The cross and the God of grace

Luke, 6:27. And I want to talk about grace as the very spirit of Easter, of the narrative of Holy Week, grace at the center of that narrative. Thinking that in a few days, as we had said during the announcements, we will be celebrating the so-called Holy Week where we remember the passion of Jesus Christ, his sacrifice for us, and his resurrection obviously too.

I want to frame that time with a meditation on grace, the grace of God and our grace that we must also extend to others. Luke, chapter 6:27 says:

“But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you. To the one who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other also, and to the one who takes your cloak, do not deny even your tunic; you want men to do with you so also do you with them. Because if you love those who love you, what merit do you have, because sinners also love those who love them and do good to those who do you good, what merit do you have, because sinners also do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what merit do you have, because sinners also lend to sinners to receive the same amount. So love your enemies and do good and lend expecting nothing, and your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High. Because? Because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked, therefore be merciful as your Father is also merciful."

The Lord bless your word. I told them that this week that is approaching and in fact in the Christian tradition of many different denominations there is this idea of those days that we celebrate in view of resurrection Sunday and for many churches and many branches of Christianity, those weeks before Sunday of resurrection are weeks of recollection, of meditation, of thinking about the different events that accompanied the process that Christ lived on the way to the cross.

And I wanted to at least take this Sunday to meditate a little on that narrative, that Easter story. The Lord led me to think while I was preparing this sermon about that immense love of God that led him to extend his life, his power in favor of a humanity mired in sin. The Bible links God's love to the salvation we receive.

John 3:16, the most well-known verse in the entire Bible, "for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son," his only son, there is a great mystery there. The language of human biology, but we know that the relationship of Jesus with the Father goes beyond what we know as son-dad, it is something much deeper, but it is an approximation of what the relationship between father and son is. .

But it says that God loved humanity so much that he gave his only son so that everyone who believes in that son in Christ Jesus will not perish but have eternal life. The love of God that was so great that it led him to donate to Jesus Christ in favor of our salvation. And that in itself, that a being delivers something totally unique in favor of others, is already something very exemplary, very spectacular. But what makes this love of God even more striking is the fact that God extended that love to those who do not deserve it, nor did they deserve it.

God did not save a humanity that loved him and was searching for him and adored the only God, but rather extended his grace and mercy towards a humanity that was lost in sin, totally ignorant of it and towards that humanity the Lord extended his love. A humanity that did not deserve it.

And that leads us to meditate on what grace is. This concept of grace, caris in the original Greek, is very important in all Christian theology, it is behind this idea of grace or caris, it is this idea of giving something of value to someone or some who do not deserve it, that is the idea when we talk about the grace of God, caris. Where the word charity comes from, for example, is that idea of charity or the love of God, the grace of God who assigned his Son to a humanity that did not deserve him.

It has been said that grace is giving someone what they don't deserve and not giving someone what they deserve. And if you examine that idea, that is what God did with us, he gave us something we did not deserve, he gave us salvation, reconciliation with him, he gave us his Son Jesus Christ so that we might be saved through him, and we were not not even wanting that. Humanity was very happy at that time when Christ came into the world, it was immersed in its sin. We'll see a little bit about that later.

That is to say, that God gave us something that we did not deserve. But he also did something marvelous and that is that he did not give us what we deserved, because in that sinful state of having offended God's law, what we deserved was wrath, punishment, justice, but God did not give us that, he gave us reconciliation through Christ Jesus, gave us the forgiveness of sins.

If you can go to Ephesians, chapter 2, wait a minute, from 3 to 5, there it says:

“All of us once lived in the desires of our flesh, that is, our carnality, our unredeemed humanity, doing the will of the flesh and of the thoughts – because sin is not only the immoral sins with which we normally associate the sin, but what about living only according to reason, as so many people live, according to the law of time and space, believing that life is purely horizontal, what is contained within this reality that we see, touch, feel because it says here:

"... the will of the flesh and of the thoughts..." He knows that he has an enmity not only against our animal part but also with the purely rational part that often tries to limit the world to the material and to what we can verify with our five senses, impoverishing what is the human experience that goes far beyond, infinitely beyond the purely material, temporal. And there are many people who will go to hell not because they are great sinners but because they have limited God to reason, great intellectuals, great philanthropists, great doers of good, great musicians and artists who, due to their rationality, have not been able to access the mystery of God.

