Bible Reading: Romans 5:1-5 & John 16:12-15
In this week’s Epistle to the Romans: 5: 1-5, Paul wrote for a world in which people were desperately trying to find the passwords that would give them access to God. Some thought that careful obedience to the law of Moses was the key. Others thought that civic virtue was the key. Still others tried to placate God by the breadth of their philosophical knowledge.
Paul’s astonishing claim is that there is only one password we need to remember: Jesus Christ and that in Jesus Christ everyone has access to grace. And suddenly the entire picture is reversed. It is not that we are striving to reach God, it is that God is striving to reach us grace. It is not that we use Jesus to attain God’s mercy, it is that God sends Jesus to enact the mercy that God has intended from the beginning of time.
Grace, however, is not only the activity of God in Jesus Christ that reaches out to include everyone (in Paul’s case, especially both Jews and Gentiles.) Grace is also our dwelling place “This grace in which we stand.” God’s goodness to us surrounds us and upholds us and defines who we are.
Our lives are shaped by the gift we can never achieve but can only receive.
Paul tells us what the life looks like that is grounded in grace. It is not usually marked by earthly success and most certainly not blessed by earthly prosperity. Far more often it is marked by suffering. It is, after all, a Christ-shaped life that lives in grace. But the suffering bears its own fruits, or better, grace bears fruit through the suffering. The litany of the gifts of grace is a kind of sketch of moral and spiritual development for the person grounded in the grace of God. Start with suffering and move to endurance; from endurance comes character, and character produces hope. Ethicists are much committed to helping us think about “character” ethics these days. Paul would say that we can be pretty sure someone has character right if she lives in hope.
Let us live in that hope, even as we reflect on what June 16 means for us. In spite of the many challenges facing our youth, school violence, teachers, we mustn’t lose hope. We have got to act; we must involve people. I read this past week, that a scholar from our neighbouring school (Sea Point High), was arrested for allegedly armed robbery, another one appeared in court in Johannesburg for fatally stabbing a colleague, a teacher gunned down in full view of learners in a school premise. Gang violence involving young kids claimed more than two thousand lives here in Cape Town since last year November. Is there hope for our youth, communities and country? I think there is, only when and if we will be willing to get involved, let us commit friends to be community and societal oriented. Sabrina Reber observes: “We cannot fight darkness with more darkness, we need to increase the light”.
Solomzi