Overflowing grace

Reflecting on Luke 8:1-3

"These women were helping to support them out of their own means." (Luke 8:3)

If you asked these women why they supported Jesus, what would they say?
Luke explains it was because Jesus had healed them.
They personally experienced the powerful, life-changing kindness of Jesus.
He did not treat them as inferior or weak women, second class citizens.
Did he ask their fathers or husbands for permission to receive their wealth?
We don’t know, but it seems hard to imagine Chuza agreeing to this.
Jesus had won them over with compassion and goodness.
And this had triggered their compassion and goodness.
They wanted to promote Jesus and His way of blessing others.

Why do people support good causes?
For most it is because they sense something good from that cause.
Maybe they themselves had experienced the good benefit of the cause?
Like a cancer survivor contributing to the Cancer Society.
Or someone who benefited from a food bank in the past, giving to a Food Bank.
Or someone who helps a stranger, because one time a stranger helped them.

Is this the reason why christians support Jesus and the church?
Maybe, though for some it is out of fear of hell, or the hope of heaven.
They want to impress God with the good they do.
Or they want to atone for bad things they may have done in the past.
Why do I do good, or share with others, or help good causes?
Why do you?
Or maybe a more foundational question is, do I? do you?

How have I experienced the powerful, life-changing kindness of Jesus?
How eager am I for others to experience this?
I am not sure that this is the reason some christians do what they do.
It was not the reason that I became a christian, or decided to become a pastor.
Yet eventually I came to realize the powerful, life-changing kindness of Jesus.
And now this is what motivates me, what I want others to know.
Having come to know His radical love, I want to show His radical love.

I am comforted by the impact of Jesus’s kindness to me.
I have not been healed, though I have been released from an evil spirit.
That spirit for me was churchianity, the spirit of self-righteousness.
Jesus saved me from Pharisee orthodoxy, religion and religious certainty.
I now realize I am loved by grace, and not because I am right.
I have received God’s kindness despite my spiritual, moral condition.
I do not need to perform to impress, or to earn my place in God’s family.
I do not need to appease God’s wrath, or need Jesus to do it for me.
Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles… God loves me.
Like these women, I want others to know this amazing grace and goodness.

I am convicted when I fall back into the rut of religion and churchianity.
This happens when I go through the motions, without my heart being in it.
This also happens when I separate between worthy and unworthy people.
Or when I favour people who agree with me, and avoid those who don’t.
When I withhold grace and kindness from those who I think are bad, or wrong.

Jesus calls me to do one thing: to love people like Jesus loves me.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34)

This is what church, and religion, are meant to be.
This is how I show my love for God and Jesus, my true act of worship.
This is what it means to follow Jesus, like these women did.
I belong to Jesus, not to church or to christianity or religion.
I am blessed to bless others, graced to be gracious, loved to be loving.
This is the heart and essence of faith in Jesus for me.
I feel liberated and delivered from churchianity to follow Jesus like this.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not living this out perfectly.
I am not always generous, I do not freely give my wealth to support Jesus’s work.
But His gracious kindness assures me that my weak efforts are a good beginning.
And His gracious kindness motivates me to grow step by step towards greater love.
I am not there yet, and I have a long way to go and to grow.
But Jesus welcomes me to follow Him just as I am.
And His gracious kindness inspires me to more and more become just as He is.
“Take my life and let it be, consecrated Lord to Thee!”

PRAYER
Lord Jesus, I have been set free through Your gracious love, and I want others to experience the blessing of being set free through Your gracious love. Continue to overwhelm me with Your radical grace, that I am overflow with it to others.