And it's important that Paul makes that clarification because the mind can be as much an enemy of God as the flesh can be. Then he says, "the will of the flesh and of the thoughts and we were by nature children of wrath the same as the rest."

In other words, by nature, that is something very interesting because Paul is saying here that the true nature of man, woman, who has not had an encounter with God is to be a child of wrath. In other words, cannon fodder as they say around there. You are destined for death. Structurally you are a prisoner of God's wrath and an act of grace on God's part is required to change your state of anger to a state of reconciliation and dealing with God.

That is why every human being, no matter how developed they are in benevolence, in good intentions, in good acts, if their life... is like a chemical reaction, a catalyst is needed, an energy that breaks the divisions between different essences and makes them one and the one, if that energetic spark of God is not given one remains dead, a son of wrath. Now when Christ comes into our life, when we are in relationship with him, that spark of life adds exactly the amount of energy it takes to create something different. And that is what is called being born again.

That's why Christ said to Nicodemus, a well developed Pharisee, a very intellectual man, very religious, Nicodemus came to Jesus Christ to talk to him about theology and this and that and to impress him with his knowledge and the Lord stopped him and said , "Wait a minute, if you are not born again, if someone is not born again they cannot enter the Kingdom of God." what the Bible calls being born again means precisely when God activates your spirit and converts you from a mere biological being to a truly spiritual being, activated by God and then your human, carnal, earthly nature acquires another dimension. You are born again.

And if that process does not take place, you remain as inert matter, purely existing in time and space, but you do not have the spirit of God activated within you because that is your true nature, to be guilty of anger.

Then he talks about how we were prisoners by nature of wrath the same as the others, but look at verse 4, "but God who is rich in mercy, in grace, for his great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in sins gave life together with Christ. By grace you are saved." Hallelujah!

Funny. We did not deserve. We were involved in our sins, dead in our sins, children of wrath, but God extended his mercy to us and devised a salvation plan called the Gospel, the good news. So, this idea of undeserved grace is inseparable, it cannot be separated from this act of salvation.

And I'm sharing with you here a little bit of theology but I'm coming to an end that's very practical. What is grace? Grace, as some say, means God's love in action for men and women who did not deserve that love. God extended his life to us sinners who could not lift a single finger to save ourselves. Thank you means that God sent his only son to descend into hell from the cross so that we guilty ones could receive reconciliation with God and have dialogue with the things of the spirit.

What does Romans chapter 3, verses 22 to 24 tell us? It says, "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe in him, because there is no difference because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is Christ Jesus." .”

In other words, another important text is that which tells us that God's grace becomes real in us through an instrument called Christ Jesus. That's important to add another capability to this process. God loves us, God redeems us even though we do not deserve it, that constitutes an act of grace and God does it through his Son Jesus Christ. And so here he talks about faith, about us believing in that Lord Jesus Christ that God sent for us.

The grace of God is activated in a man, in a woman when we receive Jesus and personalize him as our savior, when we write our name at the bottom of that page that writes the Gospel narrative, when we appropriate that act of God's grace giving his Son Jesus Christ, then this becomes a reality in our lives.

And there are many texts that we can use to continue developing, for example Ephesians, chapter 1, verse 7. I just want to set something up here right now before going to what really interests me. He says speaking of Jesus Christ:

"In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace in Christ Jesus, which he has abounded for us in all wisdom and understanding."

And what about Romans 5:17, “For if by one man's transgression death reigned much more those who receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through one, Jesus Christ.”

Here the Apostle Paul is talking about Adam and Jesus Christ. When that first man, that first human generation sinned in the Garden of Eden and violated God's commandment, that unleashed a series of negative consequences in the cosmos, in the human economy. Adam's sin tore away that delicate veil of perfect holiness in which God created the universe, an element of pollution entered into the perfect universe that God had created. And that had ramifications for all the earth that is still with us. In other words, when Adam and Eve sinned and violated God's law, there were terrible consequences. But what does it say? That the second Adam, which is Christ Jesus, through his act as well, because Adam sinned by an act that was a violation of God's law, Jesus by the act of mounting the cross, dying for our sins, neutralized that fall offense.

