TL;DR: Romans and Isaiah remind us that God's grace is a gift, not a reward. Throughout Scripture, people have tried to draw boundaries around who belongs and who is worthy of God's promises, yet God continually extends grace beyond those human limits. This sermon explores three promises: God's grace is for all people, God's grace does not depend on our performance, and God's grace keeps breaking through the boundaries we create. The question is not whether God is gracious enough—but whether we trust God's promise enough to let that grace be as expansive as God intends.
What follows is the actual transcript of my sermon, delivered June 28 in at First Congregational Church in Loveland, CO, formatted for substack. Audio is available at the bottom.
Chips, Salsa, and Grace
Well do we have any World Cup fans here this morning?
I was watching last night Ronaldo and Portugal and a little bit of Argentina before Messi showed up with his goal. But my son and I have been watching the United States games. He’s less interested in some of the other ones. You know, sitting still for an eight-year-old is hard.
But what I think has been actually quite entertaining is seeing some of the social media stories around foreign fans coming to the United States.
And experiencing American culture for the first time.
So let’s see if we have this for us. I found this on Twitter, or X, I guess as they call it now, and I can’t verify, you know, I can’t independently verify the accuracy of the story, but it’s quite entertaining nonetheless.
So from apparently from the X account of a fan from Japan writes,
Now, for those of us who are regular patrons of Mexican restaurants in the states here, we know that technically the chips and salsa are not free, right?
They’re built into the cost of the meal at some point.
But I still think it makes for an apt illustration of God’s grace.
God’s grace is free, unrequested, and unearned.
The problem, I think, is that God’s grace has often been presented as something we need to earn, to acquire, to deserve.
This has been especially true for those who’ve been considered on the outside boundaries of society, beyond the bounds of so-called respectability.
In early colonial missionary efforts, sharing God’s grace with people often meant forcing Western cultural values upon them while stripping them of their own values, as if God’s grace was only compatible with Western European ideals.
More recently, sharing God’s grace with LGBT people often came packaged with the expectation that becoming Christian meant becoming straight, as if God’s grace were only compatible with heterosexuality.
To say it bluntly, in early colonial missionary efforts, becoming Christian often meant becoming culturally white.
And more recently, for many LGBT people, becoming Christian often meant being required to become straight.
In both cases God’s grace came with additional requirements.
With strings attached.
For centuries, humans have been trying to draw boundaries around God’s grace.
But God’s grace is always bigger than we would expect, always bigger than we could imagine.
Romans: Promise, Not Threat
During my time here this summer I’ve been preaching through the book of Romans.
For one, Romans is the reading from the revised common lectionary.
Second, I’ve never preached through Romans before, and as I shared last week, I’m only here for a short time, so whatever, if it doesn’t go well, I’m gone.
But third and perhaps most importantly for today, I’ve really only ever heard Romans preached as a threat.
So I’ve been approaching each sermon with this question:
What if Romans is not primarily about threats, but about promises?
In his letter to the early church at Rome, Paul is trying to set the record straight about who God’s grace is for and who the gospel is for.
Some Jewish followers of Jesus during that time believed that non Jewish followers of Jesus needed to earn God’s grace through strict adherence to religious rules and practices.
Conversely, other Gentile followers of Jesus, the non Jews, believed that Jewish followers had somehow forfeited their rights to God’s promise.
Both groups were drawing boundaries around God’s grace.
And Paul writes them, he says,
But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart, to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
Now again, for those of you who weren’t here last week, Paul uses some dramatic language around slavery and dominion.
And he’s convinced that all humans are slaving excuse me, all humans are serving something, are slaves to something, willingly or not.
And because of God’s grace, he says we are now freed to serve God.
And as Paul later writes in chapter six,
now that we have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage we get is sanctification, the end is eternal life.
From the message translation, if you’re familiar with that translation of the Bible, we get something a little bit more palatable to our modern ears.
