A World War II story. A French churchyard. And the most important thing I’ve learned about grace in a long time.
Three soldiers. Closest of friends. One of them didn’t make it home.
His two buddies carried his body to a beautiful French churchyard. They asked the priest for a proper burial inside the cemetery. The priest asked one question. Was he Catholic?
No.
The priest was sorry. The consecrated ground was reserved. Rules were rules. So the two men did what soldiers do — they made the best of a hard situation. They buried their friend just outside the fence. Came back the next morning to say goodbye.
The grave was inside the fence.
They found the priest. Asked him what happened. Did he get special permission? Did the church change its policy?
“They told me where I couldn’t bury the body,” the priest said. “Nobody ever told me I couldn’t move the fence.”
I’ve been sitting with that story all morning.
Because that’s what grace does. It doesn’t argue with the fence. It doesn’t petition the committee. It doesn’t wait for the rules to catch up to the love. It just quietly picks up the fence and moves it.
The father in Luke 15 didn’t wait for his son to reach the front door. He saw him at a distance — broken, rehearsing his speech, covered in pig smell — and he ran. He moved the fence before the boy got there.
Romans tells us the same thing from the other direction. Paul spends eleven chapters tearing down every fence human religion ever built. Jew and Gentile. Circumcised and uncircumcised. Law-keeper and law-breaker. All have sinned. All need the same grace. Same ground. Same cross. The fence is gone.
Every form of religious gatekeeping — every whispered judgment about who’s really in and who’s really out — runs straight into that French priest with a fence post in his hands.
I don’t know that soldier’s name. I don’t know what he believed. I don’t know what passed through his heart in his final hours. But I know a priest who decided that love had a longer reach than the rules.
And I know a Father who was already running.
That’s the gospel. Not a gate that opens for the right people. A fence that moves.
As founding Pastor of The Bridge Community Church and Executive Director of Mo Hodge Ministries, Mo resources Pastors and Leaders in the area of leadership development. He enables Pastors and leaders in the following areas: Developing Teams, Church Growth, Church Planting, Discipleship Multiplication, Nonprofit Organizational Management, Multi-site Church Development, Public Speaking, Capital Campaigns, and Sr. Pastor Succession. … Mo and his wife, Nancy, live in Anderson, IN with their children and grandchildren. Though retired, Mo is still active in ministry, preaching, teaching, and planting new churches wherever the Lord leads. You can follow him on LinkedIn or through his Newsletter.
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