And now all those who accept this act of grace of Jesus Christ can receive salvation and eternal life. So Adam's act brought some degree of evil into the world, but Jesus' act covered and surpassed Adam's offense. So in Christ Jesus we have a much bigger, more extensive blessing. And I believe that we also have a greater obligation then to serve the Lord more, in every way, to be more faithful to the Lord because that act of Jesus was a totally marvelous act without precedent and with extraordinary consequences.

So we have this idea that Christ makes that grace of God possible and we, upon receiving that act of Jesus, then become beneficiaries of what Christ did on the cross of Calvary through the grace of God.

Now, my main desire this afternoon, brothers, is not to give you a lesson in Christian theology, that is very good, what I want is to establish the foundation for something that is more important to me, and I think that for you it seems very more practical and more valuable. This is the application part of the sermon.

What I mean is that God calls us to live in a way similar to the way Christ lived. God calls us to behave in the world with that same conduct of grace and mercy for those who do not deserve grace or mercy. God calls us to express that same generous, compassionate heart that God revealed through the cross of Calvary and the story of Holy Week and resurrection Sunday.

In other words, what I want to put in their minds and in mine is that Holy Week is not simply a historical event that we remember, but rather represents a lifestyle that we have to embrace. As God is merciful we also have to be merciful. As God is a God of grace we also have to have grace towards others, because this is the essence of the Gospel.

Do you know what makes the Gospel distinctive, Christianity? Not only in my opinion, but in the opinion of many people wiser and more learned than me, the hallmark of Christianity is that which is at the heart of the Gospel message which is grace, mercy, love. I believe that when one compares all the other religions in the world, of course they are exalted religions and worthy of respect, but I believe that this element of grace and goodness and love towards the enemy, towards the person that does not deserve favor, is at the very heart of the Gospel, giving others what they do not deserve and not giving them what they deserve.

This is the essence of the Gospel narrative. And I say this with a lot of respect, because when I talk about other religions I want you to know that I speak in a very respectful way, but honestly, today for example there is a lot of controversy about Islam, Islamism, the Muslim world and there is a debate about if Islam is a religion of hate and violence or it is not, etc. and when I compare, out of nine with all the respect that Islamism deserves, and I examine the texts of the Koran and I examine the texts at least of the New Testament, although I am going to show you that this is on every page of scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, it is clear that in the Christian narrative there is an inevitable content that cannot be ignored and that one continually stumbles upon when one examines the pages of scripture, of a call for love, mercy, grace , forgiveness, kindness.

This is the essence. When you ask someone about Jesus and his teachings, many people, even those who don't know the Bible, what will they mention? The Sermon on the Mount. Do you know that the Sermon on the Mount has gone from being a merely Christian text to being one of the great cultural legacies of all humanity? Many people, even atheists, know about the Sermon on the Mount. And what is in the Sermon on the Mount? Those words that I read at the beginning of our sermon about loving the enemy, blessing the one who curses you, doing good to those who want to hurt you.

And Christ himself exemplified it. What were one of his last words on the cross? Father, forgive them because they dont know what they are doing. He reached out to those who were crucifying him and mocking him and found an excuse for God to forgive them. He said, is that Lord, they are ignorant. He also extended his grace to that criminal next to him who said, “hey, remember me when you're in your kingdom.” Perhaps he didn't even know who Jesus was but he knew that he was a special man, something was there and that man had power, that being had power to get him into that place where he wanted to be after death. And the Lord did not begin to demand a number of things from him, but he assigned grace to him, he ministered to him.

What an interesting thing. On the cross he blessed a man and included him in God's saving plan. Funny. And not only that, but one of the most moving things is that the Lord is crucified there and one cannot imagine what the cross was, such a terrible method of torture, and there he sees his mother Mary, and the disciple he he loved Juan very much, and he worries about what will happen to his mom when he dies, and to a woman probably a little older, and he says to Juan, “Juan, treat her like you would your mom,” and to Maria he says, “treat him as if he were your son.” He said, "Mother, behold your son, son, behold your mother." And from that moment he says that Maria lived in Juan's house.

