A LIGHT AND EASY GRACE?

This sermon was preached on July 5, 2026, at Beechmont Presbyterian Church on Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30.

Cheap and Costly Grace

The word for today’s sermon is grace. This word is one of my favorites because it explains how God relates to creation. If I spend time trying to understand it fully, I will better understand the measure of gratitude that creation should feel toward God.

I remember working on a curriculum called Growing in Grace and Gratitude, and one of our biggest challenges was trying to explain grace to children. Our foundational paper said this about grace:

“God is the one who creates out of love, loves us even when we turn away from God and from God’s way in the world, works forgiveness for our sin, is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, and continues to uphold and sustain us through the power of the Holy Spirit. All of this is pure gift to us: we cannot earn it or pay it back.”

But that is a lot of words.

I believe the phrase we came up with was: Grace is a love bigger than you can imagine.

And it is true.

Grace is unearned love. It is receiving kindness when you might expect the opposite. It is bigger than us because it forgives mistakes and gives us hope for the future. And grace is a daily gift, because we need this love every day to help us become the best version of ourselves.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously speaks about cheap grace and costly grace. Cheap grace, he says, is grace without discipleship—forgiveness without repentance, faith without transformation, and religion without true surrender to Christ. It is the temptation to accept God’s mercy while resisting God’s call to change.

Costly grace, by contrast, is the grace that calls us to follow Jesus with our whole lives. It is costly because it requires sacrifice, repentance, and obedience. Yet it is grace because through it we discover true life in Christ.

Bonhoeffer reminds us that grace is free, but it is not cheap. It cost God the life of God’s Son, and it calls us to respond with wholehearted devotion.

So we have heard that grace is love and that grace can be cheap or costly… but can it also be light and easy?

When Grace is Heavy

These past Sundays we have heard Jesus speaking to his disciples about their call. He has been deeply honest. He has said they will be like sheep amid wolves. He has told them they will be rejected and persecuted, that even families might face division. He has shared that discipleship demands supreme allegiance to Christ above earthly relationships and that they must take up their own crosses, a symbol of torture and shame, to follow him.

This all connects strongly to Bonhoeffer’s idea of costly grace: following Jesus is costly because it demands everything, but it is grace because through that surrender we receive life with Christ.

Grace, then, can seem like a heavy burden.

And when we move to Matthew 11, that burden does not seem to ease.

Jesus speaks these words knowing that John is in prison. He begins with a rhetorical question: “To what will I compare this generation?”

Then he compares them to children in the marketplace—children who refuse to participate. Joyful music? They refuse to dance. Funeral songs? They refuse to mourn.

This is a fickle and temperamental generation. (Esta es una generación voluble y temperamental)

They dismiss John because he is too austere: “He has a demon.”

They dismiss Jesus because he is too open and relational: “A glutton and a drunkard.”

So the issue is not style. The issue is not method. The issue is that they are unwilling to receive what God is doing.

And I think we still struggle with this.

Sometimes we want faith to fit neatly inside our preferences. We want God to speak in ways that make us comfortable. We want grace to be available for the people we think deserve it. We want church to welcome people like us—but not always people who challenge us.

And when that happens, grace becomes heavy.

We make grace legalistic.

We turn grace into rules, boundaries, exclusions, and tests.

Dan Gonzalez, in his commentary on this passage, reminds us that legalistic systems place crushing burdens on people. They create rigid expectations. They thrive on public judgment. They instill fear of failure.

And then grace stops functioning like grace and it starts functioning like punishment.

Like control.

Like exclusion.

It stops being love and becomes something very different.

But grace disrupts expectations. Grace often comes in unexpected forms. And when we try to control grace, we miss the very gift God is offering. Grace does not dance to our flutes. It does not depend on our mood.

When Grace is Light and Easy

So when does grace become light?

And notice: I am not saying light means cheap.

Following Jesus is still costly. Grace is still free, but a true response of gratitude calls us to follow Jesus with our whole lives. That response still involves sacrifice, repentance, and obedience.

But Jesus says something astonishing: “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Dan Gonzalez reminds us that following Jesus is costly because it demands everything—yet the burden Jesus gives is lighter than the burden of legalism, performance, self-protection, and resistance.

Light and easy grace is grace given not just to one person, but to a community.

Light and easy grace carries burdens together.

Light and easy grace is defined by love, not restriction.

Light and easy grace offers rest for our souls instead of guilt and judgment.

That is how I hear Jesus today.

His yoke is easy and his burden is light because he does not carry it alone. His ministry is rooted in community, and God’s love is his support, assurance, and strength.

And we need to learn from him.

Instead of creating more restrictions, we need to live in gratitude.

Instead of building walls, we need to construct bridges.

Instead of controlling grace, we need to receive it—and share it.

Then grace becomes light and easy.

And gratitude becomes not obligation, but celebration.

A celebration of wellness.

A celebration of belonging.

A celebration of love.

We Love Because God First Loved Us

As I said at the beginning, grace is one of my favorite words.

It reminds me that God loves me.

It reminds me that I am not alone.

It reminds me that things do not depend only on me, because there is a Wisdom greater than mine guiding the way.

And it keeps calling me back to gratitude.

I have received grace, and I am grateful.

We have received grace, and we are grateful.

Baptism reminds me of grace and gratitude. So I want to share one of my favorite baptismal liturgies and invite you to say it with me as an affirmation of our belief that God’s grace is loving, costly, and—yes—light and easy when we trust in God’s promise to us:

For you, little one,

the Spirit of God moved over the waters at creation

and the Lord God made covenants with his people.

It was for you that the Word of God became flesh

and lived among us, full of grace and truth.

For you, Jesus Christ suffered death,

crying out at the end, “It is finished!”

For you Christ triumphed over death,

rose in newness of life,

and ascended to rule over all.

All of this was done for you, little one,

though you do not know any of this yet.

But we will continue to tell you this good news

until it becomes your own.

And so the promise of the gospel is fulfilled:

“We love because God first loved us.”