Ready or Not: No One Misses Out
Hebrews 12:12-15
New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor newest book, How to Start, grew out of a commencement address she gave at Columbia University in 2025.[i] Commencement addresses seem like a cruel invitation these days. It used to be that a speaker could stand up, say, “Follow your dreams,” everyone would clap, the graduates would throw their hats in the air, and parents would spend the next hour trying to find their child in a crowd of identical gowns.
But today, “follow your dreams” feels thin against the heaviness of the world.
Kantor realized that graduates were asking something deeper than, “How do we become successful?” They were asking, “When the world feels broken, how do we start?”
The question is not reserved for graduating classes. It is a question for the church. It is a question for Trinity as we begin a new season together after the departure of your beloved Pastor Grace. It is a question for all of us who have lived long enough to know that beginnings are rarely as clean as district trainings make them look.
A new beginning sounds exciting until you realize it can mean change. And change, as we all know, is one of those things church people say they love right up until someone rearranges the furniture in the pastor’s office. New beginnings seem great until they touch the bulletin, the meeting schedule, or the sacred and apostolic way we have always done things.
So maybe the question is not only, “How do we start?” Maybe the better question is, “What starts us?”
What gives the Church strength? What prevents us from turning inward and guarding our preferences, while calling it faithfulness?
The writer of Hebrews gives us the answer, “lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet.”[ii]
Lift your hands. Strengthen your knees. Make your path straight. In other words, get ready. Pay attention. Do not collapse. Do not drift. Do not make the path more difficult for the person coming behind you.
And, why should[iii] we do these things? Why should we “Strive for peace with everyone” and for holiness?
So that, Hebrews says, “that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.”[iv]
That is the line that hits me in the deepest part of my being.
“See to it that no one misses out on the grace of God.”[v]
Not, “See to it that everyone admires you as a pastor.” Though admiration does sound nice.
Not, “See to it that the new pastor figures it[vi] out (whatever “it” is) while the congregation watches from a safe distance.”
No.
“See to it that no one misses out on the grace of God.”
That is the work.
The work of the church does not begin with the pastor’s personality (but don’t worry, I have a lot of personality).
The work of the church does not begin with a strategic plan (though, those can be helpful).
The work of the church does not begin with budgets or nostalgia.
The work of the church begins with grace.
And this is where I need tell you that the my ministry, theology, and preaching are rooted in the urgency of God’s grace.
Please, do not mishear me when I say “urgency.” I am not talking about panic or hustle.
The urgency of grace is first and foremost the urgency with which God pursues us.[vii] The grace of God is not waiting for you to become spiritually impressive. Grace is the Shepherd leaving the 99 in search of the one.[viii] It is the woman sweeping the house looking for a lost coin.[ix] It is the father running down the road toward the prodigal before the boy can begin his rehearsed apology.[x]
Grace is God in Jesus Christ coming into the mess of this world, all the way down into our fear and pride and dead ends, and saying, “You are mine.”
Grace has a face and wounds. Grace is Christ crucified and risen for us while we were still sinners.[xi]
But, there is more.
Once grace finds us, grace sends us. Once we have been encountered by the love of Christ, the church becomes a means of grace for the world. Not because we are impressive or have mastered holiness. The church becomes urgent because grace is urgent. Not frantic or gimmicky. Urgent because if Christ has come all the way to us, then we can not sit around while people wonder whether God has anything to say other than judgement, exclusion, and silence.
Hebrews says, “See to it that no one misses out on the grace of God.” That is not cotton-candy language. That is the marching orders of the church.
Kantor says meaningful work begins where craft and need meet. Hebrews gives the church a painfully direct answer. What is our craft? Grace. What does the world need? Grace. Not grace as religious decoration or denominational branding or as a vague niceness sprinkled over church programs.[xii] The world needs the grace of Jesus Christ: given freely, embodied faithfully, and offered urgently.
We all know that the world does not need another institution trying to manage it’s decline with better snacks and a redesigned logo. The world doest not need another place where insiders know the rules, while outsiders have to guess where to sit, when to stand, and who is allowed to touch the thermostat.
The world needs a church seized by the grace of Jesus Christ. A church where tired hands are lifted, weak knees are strengthened, crooked paths are made straight, and people who have been told they are too broken, too doubtful, too much, too little, too late, or too far gone discover that the grace of God has their name on it.
A mentor of mine, retired United Methodist Bishop and all-around church curmudgeon, Rev. Will Willimon[xiii] wrote that grace is more than a “innocuous pat on the head”[xiv] from Jesus saying, “I love you just the way you are; promise me that you will never ever. change.”
If we are not careful we can make grace sound like God is merely nice.
Sure God is nice, but God is more than nice and grace runs deeper than affirmation. Grace is not God shrugging off sin, suffering, loneliness, selfishness, fear, or death and saying, “Well, nobody’s perfect!”
Grace is Jesus himself, crucified, risen, and ascended. Grace is the Son of the Father who enters the far country of our sin and death, and takes hold of us there, and brings us home. Grace does not work around Good Friday. It goes straight through the cross. In Jesus Christ, God comes near enough to be rejected, wounded, killed, and raised for us.
