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Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

John 1:1-18

Georgia Sadler is a nurse on a mission. She wanted to raise awareness of diabetes and breast cancer rates among Black women in her community. So, Georgia began by setting up informational seminars in churches all over San Diego. But she could hardly get anyone to attend the seminars. What could she do?

Georgia thought hard, then came up with the ingenious idea of training local hairdressers to talk to their clients about diabetes and breast cancer. Hairdressers are natural communicators. They hold positions of trust in women’s lives. So, Georgia ditched the informational seminar format and hired a storyteller to train the hairdressers in discussing health issues like diabetes and breast cancer with their clients. Rates of diabetes testing and mammograms rose significantly in the communities where Georgia trained hairdressers in her communication technique.

If we really care about getting our message across, we must get creative about it. Imagine how disappointing it is to send out an important message that never gets through.

Take for example what happened on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, 2019, when hundreds of thousands of text messages were sent out all over the U.S., and then disappeared. Many of these lost messages were Valentines. They were never received, until nine months later, when those original text messages somehow began popping up in recipients’ phones. Imagine the confusion of the recipients. Some of the messages were from people who had since passed away, or from lovers who had ended relationships.

This massive example of miscommunication was finally traced to Syniverse, a company that provides networking services for many major cell phone carriers in the U.S. A single server at Syniverse went offline on Valentine’s Day, trapping hundreds of thousands of unsent text messages in its system. The server issue wasn’t fixed until early November 2019. And suddenly, all those unsent messages flooded into people’s cell phones, creating all kinds of confusion and possibly some awkward conversations.

Can you imagine sending out an “I love you, Babe!” or “So glad I married you!” or “Can’t wait to celebrate Valentine’s Day with you!” kind of message, and not hearing back from the person you love? How many arguments and hurt feelings were caused by those missed messages that, perhaps, were delivered at a time that might have proved awkward?

I think about those late messages when I read John 1:1-18. Because these first few verses in John are meant to be a message of love, even if they start out somewhat confusing. John 1:1 reads: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

In writing “the Word,” John is talking about Jesus. Pastor John Piper puts it this way. He says, “. . . Jesus himself, in his coming, and working, and teaching, and dying and rising, was the final and decisive message of God.”

Jesus himself is the “final and decisive message of God.” John tells us: When we look at Jesus, we see God’s plan for our lives. From the beginning of time, God planned for us to be His children. We see it in verse 12: “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God . . .”

Everyone who repents and calls on Jesus as Lord is adopted into God’s family, and into His love.

Simon Hall, a chef in Knoxville, Tennessee, says his family and friends worried about him when he decided to adopt two sons in 2017. As he says, “Nobody can truly understand why I did what I have done, but I did it on faith. I did it on intuition.”

Simon, a single man with a successful catering company, was taking on a big responsibility when he adopted the two brothers from the county foster care system. And that responsibility grew even bigger when Simon discovered his two new sons had four more siblings separated into various other foster homes in East Tennessee. Simon’s budget and his schedule were already tight, but his heart was full of love and compassion for these children.

They were meant to be a family, and if he was willing to make the sacrifice, they could be reunited. So, Simon petitioned the court to adopt all six children in the family. As he says, “. . . in the end I knew this was what I was supposed to be doing, and I knew that they were supposed to be together. I just knew they would heal in my home.”

From the beginning of creation, that was God’s plan for us. To adopt us into His family, where we could find healing in His home.

Why would an eternal God create beings made in His image, breathe His own life into them, and then leave them to die? The answer is, God didn’t. God made us for eternal life.

John tells us: When we look at Jesus, we see God’s love for us. John 1:14 reads, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” Not just, “I’ve come to visit you,” but “I’ve come to live with you.” Instead of waiting for us to come to Him, He came to us. God came to live in our neighborhood.

Janel Perez, a nurse practitioner in Los Angeles responded to God’s move into her neighborhood. She could’ve performed her duties in a nice hospital or a private clinic. Instead, she’s spent years working among the homeless population on L.A.’s streets. In 2011, she assembled a mobile medical team to provide medical care and housing for homeless veterans in L.A. Janel doesn’t wear a nurse’s uniform. She wears jeans and T-shirts and tennis shoes. She carries medical supplies in a battered backpack.

Many of the homeless veterans she’s trying to reach suffer from mental illness or addictions or post-traumatic stress disorder. So, Janel works hard to gain their trust. She brings along sandwiches. She sits and listens to the veterans’ stories. It may take months of visits and conversations before a vet will let her take his blood pressure or give him some medicine.

She tells of encountering a homeless Air Force veteran suffering from schizophrenia who had lived on the streets for twenty years. Janel found him a safe place to live, but he still didn’t trust her. He refused to use the electricity in his new apartment. He refused to let Janel treat his schizophrenia with medication.

To gain his trust, Janel sat on the floor of his apartment each week and listened to him tell stories of his life. Week after week, this nurse practitioner sat on the floor of his apartment and just listened. Finally, she gained his trust. Today, this veteran’s schizophrenia is controlled by medications. He’s living independently in his own apartment. He’s reconnected with his family. He has a brand-new life because one woman came to him where he was and never gave up on healing him.

John writes, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” The eternal Creator God put on human flesh, with its squishy, itchy, weak and annoying imperfections and walked in our shoes. He experienced hunger and thirst and frustration and weakness and loneliness and overwhelming pain and loss. And He did it all so He could show us we don’t have to go searching for an unknowable God. God came looking for us. When we look at Jesus, we see God’s plan for us, and His love for us.

When we look at Jesus, we see God’s gift to us. In Jesus, God poured out grace on us. He flooded this world with grace, that is “loving-kindness” or “merciful kindness.” Verse 14 says Jesus came to us “full of grace and truth.” He came to show us the heart and character and mind of God. And all those qualities were compressed into these two words: grace and truth.

In December 1772, an Anglican priest was preparing his sermon for Sunday. His text was First Chronicles 17:16-17 where Nathan the prophet tells King David God has promised that David’s descendants would always serve as the kings of Israel.

Remember David’s past. He was a humble shepherd boy when he was first chosen by God. Despite his many sins, (adultery and murder), God was committed to working through him. Talk about grace. I can’t even imagine the awe and humility David felt when he heard God’s promise. And in these verses, he responded, “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my family, that you have brought me thus far?”

That Anglican priest reading the story of David was a man named John Newton. He could relate to King David. John had been a violent slave trader. After he gave his life to Jesus, it still took him many years to awaken to the evils of the trade. Once he fully confronted his sins, however, he left the slave trade and wrote an influential pamphlet exposing the suffering aboard the slave ships. This pamphlet was distributed to every member of the British Parliament and helped influence the eventual outlawing of slavery in Great Britain. John Newton could never forget the burden of sin that was lifted from his shoulders by his Savior, Jesus Christ. So, imagine how King David’s words sounded to John Newton that day: “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my family, that you have brought me thus far?”

And with this repentance and gratitude fresh in his mind, John began writing the words to a hymn he would teach his congregation:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound/That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found/Was blind but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear/And grace, my fears relieved;

How precious did that grace appear/The hour I first believed!

Through many dangers, toils and snares/I have already come;

‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far/And grace will lead me home.

It’s essential we understand who God is and what His plans are for us. God’s desire is to rescue us from slavery to sin and adopt us into His family to share a loving relationship with Him. God loves us that much. And God has gifts of loving-kindness and mercy and truth for all those who repent and receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

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Rev. Charles Eldredge is a member of Maitland Church of the Brethren. He has a Facebook page and can be contacted by email: ce1133 @verizon.net.

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