It reads
But now that you found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the light of listening to God telling you, what a surprise. A whole healed, put together life right now, and more and more life on the way.
Perhaps what’s so surprising about the things that Paul is arguing for.
Is not simply what God promises, but rather to who God promises it to.
Because throughout Scripture, whenever people started drawing boundaries around God’s promises, they discovered that God’s promises were always bigger than they could imagine.
Isaiah 56
Which brings us to again from our reading this morning from Isaiah fifty six.
And I want to read it again this morning because I think it’s important.
Isaiah fifty six verse three says,
Do not let the foreigner join to the Lord say, The Lord will surely separate me from his people.
And do not let the eunuch say, I am just a dry tree.
For thus saith the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast to my covenant.
I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters.
I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.
The Prophet Isaiah was speaking to a people who had their own assumptions about who did and didn’t belong.
In this case, he was writing about eunuchs.
People who, because of their bodies and their social status, were often viewed as outsiders to God’s promises.
Eunuchs could not have children, and because ancient society placed such an importance on family lineage and descendants, they were seen as people having no future and no hope and no lasting legacy.
Now, to be clear, I’m not suggesting that eunuchs were the ancient equivalent of LGBT people today.
The categories are different.
But many scholars and theologians have noted a similarity in that eunuchs occupied a place in society on the margins, they occupied a place on the margins of ancient society.
They did not ex they did not fit the expected norms around sexuality, marriage, and family.
And because they didn’t fit these expectations, these assumptions, many assumed that God’s promises were not really for them.
In much the same way today, many LGBT people have been told that they do not fit, they are outside the bounds of God’s grace, or that somehow God’s promises are not meant for them, but only for other people.
Yet Isaiah speaks directly to those who feared they were excluded.
Do not let the eunuch say, I am just a dry tree.
For Lord says,
I will give them a name better than sons and daughters, an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.
God responds not with a condition, but with a promise.
In other words, while people were busy drawing circles, drawing boundaries around God’s promise, God was reminding them that those boundaries were bigger than they could even themselves imagine.
These words from Isaiah remind us that God’s promise is not determined by social status, family lineage, or whether someone fits societal expectations.
God’s promise reaches farther than we ourselves can even imagine.
And that’s much the same point I believe that Paul is making here in the Book of Romans.
Paul says the gospel is not a reward for those who have earned it.
It’s a gift.
It is a gift for those who trust it.
Three Promises
So this morning I want to remind you again of God’s promises.
Of God’s gift.
First, that God’s promise is for all people.
So if you or someone you love is a part of the LGBT community, trust this morning that God’s promises.
God’s promise is for you.
And if you spent years wondering whether God’s grace extends the LGBT people, spoiler alert, I think it does.
And as we’ve seen in Isaiah, God’s grace is not conditional upon adherence to dominant cultural norms, it is for all who trust it.
That’s the promise, the first promise I believe, that God’s grace, God’s promise, is for all people.
But that’s not the only promise that God offers for us this morning.
The Second Promise
The second promise is that God’s promises do not have to be performed.
One of the temptations in churches like ours is to assume that if God’s grace is so important that we must constantly prove that we are gracious, we can begin to treat welcome like a performance, inclusion as an achievement, and acceptance as something that depends on us getting everything right.
Sometimes we act as if God’s grace is fragile, and if if we don’t get everything right, every statement correct, every policy, every conversation, then we can somehow mess God’s grace up.
But God’s grace is not fragile.
God’s grace does not depend on our performance, God’s grace is abundant.
God’s grace was here before us, God’s grace will be here after us.
We do not create it, we do not sustain it, we do not earn it, we simply bear witness to it and proclaim it.
Good news, good news for all.
The promise was God’s before it was ours.
Our task is not to manufacture grace, our task is to trust it and to share it.
Good news of God’s love and welcome.
The Third Promise
There’s one more promise here, and it may be, I think, sometimes the hardest promise to trust.