And once Jesus speaks grace over you, everything begins to change.
The grace of God says that God loves right now, just as you are. Whether you like it or not.
But, grace does not leave us the way we are. Grace goes a step further because God is not content leaving you just as you are right now. Grace grace changes us from the inside out. Not because any of us are impressive or not a mess but because God has claimed you and refuses to let you go.
That is grace and there is urgency when Hebrews says, “See to it that no one misses out on the grace of God.”
Grace is not a decoration or religious blue ribbon we tie around our ministries. Nor is grace a word we invoke when we want to remind ourselves of our Methodist heritage.[xv] Grace is the whole thing, the heartbeat, the foundation. Grace is the only reason any of us are here.
That is the church I hope we will be together. Not because I have arrived with a secret plan in hand. Moses might have come down from the mountain carrying the Ten Commandments but the only thing I have carried this week was boxes. Moses brought the Law and I brought my family, a few opinions, and too many baseball illustrations. But I also carry with me a deep trust that Jesus is already at work here.
A new pastor does not bring Jesus to the church. At our best, pastors point to the Jesus who is already here. At our worst, we get in the way and call it leadership.
So my first word to you is not, “Here’s my agenda.”
My first word is “Grace.”
So, Trinity, here we are. A new beginning. A new season. A new pastor. And the same told song of the Gospel.
Thanks be to God, the Gospel does not need us to improve it. It only needs us to trust it, to receive it, and to give it away.
Jesus is on the move, pursing the lost, the weary, the doubtful, the wounded, the bored, the burned-out, the over-churched, the under-loved, and those ones who think they are too far gone.
Lift you drooping hands. Strengthen your knees. Make straight paths. Pursue peace. Pay attention to holiness. So that…no one misses out on the grace of God.
Amen.
[i] Jodi Kantor, “Class Day 2025 Keynote Address: Jodi Kantor CC’96,” Columbia College, May 20, 2025, https://www.college.columbia.edu/news/class-day-2025-keynote-address-jodi-kantor-cc96.
[ii] Hebrews 12:12-13
[iii] I try not to “should” on the congregation very often. The church has already had plenty of practice turning the gospel into a long list of religious obligations, expectations, improvements, and spiritual chores. The Law has its place: it tells the truth, exposes sin, and reveals how badly we need mercy. But the gospel does what the Law cannot do. The gospel frees us from the tyranny of all those “shoulds” by announcing what Christ has already done. Grace does not begin with “you should.” Grace begins with “Christ has.”
[iv] Hebrews 12:14-15
[v] This is a paraphrasing of Hebrews 12:15 that I have been working with since 2015. I use this paraphrasing frequently in preaching, teaching, and church leadership.
[vi] The best part of a new pastor “figuring it out,” so that there can be an infinite number of “its” to figure out along with an infinite number of “its that the congregation believes is the most important it.
[vii] We will see this urgency front and center next Sunday as we consider The Parable of the Sower. And spoiler alert, you are not the sower.
[viii] Matthew 18:12-14
[ix] Luke 15:8-10
[x] Luke 15:11-32
[xi] Romans 5:8
[xii] The church needs to unlearn this word. Community centers has programs for kids and seniors, and country clubs have programs for their members. The body of Christ is called to ministry, which means we are not offering services to consumers. We are participating in the reconciling work of Jesus Christ by becoming a means of grace for one another and for the world God so loves.
[xiii] Rev. Will Willimon has been more than a writer I quote. He has been a mentor and friend since 2012, when he first made the questionable decision to trust me to drive him around Alexandria. He was in town to speak at my church. The topic was, “Why the United Methodist Church is the worst denomination in modern Christianity.” Since then, he has been a frequent guest on my podcast, helped me navigate the United Methodist ordination process, baptized my daughter, and offered the kind of friendship that is equal parts encouragement, correction, and grace. Like most good mentors, he has shaped me not only by what he has taught me, but by the way he has trusted me, challenged me, and reminded me that the gospel is always more interesting than the church’s or any pastor’s attempts to manage it.
[xiv] Willimon, Will. God Turned Toward Us – The ABCS of Christian Faith. Abingdon Press. 2021. Pg. 57.
[xv]At our best, Wesleyans have given the church a particular grammar for speaking of grace as prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying, but grace does not belong to Methodism. Grace belongs to the gospel. The late Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon spent much of his ministry reminding the church that grace is not a reward for the spiritually competent or a supplement added after we have done our part. Grace is the reckless, unmanageable mercy of God in Jesus Christ, given freely to the dead, the lost, the guilty, and the undeserving. In other words, we may have a wonderful vocabulary for grace, but Methodists do not have license to domesticate it. For more on Capon’s theology of grace as the reckless and unmanageable mercy of God in Christ, see Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). The volume gathers his trilogy on the parables: The Parables of the Kingdom, The Parables of Grace, and The Parables of Judgment. I will be pulling from this book over the coming weeks as we continue through some of Jesus’ parables.