Look at the Lord worrying about your mom's retirement plan while she's there on the cross, crucified. Do you think that if you are there being tortured you are going to think of similar things? But it is that Christ overflowed with grace, his person is grace. When the woman with the issue of blood touches him without him noticing from behind to steal the Lord's blessing, the Lord doesn't even notice, he is doing his thing, talking to the crowd, when she touches him, she says thank you came out of him and she was instantly healed. And when the Lord felt that discharge of life come out of him and healing, he said, "'Who touched me?" and the disciples said, “Lord, but who touched you if you are surrounded by a crowd? They are all elbowing you, they are pushing against you.” He says, "someone has touched me because virtue has come out of me, grace has come out of me."

It is that the Lord was like those dynamos that some see in Sommverville when I travel there is a place that is closed with protective meshes because there is an electricity station there. If you get in there and touch one of those things, you are electrocuted and completely charred, because they have energy, they are energy itself. If you stick to them your nature is that.

The nature of Christ is grace and virtue. If you stick to it, you touch it, make contact with it, virtue comes out of it, mercy, love, blessing, and that is the essence of the Gospel. The fact that Christ enters the world by an act of grace and leaves the world with an act of grace. And that grace God tells us, now I want you to extend it to others too because that is the very essence.

There are people who would say, well yes, that is true, that is in the New Testament but in the Old Testament it is a text of hate and genocide and war and there are some very difficult texts. Sometimes we want to divide the revelation of God and it is as if the Lord had his period of adolescence in the Old Testament and then in the New Testament he already repented of the mistakes of his youth and now he is more sober, more loving, more merciful through Christ Jesus. No. The entire narrative of the Bible is a narrative, you continually stumble into acts of grace.

Think of Genesis chapter 3, I think verse 21, when Adam and Eve sin and the Lord is saying to them, “Look, you have made a serious mistake and there are consequences, I had told you so. Now you have damaged things." But the Lord is already thinking about the redemption and salvation of humanity. And when Adam and Eve participate in that act that he had told them, do not eat from that tree, I think that tree was something symbolic, his eyes open. Until then they were like innocents.

How did that happen? don't ask me. The human mind is incredibly marvelous and multidimensional and we have seen many times that when I have talked about perspective, how sometimes one can be in a state and one wonders... how many have been driving– Maybe because I already I have a few years on me – but you are driving and at the moment you have like a microsecond before you are thinking, where am I? Yes or no? That happens to anyone. But it's like a microsecond and then the world kind of snaps back together and you're like, oh, I'm in Sommerville, in Union Square, and I'd better put my hand on the guide again. It's an instant and then you say, wow, that's weird, how did I feel at that moment?

The mind is wonderful. Adam and Eve were like this, I think, before they sinned, they looked at each other, naked, naked, as the Dominicans say. And for them it was very cool, very good, all good. Adam looked at Eve, Eve at Adam and both were happy. At the moment when they ingest this substance that helps to discern good and evil, I think it is like the critical reason. It is interesting what they... is the critical man, the rational man, reason becomes an obstacle to have intimacy with God.

That is why many times Christ says, whoever does not become like a child cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Because Adam and Eve when they were like children looked and were perfectly happy and had a perfect relationship with God, when their mind opens and they develop the ability to discern different states, suddenly they realize, wow, Adam is not so pretty as I thought. And they start to feel uncomfortable with each other.

But you know what God does? He becomes a clothing designer. The first clothing designer is God. Because it says that God made tunics for both of them to cover them. Look, God is angry with them, he is seeing that they have damaged the party and now he is going to have to fix this mess that they have gotten him into, and yet he is thinking about his comfort and his psychological comfort. I believe that this was a symbolic act of the God who cares about us, a God of grace, a God of mercy, a God of goodness, he wanted his creature...

It's like when a child breaks a glass and spills the juice on that rug you just bought and while you're angry with him, but he got a little splinter in his finger and you're worried about getting the splinter out while you're thinking, Now how am I going to fix this mess that this boy has made here.

God is a God of grace. At the very dawn of humanity God is showing his mercy, his grace, his forgiveness and is saying to the woman, "yes, the serpent bit you on the heel but you are going to trample it on the head through Jesus Christ." when he comes." He was already thinking about the redemption that was to come through the fruit of the woman.

