God's Geometry--July 3, 2020

God’s Geometry—July 3, 2020

“Although I am the least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ…” (Ephesians 3:8) 

Grace is like a fractal. 

Fractals, just as a refresher for us all, are those geometric figures where you get the same pattern, or the same curve happening again and again as you zoom in. So looking at one distance, you see a particular paisley-looking curlicue, and then if you were to zoom in to one corner of the pattern, you would see the same paisley-looking curlicue repeating itself in smaller and smaller versions. Scientists and mathematicians see fractal-like patterns in things like crystal formations—where the molecules might form hexagonally-shaped structures at the microscopic level, and then those in turn become larger crystals that have the same hexagon shape. Or they find that they can make sense of things like galaxy formation or coastline erosion by recognizing how a particular curvy pattern in one small are gets repeated at a bigger scale when you zoom out. 

If this whole “fractal” thing still isn’t making sense or ringing a bell, go ahead and take a minute to Google it. I’ll wait. 

Ok. 

Are we all back? Ready to pick up with Paul, the Ephesians, and the grace of God? Here goes. 

Okay, so zooming in to the personal, individual level. Here’s a guy named Paul, who has been given the privilege of sharing the Gospel with people. Paul sees this as not just an honor, but an undeserved, unearned, unfathomable gift of grace. “I wasn’t owed this; I am not entitled to get to bring the message of Jesus to people,” Paul seems to say here. He calls himself the “least of all the saints,” recognizing that his old life as an enemy of Christ and his church should have, by all reasonable thinking, disqualified him for serving in that church once Paul had become a part of the Jesus movement. The same way we would probably say today that if you are convicted of embezzling from the church, you aren’t likely to be accepted for the church treasurer position, Paul knows that his past actions could well have been a deal-breaker for any possible hope of serving as a leader in the church. 

But grace won out. God took the risk, so to speak. God used the one who was deemed unacceptable, disqualified, and ineligible. The living Christ grabbed a hold of Paul and said, “Your past is put away. Your sins are forgiven. Your violence against me, mind you, will not separate you from my love. I am going to use you regardless of what your past actions and choices were. You didn’t earn it, but I am calling you to this opportunity. I am giving it to you.” The word for that, quite simply, is… grace. 

Okay, so far, so good? The pattern here is God giving things for free to people who haven’t earned it, apart from their worthiness or deserving. The theme to look for is the way God takes people who are estranged from him, and even are enemies of God’s cause, and embraces them in love. Got it? Because we are about to zoom out. 

Paul sees the same pattern happening in the mission he was sent on: to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles (that is, anybody who wasn’t Jewish). God makes a special point of sending someone to the outsiders, the people who weren’t already trying their best to follow God’s commandments, the people who were knee-deep in worshiping a pantheon of other gods, the people who weren’t trying to impress or seek God’s will. These people get sent a special messenger. God makes a special point of reaching out to them, even though God could have said, “You all are just a bunch of rotten, no-good sinners, and you aren’t worthy of getting access to this good news I have for you.” 

It’s the same pattern, playing out for a whole swath of humanity! It’s God, reaching out to people who were turned away from him, and drawing them to himself before they have done a thing, and even while they are dead-set against God. Paul saw it in his own life, and he sees the same pattern in the audience he was sent to, as well. 

And then, you could even zoom out again and see the grace-fractal in one more level, too: the news itself that Paul brought. The Gospel Paul preached is the message of God drawing all of humanity into right relationship through the cross of Jesus, and apart from our works, our earning, our deserving, or our congeniality. None of us is a perfect peach. We all have jagged, broken edges, and we use those jagged, broken edges to keep jabbing each other, which makes us all more and more broken. But God’s way of dealing with that brokenness—that we usually just call “sin”—is not to give us a ten-step plan or a five-year scheme for us to follow so that we can make ourselves acceptable. God’s way is to reach out to us while we are unacceptable, and to die for us, reconcile with us, and restore us. The Gospel is the news that what God did in Paul’s specific case is exactly what God does with each of us: to grab a hold of us in love through Christ, regardless of our deserving (or not deserving, rather). 

Grace, it turns out, is not just an exception to a rule, or some outlying special case God only resorts to in extreme circumstances. Grace is the very fabric God works with. Grace is the pattern woven into God’s whole way with us, whether at an individual level in the twists and turns of your life and your day today, or in the cosmic scale in the way God deals with all of humanity at the cross. Look for grace today—in big or small ways. Once you catch the pattern, you will soon recognize it everywhere. 

God of grace, allow us to see today the way your love animates and illuminates everything in creation. Let us see the way your mercy runs through every moment of our day and every atom in the world. And let us dare to live like grace really is our sustenance.