Administering grace. Boy this sounds like a snoozer of a sermon title doesn’t it? Administering anything sounds like anything but exciting. Administration is the stuff of boredom and tediousness. But today we are talking not just about administration but also about grace. And God’s grace as the sign out front says, never runs out.
A Greek slave girl was being auctioned off during the days of the Roman Empire. They put her up on the stand and turned her this way and that way in order that all the bidders might properly appraise her. Then the bidding started. The price went up and up and up, for she was young and very attractive. Finally, one man, through persistence, outbid all the rest. When she was delivered to him, he said to her: "I have purchased your freedom! You are absolutely free! You can go wherever you wish! May God bless you!" The girl, moved by his great kindness and mercy, fell at his feet and said: "Sir, thank you for this great gift of freedom! Let me now serve you, not reluctantly as a slave, but freely as a friend."
This girl was given freedom by an act of grace. The same is true of us. We have been given grace by God. How many of have heard the definition of grace that goes, God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. We posses grace, like the slave girl, because someone else paid the price. By Jesus death on the cross our freedom has been won for us and given to us by His grace. We now serve God as His friend. And as God’s friend, by His choosing us, we now serve others as we have been served by God.
We serve together, according to Saint Peter in verse 10 from our reading today, to administrate God’s grace to others. Read verse 10 with me please, it says, 10Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. We do not own the grace of God but we have been given grace by God’s, just as the man choose not to own the slave girl, but set her free. And we are now called to administer that grace of God to others.
We are responsible to give others the good news of that grace that God has freely given to us and to all His creation. He has called us to be stewards of grace, to administer grace to a hurt and dying world in need of healing, hope and new life in Christ.
Look up administer in your Webster’s dictionary and it says, to give ritually or to give remedially (as in medicine) also it says that to administer is to furnish a benefit. All of these things, to furnish and to give, are focused outward, focused toward others. You give, to others. You benefit others. You serve others with what you have been given.
Others are the focus of our administration of the grace of God. We have been given possession of the grace of God not for ourselves only but also so that others may come into possession of it. They have the right to know of God’s grace and it falls to us who have it, to let them know about it. We’re the ones called to administer the… medicine… of the gospel.
In February of 1995 my pastor in Seattle sat at Ballard Hospital with a man named Ron who was critically ill. He had overheard the pastor’s conversation with one of our church members in a small dining room. Ron had no church and no pastor, but he desperately wanted to hear words of comfort and hope. After Pastor spent some time with him, he said: "You have been so nice to me!" and his statement was more of a question: "Why do you care about me?" Pastor explained to him that it was God's great love for us and God's great love for him, that moved pastor to care about him. He told Ron that God's love had given us life and hope and he wanted to share God's life-giving, hope-giving love with him.
Less than a week after that conversation Ron died. We hope to see Ron some day in the Lord's house. God's love and care for you can let you give His love and grace to others. God can use your loving words and your loving actions, to catch the attention of those who desperately need to understand His love for them.
We’re to serve others as Christ has served us. We are to give them the medicine of the gospel. That means for us, sacrifice, challenge, commitment and follow through. We’re preparing, in Strategic Ministry Planning, for God’s challenge to us and how we will live and serve Him over the next 20 years here. In this planning process, our eyes are to be lifted up to see beyond our day-to-day living and to look forward, to look ahead and focus on the horizon and not on the road. That’s what we’re doing with SMP we’re looking toward the horizon. After that we will then look at the road, but the vision we are trusting God to lead us to, that vision is what will then guide what roads and paths we take.
Whatever those roads are they will involve, what Peter talks about today, administering the grace of God to others. We’re to use the grace God gives us to serve one another here, and we’re to serve the community God has placed us in. We’re to administer the benefit of the gospel somehow and in some way to others.
Peter also says today in verses 10 and 11 that we are to serve others with the talents; with the gifts that God has given to each of us. There are two points to this that are important. First is that we each have talents with which God has gifted us.
None of us are exempt from having received gifts from God. We all have been given something to share. This isn’t about how much or how little you value the gift God has given you. Frankly your opinion of your gift is irrelevant.
What is relevant is your willingness to share that gift; just as God has shared His gift of grace with you. Peter doesn’t give the option of either not serving or of not being given a gift. You are gifted… by God. And that is what is important. Your gift is not something you earned, you manufactured or you created on your own. Your giftedness is what it is, because of what God has done in your life.
In your baptism into the triune God, you were made spiritually alive. You were made part of the family of God and you were given new life in Christ. You had nothing to do to make that happen. That’s God’s doing, it’s God’s action and God’s the one who begins His work in you because He chooses to do so. It’s the same with God’s giving you gifts to share.
Its God’s doing to give you His spiritual gifts. It’s God’s work in you that results in your being gifted. You can take no pride in your gift and you can take no blame for your gift. It is what God has given you.
However, like salvation being God’s action, you can reject God’s gifts to you as well. You can choose not to use the gifts God has given you, in the same way you can choose to reject salvation as God’s gift to you. You can choose to say, thanks for your gift to me God, but I don’t want it because that means I’ll have to put out effort to use it. That’s a choice you can make. But why? Why would you choose to say to the Creator of the universe who has given you a gift, no. Thank you God, but no. It isn’t something I want because it’ll mean giving up my time.
The second important thing we’ve already touched on and that is, that our service is to others. Not ourselves, but to others. We have a hymn that says: "Take my hands and let them do Works that show my love for you." Ours are the hands by which God’s love and mercy are extended to others.
If our own love for our God is genuine, it cannot be concealed. It will reveal itself in our actions toward others, as well as in the satisfaction, joy, and peace to be experienced for ourselves. In the introduction to his German translation of the New Testament, Martin Luther provided the reason: "For where works and love do not appear, faith is not genuine, the Gospel has not taken hold, and Christ is not recognized correctly."
Peter today, frames this as a matter of the administration of God’s grace by those who have it, to serve others with it. How will you administer grace, God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense, to others this week? Perhaps seeing someone you know and love who is enslaved by guilt, you can be the one who, like man in our first story, tells them simply that they are free because of what Christ has done.
Will you be visiting a hospital or nursing home like my pastor in Seattle? Maybe there’ll be someone there who hears you praying with your friend or loved one. Will you see the hunger in their eyes for that same gospel medicine; to hear from your mouth that they also are cared for by the Creator? It may not be another patient even; it might be one of the nursing staff or janitors.
Our administration of God’s grace, Peter says, is to others. When we enter into this Strategic Ministry Planning process we are entering into a commitment that will result, in some way, of service to others. We’re preparing to plan the administration of God’s grace to this part of the world through the gifts God has given each of us. We’re looking to the Lord to lift our eyes to see His vision here, so that others can know that God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense is for them as well.