And you remember in the Old Testament about 3, 4 Sundays ago I preached about Elisha and the Syrians when the Syrians come to capture Elisha and take him captive and God puts them in another of those trances that I'm talking about. And Elisha tells them, "Come with me, I'm going to take you to where you are looking." They're like, okay, thanks, here we go. and he takes them and puts them in the very heart of Israel, Samaria, and when they wake up from their trance they are surrounded by the army of Israel.

And what does the king of Israel tell him? Again, this is the carnal man, the king of Israel represents the man who does not live by grace but by revenge. He asks Eliseo, "Dad, what do you want us to do, do we kill them?" and Elisha says, “No, man, how are you going to do that? How are you going to take people that God has delivered into your hands and are you going to kill them? No, we are going to give them food, we are going to make them a sancocho and have them eat here and we are going to send them back home.” Funny. See, what the unredeemed man wants is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, I am going to exterminate my enemy, I am going to kill him, I am going to destroy him. But the heart of God is, no, feed them.

It reminds me of the words of Pablo, if someone wants your evil, feed him, give him drink because embers of fire will heap on his head. Do not pay evil with evil but bless because with that you will make them more inmates of God's justice. Don't seek your own revenge.

So we see again and again, brethren, that at the heart of scripture is this concept of grace, mercy, and goodness. That's all over the Bible. And that idea of Elisha extending grace to the Syrians reminds us, brothers, once again of the essence of my sermon and that is that we too have to be a people of grace and mercy. Congregation León de Judá that is what I want to leave embodied in your heart and in your spirit this morning.

We have to be a people of mercy and grace. And one of the things that grace does is it goes against biological nature and gives love and care and attention to those who shouldn't expect it from us. The Lord says in Luke, the text I read, in verse 32, "because if you love those who love you, what merit do you have."

You know that the word translated merit is the same word in the original Greek, coiné, in which the New Testament was written, it is the same word charis which is grace. So, the Lord says, but if you love those who already love you, what grace are you exercising? Because grace is when you extend yourself beyond what is normal, common and easy to do.

What is the easiest? That if someone loves you, you love them back. But there is nothing extraordinary about that, that is what one normally does in life. If you do good to those who do you good, what grace are you using? Because also sinners, those who do not know God do the same. And if you lend to someone that you know is going to pay you back and with a little interest, what's funny about that? The funny thing is when they come before you and say, "Look, I need $100.00 to pay the rent," and you look at your bank account and you say, "Well, okay, in the name of the Lord I'm going to give it to you, ” and extend your hand of mercy. That is grace.

Grace is when you invite the least popular person in school and sit down to eat with them or call them on the phone or make them a friend, even though they are not a person who can necessarily be a good conversationalist or a friend that brings a lot of interest to your life. Grace is when you give respect to that teacher who is clumsy in his relations with the students and doesn't know how to be funny with them, and you give him respect.

One of the people who blessed me the most in my life, more years ago than I even dare to say, I was in a school in New York and there was a teacher who was very effeminate and the boys laughed at him. him, but he was a very educated man, a graduate of Yale University, he taught French and a man very given to Greek culture and all this kind of thing, but he was a man with very effeminate gestures and manners and the boys laughed of him and ridiculed him without respect. I always, even at that age, 16, 17 years old, felt that this man had to be given respect and treated with his rank as a teacher. And so I always treated him with a lot of respect and I earned it. That has happened throughout life when you live in a posture of grace, God blesses you.

So, at that time I was in a process of changes in my life and I had gone to this high school because it was a school focused on science and mathematics and later I realized that I was not so interested in focusing my life on science and mathematics. mathematics and that I was very interested in religion, philosophy, art, literature, and this man one day in a meeting that I had with him, we had a conversation and I told him about my frustration that I was in this school, I had taken an exam to go to it, I had prepared myself and once I was there it was not what I wanted and I was frustrated. And he told me, "Don't worry, look, I know a school where I think you would fit in very well, and I want to help you get into it."

And so this man was in charge of looking for information about that school and he helped me fill out the paperwork. He even paid for my trip, once they invited me, I had applied to that school, a very exclusive boarding school in northern Massachusetts, I didn't even know that world of high schools existed here in the United States, tremendously privileged places where only the very rich could go.

