sheltered you, gave you their protection and approval. In the
Bible most often it is God who is the giver of grace – in fact it’s one of the
things that defined God for the Jewish people “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow
to anger and abounding in steadfast love” - that’s Psalm 145. Again and
again when they were in need they cried out to God for grace. “Turn to me
and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted,” says Psalm
25.
In the New
Testament, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are described as charismata – graces
- everything from dramatic things like
prophecy and healing to the less obvious like administration and helpfulness.
Charismatic people aren’t people who are charming or persuasive; they are
people who are filled with the gifts of the Spirit, deeply connected to the
life of God and dependent on him.
According to the
Bible, then, being a gracious, or a graceful person, means being secure in our
relationship with God, knowing that he accepts and loves us, confident that he’ll
support and uphold us.
So let’s go back
to that synagogue in Nazareth and those “gracious words” which Jesus spoke. The
thing which amazed people that morning was not that he spoke fluently, but that
what he said reflected enormous confidence in his relationship with God.
He‘d read words
some very familiar words from the prophet Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor”. Isaiah
was one of the best known, most quoted books of scripture at the time of Jesus,
so his hearers would have known knew these words like the back of their hands.
But who was Isaiah talking about? Interpretations varied. Some people thought it referred to the whole
people of Israel; others saw it as a prophecy about a particular promised
leader, a Messiah – literally an anointed one. But people wouldn’t normally
have applied it to themselves as Jesus did here. “Today this scripture has
been fulfilled in your hearing”. To
do that would have sounded presumptuous, a bit mad maybe – unless, of course,
it was true.
But the fact that
these are described as “gracious” words implies that, to some of those who
heard them, at least, Jesus claim seemed authentic, grounded, powerful. It rang
true to them. And let’s not forget, these were people who knew him. In other
places in the Gospels, people are amazed at the authority with which he speaks
too, so it wasn’t just them. This is a man whose words are shot through with
assurance that God is with him and for him. That’s why they are called
“gracious”. He knows he is secure in the grace of God. He doesn’t just speak
gracious words, he is the Gracious Word – God’s word of grace -who “became flesh, and lived among us…full of
grace and truth” said John (1.14)
So, we might say,
that’s all very well – it tells us something about Jesus – but what difference
does it make to us?
It makes a
difference to us because this man, who was so secure in his Father’s love that
he was prepared to die for his message, didn’t just believe that he was
“graced”; he believed that we were too. “You are the light of the world,”
he said. “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” “Ask
and it will be given to you”. The joyful, hopeful message of Jesus is that
all of us are chosen, called, “graced” by God, brought into a relationship with
him that is safe, certain, indestructible. All we have to do is to learn to
trust it.
But of course,
that’s easier said than done. The
disappointments and betrayals we encounter in life often damage our ability to
trust. If we’re lucky, there’ll be people in our lives whose love we can rely
on, but most people, in my experience, struggle at least some of the time to
believe they really are acceptable and accepted, and for some it is a lifelong
battle to feel secure. Why should anyone
– let alone God - be with us and for us? But according to the
Bible that’s the message which Christ lived and died to proclaim, and if we
call ourselves his disciples, which literally means learners, then this is the
most important lesson we need to learn.
And perhaps that’s where these Biblical ideas of grace do,
in fact, connect with the images we started with. Graceful dancers know where to put their feet
because they’ve practiced, repeating the steps time and time again until they
are secure in them. Gracious speakers
can rise above the level of those who insult them because they are sure of
their own worth. They are sure of their ground. They have learned that they
don’t need to put others down in order to win the argument. Gracefulness and
graciousness aren’t magical qualities which some people have and some don’t,
even if it sometimes looks that way. They’re things we have to learn and
practice if we want them to be embedded in our lives.
That’s true for
the dancer or the public speaker, but it’s also true for us in our normal daily
lives. If we want to be graceful, grace-filled people we need to practice, to
take in day by day the truths God wants us to learn about him and about his
love for us. We practice that through prayer, through coming together for
worship and fellowship, learning from and with one another. We practice, too, through reading the Bible – today is Bible
Sunday – taking into ourselves the gracious words of scripture which were
written, said our first reading so that “by
steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.”
Last week at our
All Age Worship, I talked about Promise Boxes – boxes of cards printed with
Bible verses. have a look on the red table if you’d like to know more about
that. They are one way of taking in the gracious words of God day by day, but
however we do it, it is important that we learn to recognise and own the grace
of God that is given to us, that message of security – or salvation if you want
to use a more theological word – which Jesus died to proclaim.
It matters
because it’s the knowledge of God’s grace, his loving acceptance of us, with
all our faults and failings, that gives us the confidence and courage to speak
gracious words to others, even when they hurt us, insult us, let us down,
misunderstand or ignore us. And the
world surely needs as many gracious words as it can hear today!
So today, on this
Bible Sunday, as we give thanks for the gracious words of God, may the grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be
with us all, now and evermore.
Amen.
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