2339AFC092923 – DON’T FORGET NEMO
Read it online here, please. And please – when you visit there – use one of the social media links at the bottom of the page to share this post. Thank you! And remember, we now have a READER VIEW available, so share this link or this email often. Do you know someone who enjoys Bible study, or who might like to read this? Ask them to email us or to subscribe on our blog-site.
Ezekiel 18:27-28 – 27 Again, when the wicked turn away from the wickedness they have committed and do what is lawful and right, they shall save their life. 28 Because they considered and turned away from all the transgressions that they had committed, they shall surely live; they shall not die.
Psalm 25:6-7 –
6 Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love,
for they have been from of old.*
7 Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
according to your steadfast love remember me,
for your goodness’ sake, O Lord!
Philippians 2:3-5 – 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus
Matthew 21:28-31 a – 28 “What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ 29 He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. 30 The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. 31 Which of the two did the will of his father?”
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy 
Spirit be with all of you. You remember these guys, right? Nemo and his dad, Marlin and mom, Coral? Coral and her eggs are destroyed near the beginning of the movie, but one egg apparently survives and grows up to become Nemo. We should begin by telling why this post title is so strange. What’s Nemo got to do with anything? Let’s start with his name.
Nemo is a Latin word meaning “nobody.” In Homer’s Odyssey, when Ulysses blinds the Cyclops, the Cyclops asks him: “Who are you?” Ulysses replies (in the Latin translation): “Nemo.” When the Cyclops was later asked by his father Neptune: “Who did this to you?” he answers “Nobody did it.” In Greek, the name Nemo is ανώνυμος → anonymous I or no one. another word with the name connotation is Κανένας ka-‘ne-nas → nobody, no one and in “not any person.” Another odd “co-inkidink” is that Nemo lives in an anemone as in a-NEMO-ne. Get it? So, the movie is about a fish named Nobody who gets lost trying gather knowledge and he gets caught by a human and hustled off to Sydney Australia. His dad teams up with a ditzy Pacific regal blue tang name Dory and together they eventually locate Nemo. In just about 100 minutes we go through all sorts of internal and external conflicts, experience loss and gain, grab a little comedy along the way, and end up dismissing the whole thing as just another kids fable. Why, then, are we going to think about Nemo as we get into this message? Good question, Camper!
Where does Nemo’s adventure happen? In an OCEAN. Where does our adventure of Life happen? In an OCEAN OF GRACE (↔ Click Link). You can follow that link and find some additional insights. The Express Stop Summary for that is this: It is the 9th installment in the Series on Virtue and Sin. There we recount how we can open our hearts to let in Jesus or a demon. We spoke of “Grace upon Grace,” and showed that does not mean Graces piled on top of each other, but rather Great Grace exchanged for Greater Grace. When the inner furnishings of our hearts are in good order and clean, there is no place for the demon to take a place there. To ensure our hearts are ready for Jesus we recall Colossians 1:19-20 – 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. Jesus is the Fullness of God’s Immeasurable Grace, so when we open the door of our hearts (remember last week?), we get the WHOLENESS OF God! We live out our lives in an ocean of Grace. You may recall a lovely story by Steve Brown at KeyLife Ministries about a fish who swam in a Great Ocean but was afraid he would fall into the Great Abyss. He chose to try to hold his tail in his mouth so he couldn’t fall, but he wasn’t flexible enough to catch it. He started having a panic attack because of this and then a BIG VOICE (it was The Ocean) said, “What are you doing?”
“Oh,” said the fish, “I’m terrified of falling into the deep dark abyss, and I’m trying to catch hold of my tail in my mouth to hold myself up.”
So the ocean said, “Well, you’ve been trying that for a long time now, and still you have not fallen down. How come?”
“Oh, of course, I haven’t fallen down yet,” said the fish, “because … Well, because I’m swimming!
“Well,” came the reply, “I am the Great Ocean where you swim, and I have given all of myself to you in which to swim, and I support you all the time you swim, but here you are, instead of exploring the length, breath, depth and height of my expanse, you have been wasting your time pursuing you own end.”
We might be tempted to think , “Silly fishy! Do what God created you to do.” Hmmm. Sounds like good advice for us, too, yes? The love of God is like the ocean, you can see its beginnings but not its end. The Grace of God is the Great Ocean of His Love. He is the source of the Ocean of Grace. When you acknowledge Him, it is as if you are submersed in a vast ocean being fed by a fountain of purest water. You are standing in that fountain in the center of the center of the Crystal Sea drinking from a crystal cup filled to overflowing with God’s Endless Grace and Love, and this is available to every human soul alive today in Heaven and on Earth who chooses to Live in the Grace of God . This is “so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.” ( See 1 Peter 4:7-11 And that’s the TRUTH!