And he took that cause to heart, if you will, and helped me through the whole process including writing a recommendation for myself and to the grace and glory of the Lord I was able to get into that school at age 17, Phillips Academy, a school that is very exclusive, and that changed my life, it changed my academic trajectory, because from there the Lord helped me to go to another university and something else. But that was a very fertile time in my personal and intellectual life, and this man despised by these students was the instrument that God used. But I clearly see that it was because I had seen the value in him beyond his gesture and his social awkwardness, and God told me, you know what? I will bless you for that.

And brethren, that's grace in action. And so many times I have seen through the years that grace is what defends and is what allows this world to work. Do you know why this world is stuck right now like the United States is? It is like a machine that cannot go forward or backward. Because everyone is fighting for my rights and what I require. We live in a totally sterile world because it is a world of rights where all people fight for their rights and the world cannot function solely on the basis of rights. There has to be a time when someone puts their right aside so that society enters another plane of operation.

It's like marriage. How many times does one advise couples and you listen to one and the other, and when you listen to each part, each one is right. There are times when you sit in the room – and Meche who does counselling, we can say the same thing – when you listen to the isolated argument of each one, each one is right. Sometimes I have had to pray, Father, what am I going to say? help me, give me supernatural wisdom. And I have seen time and time again that in a marriage unless one of the partners does not step forward with grace and mercy, and stop demanding their right and enter into a moment of self-sacrifice, there is not going to be healing. but we are going to continue locked each one demanding what is his right. And marriage is something that requires that there be death for there to be life. Each one has to die in something so that there is life for the couple. Someone has to deliver something, a little bit of something. It has to be, you give, I give, and someone has to be the first.

And in the church it is the same. In the church how much division there is in the congregations at times. The churches, and we are blaming the poor devil, but we ourselves are always demanding our rights. And if the pastor passed me by and didn't greet me, well, I already scratched it out of my book, I took it out of my book. If I got sick and they didn't visit that church anymore, I don't want to go back to it. If I wanted to play the piano and they wouldn't let me, forget that this church is already a church for the elite only.

If someone sings out of tune behind me I give them an ugly look and turn away because they are violating my space. You see that this is what is behind everything in the world. All the atrocities in the world are because of that 'my right' mentality Abortion says, no, that's the woman's real estate, her body is a piece of territory and no one can enter it, including the life that is inside of her is subject to her right and she can take that life and in her last week of life if she wants to cut it up and scrape it, it's okay because that's her right.

And so all of humanity is… right now white people are fighting for their rights. The working class, their rights; the African American, his rights; the Latino, his rights. Brothers, the world cannot function under that principle of law, because the world cannot accommodate all the rights of each individual, of each group.

Do you know what changes the world? an attitude of grace, mercy, love and forgiveness and generosity. The most powerful force in the universe is grace, mercy and love. Grace is like a stone that you give him in the face of the devil when you put aside your right, your anger and you give in so that another can have a moment of respite, and you say, "Lord, I give you this moment of respite." silence to you, do what you want.”

Look, at that moment the very configuration of the universe changes. When a man or a woman puts aside his right for others to be and exercises an act of generosity, he is joining hands with the Lord of lords and king of kings himself because he did that, he put aside his rights.

Philippians 2, says, that there be in us the same feeling that there was in Christ Jesus who, being equal to God, did not take being equal to God as something to cling to but emptied himself and took the form of man, and not of any man but a servant and became obedient and obedient to the cross.”

And you see the same thing there, that God who gave himself for you, I didn't say, well, my right is to stay up there in heaven, glorious and divine as I am. He didn't cling to it but put it aside and plunged into the reality of time and space. He became a humble, fragile baby, he experienced all the sensations and tendencies and temptations that we experience so that he could become a representative of humanity and win liberation and salvation for each one of us.

But look how interesting, when one lives like this, I said that to a young woman this week with whom I met, I told her, look, live according to grace and be an instrument of God's grace in this world because this world needs instruments of grace like never before and become a channel of God's grace here in the world, so that wherever you go you will be a heavenly station that God can use to bless those around you. Live like this. Be generous with your money, with your knowledge, with your time. Bless, bless, bless and give everything you can around you in your life because that is something revolutionary.

