Matt Chandler - The Scandal of Grace

If you have your Bibles, please grab them. I would love for you to turn to this chapter as we finish out the Book of Jonah in our time together today. I plan on walking through a couple of verses at a time, and it’s a one-point sermon. That doesn’t make it any shorter at all, and that’s okay. The first time I held Audrey in my arms—she’s my firstborn—I felt these two competing emotions, or at least I understood them as competing at the time. I felt an immense and new kind of love. It was not the love with which I loved my wife, nor the love with which I loved my parents or my friends. It was this new thing, and it was unbelievably powerful—almost overwhelming. Simultaneously, I felt an increase in my capacity for violence. I first felt it flare in me as I watched the nurse scrub her down after she came out of the womb. It just felt so unreasonable to me—like, you don’t have to scrub her that hard, and you don’t have to jam that thing up into her nose that way. I could feel it; I was about to fight this nurse in the delivery room. By the grace of God, I’d learned at least a little about my compulsions and tendencies at that moment and was able to rationalize that fighting the nurse holding your newborn daughter was probably not the way to go. Then, as I got to hold her and we brought her home, I still felt both of those emotions in really profound ways. I would often think I would trade everything God has put in my life happily for a vibrant prison ministry from the inside if anyone were to ever try to hurt or harm this little girl. I’m willing to trade it all in for a vibrant prison ministry from within. So when Audrey was about six months old, I was watching TV—that’s what you did before streaming services; you just watched, well, I don’t know what you call it anymore, shows. There was a news clip about Gary Ridgeway, better known as the Green River Killer. He is the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history; 49 young women were killed by Gary and hidden along the Green River. This segment was about his trial. In a plea deal with the state to take the death penalty off the table, he agreed to show these families—who never found their daughters—where those bodies were. He actually went from 48 to 49 at that time, and there are many theories suggesting there are many more. So, I was watching this, and please don’t judge—I feel judged right now. It’s not like you guys aren’t watching those murder documentaries that are everywhere. So, I’m watching this, and he gets fully convicted on 49 counts. The judge gives each family, not just each family member, ten minutes to look at Gary and give a victim’s impact statement. This is when the family stands up and says, «This is what you took from us.» So, I’m watching this with my little six-month-old Audrey in the other room, already primed to murder someone who made her cry. As I’m watching, these families expressed all the righteous rage you would expect, and I was certainly nodding along. I was there, amening them, thinking, I can’t share all of their statements because they’re not really church language. Right out of the gate, the first family was like, «I hope you rot in hell, you son of…» I’ll let you fill in that last blank for the sake of us being in church. I found in my heart an agreement with that family—I hope you do rot in hell, Gary Ridgeway. Then there were many more sentiments just like that, and I could agree with them; how dare you? Then there was another category of speeches where they expressed a great deal of sadness, saying, «Who let you decide to be God that you should reign over life and death?» I was resonating with that and feeling it deeply. What made me hate Gary Ridgeway even more was that the more venom the families poured on him, the harder his face got, the slacker his eyes became, and the grittier his teeth appeared. Then Bob Rule came up; his daughter was a 16-year-old who had been killed by Gary Ridgeway. I’m going to put his speech on the board: «Mr. Ridgeway, there are people here who hate you; I’m not one of them. I forgive you for what you’ve done. You made it difficult to live up to what I believe, and that is what God says to do, which is to forgive. He doesn’t say to forgive just certain people; He says forgive all, so you are forgiven.» The most fascinating thing happened to Gary Ridgeway as Bob said this to him. Bob just stared at him as he spoke those words, and this man—who had been sneering and responding rage for rage—began to soften. His face changed, his lips lost their hardness…