Third is that God’s promises keep breaking through any boundaries that we ourselves might set up.
If God’s grace is truly grace, then it cannot be reserved for people who already agree with us.
Otherwise, it’s not grace at all, but instead an earned reward.
Which means that even the people we disagree with, even the people who have hurt us, who have disappointed us, who see the world very differently than us, do not have to earn God’s grace before receiving it.
Our role as Christ’s Church, his body on earth then, is not to manufacture grace, but to trust it and to share it.
Which raises a difficult question, I think, I suppose.
Do we trust God’s promise?
Do we trust God’s promise to let God’s grace be as gracious as God wants it to be?
Do we trust God’s promise enough to let God be as gracious as God wants to be?
The promise of Isaiah 56 is not that God finally welcomes the worthy.
The promise is that God welcomes those who assumed they were already outside.
The promise is that God keeps extending grace beyond the boundaries that humans themselves ourselves create.
And once we start talking about grace, all of our human conditions fall away.
Because the moment we decide who can receive God’s promise, it stops being a promise and instead starts becoming a reward.
But God’s grace is not a reward, it’s a gift.
And gifts, by definition, are freely given.
And that brings me to the real question that I suppose for this morning.
Do we trust the promise?
The Hospital Room
At different points throughout my ministry career, I worked on and off as a hospital chaplain.
Early in my training I got the sense that being a chaplain in a hospital was sort of like a mix of being a crisis responder and emotional support presence.
In recent years I’ve recognized a deeper calling, that of being an evangelist, of trying to share God’s love and grace with whoever I encounter.
Some months back I remember seeing a young man in the hospital.
He had a note attached to his door saying, Check with the nurse first.
So I did, and the nurse said that he was a bit hot-headed and stubborn.
Good luck, she essentially said, but as I’ve already said, I enjoy a challenge.
But more I trust that God is already at work ahead of me in that situation.
So I knocked on the door.
Hello, my name is Loren Richmond.
I’m a chaplain here.
Would you appreciate a visit?
I came in and entered the room.
We began having a conversation, and as advertised, he was animated and expressive.
And despite being young enough to be my son, he had already lived a lifetime, and I mean a lifetime of pain and abuse and trauma.
Some of his stories were so shocking and appalling that I wasn’t really sure what was the pain Med’s talking and what was all the way true.
But it became quite clear to me in the moment as I was talking to him that this was a young man who was both desperately trying to outrun his trauma while at the same time desperately trying to not repeat that said trauma in his own life.
And I found myself saying something in the moment that surprised even me.
I kept telling him,
God loves you.
God forgives you.
God loves you.
God forgives you.
God loves you.
God forgives you.
Receive that.
See, this was a young man who was labelled as being far outside by society, by nurses, by his trauma.
That he was desperately, desperately, desperately trying to prove that he was worthy.
He was desperately trying to prove that he deserved a better life for himself.
And he was failing miserably.
What I wanted for him in that moment was not to proselytize him.
I didn’t want to win him over to a certain set of propositions.
I wanted didn’t want him to prove that he deserved love and acceptance.
I wanted to help him see that he could trust God’s promise of grace.
See underneath all the stories, all the bravado, all the pain.
I think there was a simpler question that was resonating from his heart.
Is God’s grace really for me?
And I kept trying to say to him again and again,
Yes, yes, it’s for you.
Yes, for the eunuchs that Isaiah wrote about.
Yes, for the LGBTQ community who has wondered if there’s a place for them in church.
But that’s not even it.
For those of you this morning carrying shame and grief and pain, yes, God’s promise is for you.
For those of you who feel like outsiders, yes, God’s promise is for you.
For those who have spent your entire life trying to prove you belong, yes, God’s promise is for you.
Because the promise of Isaiah 56 is not that God fondly welcomes the worthy.
The promise is that God welcomes those who thought they were outside.
And that’s good news, friends.
That is good news.
Thanks be to God.