I would like to share on the topic, “Extravagant Attention to God’s Grace.” I speak on this topic from a lineage of faithful Christians who know the Gospel of Jesus Christ and stay focused on its transformative message of love as a matter of necessity. It is important to share this topic because the times in which we live call us to focus even more on giving extravagant attention to God’s grace. This is a time of heightened spiritual warfare with the concepts of focus and attention, formerly used to identify strategies to acquire knowledge, education, and enlightenment now characterized as avenues for the acquisition of political and economic power and influence. Mindful of the Simone Weil quote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity”, extravagant attention to grace means to be generous with our faith, to do those things that nourish and deepen our faith. It is this generosity that reveals the depth of God’s great grace and radically inclusive hospitality amidst a time of a great falling away. The implication of this generosity is awakening your potential. Receiving God’s love within is key! The texts for today are Psalm 119:15-16 (ESV), Philippians 3:12-14 and the life of Saint Irene of Macedonia. The last message was on “Harvest time”, a season of gathering things planted, a natural time of reaping in joy what has been produced during the year in an agricultural community. From a theological perspective Harvest time is a time of reckoning regarding the affairs of humanity, be it for good or for evil. It is the end of a season, the ending of an age, it is time as set forth by God and not the responsibility of the servant.
The Psalmist says “I will meditate on your
precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will
not forget your word. The Psalmist is focusing their attention on the precepts
and statutes of God. This is their spiritual practice. The Book of Psalms shows
us the depth of the Psalmist's extravagant attention to their relationship with
God. The Psalmist's desire is for God.
Psalm 42:1-2 says “As the deer pants for streams of water so my soul pants for
you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Where can I go and
meet with God?” O How many times have I been comforted by the extravagant
attention of the Psalmist. Our second text, Philippians 3:12-14, attributed to
the Apostle Paul says, 12 Not that I have already obtained this or have already
reached the goal,[a] but I press on to lay hold of that for which Christ[b] has
laid hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have laid
hold[c] of it, but one thing I have laid hold of forgetting what lies behind
and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal, toward
the prize of the heavenly[d] call of God in Christ Jesus. When I read this text
I see a man so focused on Jesus Christ that he is completely sold out. The
Apostle Paul, having met Jesus on the road to Damascus in the book of Acts
9:1-8 acknowledges his humanity, his need for growth, his shortcomings and
growing edges, those unspeakable things that would deny the Good News of Jesus
Christ in his life, yet it is his complete and uncompromising focus, that
extravagant attention to God’s grace that sets aside those things that would
hinder God’s Call upon his life. The Apostle Paul’s faith became bigger
than his fear. The Christian faith is about fully apprehending the grace
of God through Christ Jesus and allowing that grace to transform our lives and
implications for the love and glory of God. Grace will not leave you
where it found you.
Extravagant
attention to God’s grace is about cultivating loving intimacy with God. From
that intimacy, there emerges a gradual and persistent deep hope and freedom in
Christ that avails a prophetic imagination formerly unseen that overcomes
structures, systems, and agents of injustice and the evil perpetrated to seize
the day for the Good News of Jesus Christ. The spiritual disciplines of prayer,
meditation, studying scripture, Christ-centered covenantal relationships, being
a part of a community of faith, being active in your faith so your faith would
be fresh and not risk becoming hard and stale, and most importantly self-care, are
essential in this spirit filled endeavor. This process has the potential to awaken
the Christian to what Gary Cummins, author of If Only We Could See, Mystical
Vision and Societal Transformation, calls the “God Realm or the Kindom of
God for which Christians work and wait and pray, and God’s revolution.” Amidst
a social order that struggles to embrace the fullness of humanity
Thirdly we have Irene, known as St. Irene of Macedonia in the
Eastern Church. According to the writings of the scribe John the Stylite, Irene
was baptized in the first century by Timothy after he received a letter from the
Apostle Paul and became an evangelist. She was initially betrothed to be
married but the call of Christ was so heavy upon her that she chose not to get
married but to be baptized with oil and water and to preach a defiant sermon to
her father, the King of Magedo and other high-ranking men, proclaiming herself
to be the bride of Christ. Here is a woman who defied the norms of her society
and her father’s desire to give her complete and total life to the call of
Christ Jesus. When her Father was killed, she turned to the east, lifted her
hands high, prayed, and like the male Apostles who raised the dead in their acts
– she raised her Father to life. St. Irene converted 10,000 pagans, by
traveling to various cities, “preaching about Christ and working miracles,
healing the sick and she baptized 130,000 souls by her own hand.
She made the deaf hear, she opened the eyes of the blind, she cleansed the lepers, and healed all who were in pain. The narrative concludes with Irene dying in the city of Ephesus where she did many cures and miracles in the name of Jesus Christ. Similar to other Apostles St. Irene was incarcerated, tortured, and martyred. In all of this, there is an extravagant attention that is unwavering. Today the Church continues to be steadfast and focused as it moves forward in the everlasting hope of Christ Jesus because there are Christians who focus and refocus as needed, and who don’t succumb to the desires of this world. While there are those who have fallen for Christian Nationalism and its rejection of Jesus Christ as left-wing and woke, who cause American Christianity to be characterized as antithetical to the Good News of Jesus Christ there are many more whose eyes are fixed on the call of God through Christ Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. They focus and refocus on the teachings of Jesus Christ; they do the spiritual disciplines, they engage in a covenant community of faith, they take time out for their faith and what Civil Rights Icon and member of Congress Rev. John Lewis (1940-2020) called “Good Trouble.” For those engaged in “Good Trouble,” the words of John Lewis become a meditation on the life of Jesus Christ. They are an invitation to encounter the overwhelming attention of a God who responds to the many needs of humanity.
I find the
Advent season, the six weeks of Lent ending with Holy Week and then Easter
Sunday, taking time out of our busy schedules to nurture and strengthen our
faith to be necessary ways that focus and refocus our attention on God’s grace.
Amidst the unsettling time we are living through we should make this a
priority. I invite you to engage in three things, (1) Nourish your soul If possibly make it a priority in your
life. Be careful to feed your soul with good nutritious spiritual food (2) Reflect
on what keeps you engaged and active in Christianity? and (3) Reflect on the
Spiritual Disciplines.
