Sermon by the Rev. Andrew S. Rollins

Lent IIC (March 4, 2007)

Text: Genesis 15:1 – 12, 17 - 18

Title: “How I Became the World’s Greatest Dancer”

 

If you were to compile a “Top 10 Most Important Passages from the Bible” list, Genesis 15 would have to be on it. Genesis 15, the story of God’s Promise to Abraham, is one of the biggies. You could even claim that Genesis 15 is of the “Pillars of the New Testament.” That’s a counter-intuitive statement, but let it just sit there and be odd for the moment.

 

What God Did For Abraham

The necessary background for the story is this: God first came to Abraham in Genesis 12 and promised to make him ‘a great nation’ – lots children, many of diapers. At that point Abraham was 75 and his wife Sarah was past child-bearing years. 25 years later, God returned to Abraham (Genesis 15) and repeated that promise: “Your descendants will be as numerous as the stars of heaven!” And, despite all evidence to the contrary, the scripture says, [Abraham] believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.

 

Abraham ‘believed.’ He put his trust in God’s promise even when there was no concrete evidence to support it. As a result, God ‘reckoned’ righteousness to Abraham. The key word here is ‘reckoned’ . . . or ‘credited’ or ‘imputed.’ They mean the same thing. ‘Reckoned.’ The apostle Paul reached back into the Old Testament and ‘grabbed holt of’ that word.

 

These Words Are For You

Paul deals with this passage in a similar way in both Romans and Galatians. In his letter to the Romans, he writes, Therefore [Abraham’s] faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It [righteousness] will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus from the dead . . . (4:23, 24).

 

Paul is saying at least two important things. First, he’s saying that those words from Genesis, written some 3500 years ago, were written for the benefit of Drew Rollins, Denise Jensen, Andy King, Kate Stump and Michael West. Those words, ‘it was reckoned to him”, were written for the Christian.

 

I have a letter that my grandfather wrote for me when I was less than a year old. My mother gave it to me several years ago near my 40th birthday. My granddad intended me to read the letter as an adult. It’s full of love, hope, expectation, encouragement. When I read it, it’s as if my grandfather is speaking directly to me over an expanse of 40 years. That’s what Paul sees when he reads Genesis 15. God was writing to you and me some 3500 years ago. Genesis 15 is like a time-released letter set to explode in your hands today.

 

The Gospel in the Old Testament

The second, even more important thing, Paul says has to do with the content of the Gospel. Like every preacher, Paul is searching for images, stories, and examples to bring the gospel to life for his hearers. In this case, he looks back to Genesis and recalls how God treated the faith of Abraham. God took Abraham’s response of trust and “reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abraham’s trust in God was “applied to his ‘credit’ as if it were moral righteousness (Paul Zahl). In other words, God substituted trust for moral uprightness which Abraham didn’t really have. (And if you recall the other stories of Abraham, you’ll remember that he really didn’t have it!)

 

Paul recalls at how God treated Abraham and says, “That’s the gospel!” That is the Christian gospel. Paul says that the best example of the gospel -- how God saves people by grace, not works – is to be found in Abraham. You see how odd that is? The best example of the gospel is in the Old Testament! That’s what I mean by a “Pillar of the New Testament.

 

Paul claims that the Old Testament declares the gospel, through Abraham. Do you see the implication of that? The gospel that Paul preached to the Romans and Galatians was NOT as new as Jesus Christ. It was as old as Abraham. That’s his point. God imputed grace to Abraham long before God ever gave the Law. The Law came 400 years later through Moses. But God’s relationship with Abraham was always based on grace.

 

Imputed Grace

We all know that the gospel has to do with grace: “Amazing Grace/ how sweet the sound.” But how precisely is that grace given to us?

 

The claim of the gospel is that God extends his grace to us by reckoning, or imputing, his own righteousness to us. To ‘impute’ means to ascribe qualities to someone that are not there intrinsically, to regard somebody as a person that he or she is not. In other words, God looks on your failure and gives you credit where you do not deserve it (Paul Zahl).

 

In his new book, Grace in Practice (to which this sermon is indebted), Paul Zahl writes, “Imputation calls bad things by a good name. . . . It is the big effect that no one but God is able to pull off. It is creative naming, which has the power of changing.”