Now, that Great Ocean of Grace is what we might recall is “Prevenient Grace.” It is the Grace of Hope. Godly Hope is the combination of desire (it’s what we want) and expectation – (we believe we will receive it). Prevenient Grace is Grace that’s given to all earthlings without any effort or contribution on their part; it’s like “standard equipment.” It means Salvation cannot be credited to believers’ enterprise because all they did was to accept what God had already provided – a Great Ocean of Grace. A fish gotta swim, and a sea’s the place for it. We can’t pay for the Great Ocean of Grace any more than we can pay for our own Salvation. Both of these are God’s Gifts, the Prevenient Gift of that Ocean of Grace is essentially irresistible if we are still alive. Salvation, on the other hand, is resistible which means that anyone can choose whatever is less than that. We must choose someone or something.
Everybody can choose a Life in Christ, but, not everyone will. We have an ocean of Grace surrounding and filling us. Oh! And now I know why I got up in the middle of the night a few years ago and wrote down this! “I have immersed my life in His Heart so that my heart can be entirely filled with Him.” Scroll up and look at that passage from Colossians. “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell …” As we’ve said, Jesus is the Fullness of God’s Immeasurable Grace, so when we open the door of our hearts, we get the WHOLENESS OF God! Therefore we are reconciled with him as part of “all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” Now that will change the interiors of our hearts by placing Grace upon Grace!
In the past when I read that phrase, I thought it meant one grace piled on another grace – like a wall made of bricks – a fortress of Grace built with succeeding layers of God’s gifts. Then I actually looked at the language behind that verse and discovered I had the wrong idea. The Greek word meaning “upon” is the preposition ἐπί (epi) {ep-ee’}, but this verse says in Greek χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος. John did not say χάριν ἐπὶ χάριτι; he said χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος. That word in bold letters, ἀντὶ, is another familiar preposition anti – (anti) {an-tee’}. That word means “instead of; for; in place of; corresponding to.” What difference does that make, after all, if grace is given in exchange for grace rather than on top of grace? How about if it signifies Grace that serves is the Grace of God and that Grace is within us? All of us already have Prevenient Grace, so when we take in the Great Graces of God we experience Sanctifying Grace, Grace that makes our souls holy and makes us the Children of God. God Gifts us with additional Graces – called “actual” Graces – actual here meaning a Grace that enables us to act in cooperation with God’s redemptive actions. These are like little nudges, or hints, or stirring events with which God blesses us. We can sure then say, “Your Grace Is Sufficient For Me.” (↔ Music Link)
Perhaps we could think of them as gentle (or heavy!) currents in that Great Ocean of Grace that move us toward Home. (Or maybe like a great migration of really cool sea turtles?) In addition to the terminologies of Prevenient and Actual Grace we also have Justifying Grace which is the forgiveness of our sins through Baptism and brings us into “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ.” (CCC 1987). Justifying Grace is inextricably intertwined into Sanctifying Grace and together these Graces truly cleanse and free us from our sins. Because of our extraordinary gift of Free Will, these processes are always ongoing in Believers who refuse to coexist with serious sins cluttering up the interiors of their hearts. God’s Amazing Grace (↔ Music Link) takes care of that. I say again, “why would anyone want anything less?” Reflecting on that, one might ask, “Who is the person for whom salvation is not possible?” Wanna know the answer?
NEMO. That’s right! NEMO – NOBODY! Rewritten that says, “Nobody is the person for whom salvation is not possible.” Now, those of you who are grammar geeks like me will know that’s a double-negative which translates to “Everybody is the person for whom salvation is possible.” All of us live in the Great Ocean of God’s Grace because that is how and where he created us to be. Thinking back to the story of the fish trying to hold itself up in the waters, all we need to do to have Life is to Live as God intended us. Wanting anything less than that would be like that little fish deciding it wanted to walk out of the ocean and breathe in God’s Gigantic Ocean of Air. That may be good enough for a mermaid named Ariel, but it’s not good enough for us. DON’T FORGET NEMO. Remember, Nemo is nobody. God has forgotten Nobody in his Absolutely Perfect Plan, so that must mean we’re part of it – surprise! (↔ Click Link) Why would we want anything less?
Ephesians 2:4-9 – 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with 
Christ —by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. There’s no point in chasing pursuing our own ends to stay afloat in God’s Infinite Mercy. Otherwise, if we choose unwisely, we might have a misadventure like Nemo and Dory or even like The Three Little Fishies (↔ Music Link).
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
Please pray with us here at Share-a-Prayer.
Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Biblical languages inserts from Bible Hub (Bible Hub: Search, Read, Study the Bible in Many Languages) Visit at http://biblehub.com
Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
