Prevailing Grace

From a recent entry (July 22) in Philip Yancey's book, Grace Notes:

"Recent times have seen public dramas of forgiveness play out in nations formerly controlled by Communists.

In 1983, before the Iron Curtain lifted and during the period of martial law, Pope John II visited Poland, where he conducted a huge open-air mass. Throngs of people, organized in orderly groups by their parishes, marched over the Poniatowski Bridge and streamed toward the stadium. Just before the bridge, the route crossed directly in front of the Communist Party's Central Committee Building, and hour after hour the platoons of marchers chanted in unison, "We forgive you, we forgive you!" as they passed the building. Some said the slogan with heartfelt sincerity. Others shouted it almost with contempt, as if to say, "You're nothing--we don't even hate you."

A few years later Jerry Popieluszko, a thirty-five-year-old priest whose sermons had electrified Poland, was found floating in the Vistula River with his eyes gouged out and his fingernails torn off. Once again the Catholics took to the streets,s marching with banners that read "We forgive. We forgive." Popieluszko had preached the same message Sunday after Sunday to the multitude who filled the square in front of his church: "Defend the truth. Overcome evil with good." After his death they continued to obey him, and in the end it was exactly this spirit of prevailing grace that caused the regime to collapse.

All over Eastern Europe the struggle of forgiveness is still being waged. Should a pastor in Russia forgive the KGB officers who imprisoned him and razed his church? Should Romanians forgive the doctors and nurses who chained sick orphans to their beds? Should citizens of Eastern Germany forgive the stool pigeons--including seminary professors, pastors, and treacherous spouses--who spied on them? When human rights activist Vera Wollenberger learned that it was her husband who had betrayed her to the secret police, resulting in her arrest and exile, she ran to the bathroom and vomited.

Paul Tillich once defined forgiveness as remembering the past in order that it might be forgotten--a principle that applies to nations as well as individuals. Though forgiveness is never easy, and may take generations, what else can break the chains that enslave people to their historical past?"

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[Taken from Philip Yancey's book What's So Amazing About Grace? pp. 125-26]

The Power of Grace

The reading in Philip Yancey's Grace Notes (Zondervan, 2009) for July 21 reads as follows:

"In 1990 the world watched a drama of forgiveness enacted on the stage of world politics. After East Germany chose a parliament in its first free elections, the representatives convened to take up the reins of government. The Communist bloc was changing daily, West Germany was proposing the radical step of reunification, and the new parliament had many weighty matters of state to consider. For their first official act, however, they decided to vote on this extraordinary statement, drafted in the language of theology, not politics:

"We, the first freely elected parliamentarians of the GDR . . . on behalf of the citizens of this land, admit responsibility for the humiliation, expulsion and murder of Jewish men, women and children. We feel sorrow and shame, and acknowledge this burden of German history. . . . Immeasurable suffering was inflicted on the peoples of the world during the era of national socialism. . . . We ask all the Jews of the world to forgive us. We ask the people of Israel to forgive us for the hypocrisy and hostility of official East German policies toward Israel and for the persecution and humiliation of Jewish citizens in our country after 1945 as well."

East Germany's parliament passed the statement unanimously. Members rose to their feet for a long ovation and then paused for a moment of silence in memory of the Jews who had died in the Holocaust.

What did such an act of parliament accomplish? Certainly it did not bring the murdered Jews back to life or undo the monstrous deeds of Nazism. No, but it helped loosen the stranglehold of guilt that had been choking East Germans for nearly half a century--five decades in which their government had steadfastly denied any need for forgiveness.

For its part, West Germany had already repented officially for the abominations. In addition, West Germany has paid out sixty billion dollars in reparations to Jews. The fact that a relationship exists at all between Germany and Israel is a stunning demonstration of transnational forgiveness. Grace has its own power, even in international politics."

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Perspective

Just back from an Annual Meeting at Grace Chapel Primitive Baptist Church in Memphis, TN. We weren't able to stay for the whole thing, and my recalcitrant sciatic nerve made me miss one morning's session, but I very much enjoyed the gatherings I was able to be part of. Elder Lasserre Bradley preached wonderful--very helpful and encouraging--messages. Adding to that were other ministers that brought us good, solid messages from God's Word.

While away from home, I continued my reading in Philip Yancey's book, Grace Notes, and yesterday's reading is one that is connected to my GRACE posts, so I'm including it below. Later, I hope to send to other posts taken from Yancey's writings. I labeled the one below "Perspective", because it sheds a lot of light on believers' relationships to each other in Christ. For all true believers, these thoughts are enlightening.
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"God miraculously provided food for the Israelites wandering through the Sinai Desert, and even made sure their shoes would not wear out. Jesus too fed hungry people and ministered directly to their needs. Many Christians who read those thrilling stories look back with a sense of nostalgia or even disappointment. "Why doesn't God act like that now?" they wonder. "Why doesn't God miraculously provide for my needs?"
"But the New Testament letters seem to show a different pattern at work. Locked in a cold dungeon, Paul turned to his longtime friend Timothy to meet his physical needs. "Bring my cloak and my scrolls," he wrote, "and also bring Mark, who has always been so helpful." In other straits, Paul received "God's comfort" in the form of a visit from Titus. And when a famine broke out in Jerusalem, Paul himself led a fund-raising effort among all the churches he had founded. God was meeting the needs of the young church as surely as he had met the needs of the Israelites, but indirectly, through fellow members of Christ's body. Paul made no such distinction as "the church did this, but God did that." Such a division would miss the point he had made so often. The church is Christ's body; therefore if the church did it, God did it.
Paul's insistence on this truth may trace back to his first, dramatic personal encounter with God. At the time, he was a fierce persecutor of Christians, a notorious bounty hunter. But on the road to Damascus he saw a light bright enough to blind him for three days, and heard a voice from heaven: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"
Persecute you? Persecute who? I'm only after those heretics the Christians.
"Who are you, Lord?" asked Saul at last, knocked flat on the ground.
"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," came the reply.
That sentence summarizes as well as anything the change brought about by the Holy Spirit. Jesus had been executed months before. It was the Christians Saul was after, not Jesus. But Jesus, alive again, informed Saul that those people were in fact his own body. What hurt them, hurt him. It was a lesson the apostle Paul would never forget.

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