 

Many of you will have experienced this ‘imputed grace’ in some tangible way in your life. If so, I would be that circumstance is close to your heart. It is often a good teacher who does this for us. Maybe a teacher saw something in you and was willing to name it as something greater than it really was. You didn’t really have it until they named it in you. You’re blessed if you had parent who gave you a name (“Hey, big man” or “My beautiful princess”) – a name that wasn’t an objective description of who you were, but a name that you could grow into.

 

When I was in high school, I was asked to be a member of SODA (Student Organization on Developing Attitudes). Each year, a select group of high school seniors was tapped to visit area middle schools to talk to 7th and 8th graders about how to develop good attitudes. What a joke! I had a terrible attitude. I didn’t realize until years later that the attitude that was being developed was mine and not the middle schoolers! I expect there were lots of laughs over this in Teacher’s Lounge. I was only a member of SODA by imputed grace.

 

“I find you passing gentle . . .”

Imputation, which is always how grace operates, is also very romantic.

 

There’s an example of imputation in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. You remember that the younger sister (Bianca) cannot wed until her older sister, Katharina, ‘the Shrew’, is first wed. So Petruchio, a fortune-hunting scoundrel, is brought in to ‘tame the shrew.’ Surprisingly, the two fall in love despite their passionate warring -- which actually happens almost immediately.

 

The way that Petruchio woos Kate is by imputation. Kate has a well-earned reputation of being shrill, abusive, rough, coy, sullen, discourteous – shrewish. Petruchio is a brute. But he wisely decides to impute all of the opposite qualities to her. When they meet, he says, "Hearing thy mildness praised in every town,/ Thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded,/ Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs,/ Myself am moved to woo thee for my wife." Even as she insults him (She finally hits him!), he continues to name her “Good Kate.” He concludes the courtship this way: “I find you passing gentle,/ ‘Twas told me you were rough and coy and sullen,/ And now I find report a very liar, / For thou art pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous,/ But slow in speech, yet sweet as springtime flowers.”

 

The result of Petruchio’s imputed grace is that Kate changes. When she finally decides to admit the love she has for him, she already has the name (“Kate the Gentle” “Kate the Mild” “Kate the Courteous”) to walk into and inhabit.

 

I like that story because both Katharina and Petruchio are so obviously flawed (the Bible would say ‘sinful’): Kate is shrew; Petruchio is a brute. Shakespeare gives us real people -- like you and me. Despite their many detestable qualities, Shakespeare shows us that, because they experience grace, they change. They are transformed. They grow to love.

 

The Result of Imputed Grace

And that’s always the result of imputed grace. We change! Grace operates that way in everyone’s lives, not just in the lives Christians. Offered one human being to another, imputed grace rarely fails to touch the heart -- both of the receiver and of the giver.

 

Your new supervisor introduces you to her colleagues: “This is the newest member of our team. She’s remarkably talented and creative. I’m confident that she’s going to be our ideas person.” What happens? The next hour, you’re at your computer churning out creative ideas. You are ‘the Ideas Person.’

 

This is certainly true in marriage. Jeanie announces to a group at a party, in front of me, “My husband is the best dancer. I just love dancing with him. He’s the greatest!” What’s the result? I’m out there . . . . Fred Astaire!

 

Is that flattery? Is that manipulation? No. Because I am the world’s greatest dancer! I become the world’s greatest dancer, sailing across the dance floor on the imputed grace that she offers me.

 

Hasn’t that ever happened to you?

 

What God Offers Us

Unfortunately, you may not have experienced that sort of imputed grace in your life. Or, it may have been a very long time since you have experienced anything like that. Perhaps you’re in the middle of a long stretch of just the opposite – where you have to earn whatever grace you get.

 

But here is the Good News.

 

The Good News of the Gospel is that, through Christ, God Almighty offers imputed grace to you. Where human beings fail, God does not. The claim of the gospel is that, when we place our trust in Jesus Christ, God imputes His righteousness to us. There is an objective exchange of sin for righteousness.

 

As a result, we really can change. We begin to actually become that which God has named us to be: Righteous.

 

That’s all it means to be changed by the love of God.