And what I was saying to her is that if one lives like this then God's blessing falls on one's life and one is blessed oneself and lifted up. Because that was what happened to Jesus Christ, when he gave himself on the cross of Calvary, when he gave up his perfect deity and became a man, says the Bible, "for which God raised him up to the highest and gave him He gave a name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of what is in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.”

That was what happened to Christ Jesus. I have learned that grace is the most powerful weapon that exists in the universe to make us happy and to provide us with everything we need in life. Grace, I say, is the judo of God, it is what takes the strength of the opponent and turns it against him.

When a man or a woman remains silent in the face of an offense, when a wife or a husband remits for a moment to the mercy of God and does not attack because they are being attacked or because they are upset or whatever, when a person gives up a position in the church so that another can develop his gift, when someone lowers his head because they took away a position, because the church needed that instead of swearing and leaving the church throwing rays and saying all bad things about the congregation, and he says , Lord, I refer to you. You know that this is constituted, brothers, in something very powerful and the person who learns to live like this will always be happy, will sleep well, will not have to spend a lot of money on doctors and psychiatrists, will enjoy better health, ulcers will decrease greatly in a community that exercises grace, I assure you. God's blessing will flow.

So, my brothers, I ask you and I ask myself, I deserve to apply this sermon to myself continuously, let us be a people of grace, mercy and love. And let's give generously, I know that what I asked this congregation a few months ago was something very hard and very difficult for us to deliver that 9 o'clock service so that we could reach another sector of the city of Boston, the Anglo sector. speaking, and I was telling you, God has called us to be more than a Latino church. God has put us to build all these buildings and has given us all these financial resources that we have enjoyed but it is not for us to hoard them and put our arm around here. Nobody touches us except if we are Latino and speak Spanish, then yes.

I know that many people will have wondered, well, gosh, we have given so much money, we have done this and that and now they are taking this service away from us to give it to the gringos, I am playing. But what I want to tell you, brethren, is that when one empties oneself as Christ emptied Himself for a higher ideal, God's blessing falls like torrential rains on a church. That is the grace of God.

I encourage you to live that way in your life. Stop counting the coins of your justice and your right and give, when the flesh wants to say, no, hold on, keep your pockets. Say, I'm going to show you something, and take it out and throw it in the air to challenge the devil and challenge the flesh. And bless and be generous and you're going to discover a source of power like no other in the universe and God is going to bless you and exalt you and lift you up. That is the story of Holy Week. That is the story of Easter Sunday. That Christ became poor and God then constituted him and raised him from death, broke the inertia of death and the grave and exalted him and gave him a name above all names.

Would you like to live that life of victory like this? Be a man, a woman of grace, love and mercy. Stand up for a moment. We are going to receive this call. I am the first to have to apply that to myself. Every time I drive down Route 93, Lord, I believe that God created the Boston Tunnel for me just to sanctify me, to purify me. But it is so, brothers, we need to tell ourselves this story over and over again.

Ask God right now to make you a man, a woman of grace and live in grace. Fill yourself with the grace of God, emptied yourself, make yourself poor so that others may be rich, make yourself weak so that others may be strong, forgive and waste your cash that you have, and trust that if you do it in the name of Jesus and for his glory, you will lack nothing, because the Lord will make you a conduit of his wealth here on earth and of his goodness.

God only entrusts his power to those who have first learned to live gracefully, remember that. Father we receive your word. The Lion of Judah asks you to make us a congregation of grace, mercy, goodness, a congregation that is hospitable, a congregation of good works, a congregation of good reputation, a generous congregation, a congregation that gives and does good without look at who, a congregation of forgiveness, kindness, love, patience with each other, Lord, begins with me. Do that work in us, we want to be a people of grace, goodness and mercy. We want these weeks of meditation on the passion to be more than a religious act, to be a reality in our lives, that we reinforce the call of the Gospel to be men and women of goodness, grace and mercy.

Right now we rebuke carnality, biology and ascend to another principle which is the principle of divinity, the principle of eternity, the principle of love. Help us to live like this, Lord. That is our ethics, our desire, be glorified in our life in the style of Jesus. We thank you Lord, in your name we ask these things. Amen and amen.