Tag: grace

The Mystery of Grace

Notes for a sermon preached at Holy Trinity Anglican Church (Old Strathcona), Edmonton AB, Oct. 15, 2023. Text: Matthew 22:1-14; (Exodus 32:1-14)

In 26 years of parish ministry, I officiated at around 100 weddings, and was a guest at many receptions. I never once heard of a wholesale rejection of an invitation, with a substitute guest list, and if anyone was ever ejected from one of those occasions for how they were dressed, it didn’t come to my attention. But today we hear Jesus telling a story of those two things happening, in a parable told to the leaders of the nation (the chief priests and the elders of the people), clearly aimed at them.

The story may have been directed to a particular group in a particular time, but I believe it has something important to say to us today. I would suggest that the central act of the story is invitation – the King invites the people of the story to a wedding banquet for his son. By their responses, the prospective guests showed themselves unworthy of the invitation. The King’s response seems violently over the top but remember that Jesus often uses hyperbole like this to emphasize a point. The A-list guests won’t come, so the King invites everyone he can find to the banquet – everyone!

The first invitation might have been a matter of asking his usual guest list who might have treated it as nothing special. The prospective guests find something better to do, like the people of Israel at Sinai, who spurned the covenant made through Moses for something much more exciting – a great feast around a golden calf. “…the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.” Note however: in the Exodus story, God does not carry out the threatened destruction, but graciously relents when Moses intercedes. In Jesus’ story, the people with something better to do suffer dire consequences for their rejection of the invitation.

But then comes the great turnaround: if the expected guests won’t come, the King graciously extends the invitation to everyone. The invitation is not made according to the usual criteria. (Who IS on the A-list, anyway?) Instead, the invitation is a matter of pure grace – opening the doors to all who will come, making a place at the table for both good and bad. No one had to qualify for this guest list. They just had to say “yes.”

Except… one man was not wearing a wedding robe, and he was thrown “into the outer darkness.” We are left wondering,

“Where’s the grace in that?”

The grace of the second invitation reflects unconditional love: it doesn’t matter who you are; God loves you and wants you at the banquet. But the removal of the improperly-clad guest looks like love with strings attached – putting limits on God’s infinite love.

Unconditional love means that God loves us just the way we are. God loves all his creation! But with that comes the realization that God’s love is beyond our imagining, and that God loves us too much to want us to stay the way we are.

Or as Anne Lamott wrote:

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace –
only that it meets us where we are
but does not leave us where it found us.[i]

I have encountered many congregations in my life in the church, in a variety of settings and roles. Not once have I heard a church say that they did not want to be welcoming. People generally understand on a very basic level that welcoming all is part of living into God’s grace, but we sometimes forget that just welcoming people is only part of the job. The other side of the equation is that God has expectations of us, as individuals and as a church. The church may be a “come as you are” party, but it’s also a “come prepared to change” party.

Being a church that welcomes all is a good thing, but being a church with a mission is also a good thing. Being only a welcoming church can be self-defeating when it develops into as “anything goes!” This seems to be one of the major subtexts of Matthew’s gospel: some in his audience believed that the Law had been set aside, and they were free to do as they pleased.[ii]

Being only a missional church is likewise self-defeating when it presents as welcoming people only according to their ability to fit into the mission. Down the one road lies chaos as everyone does what pleases them, and the church loses sight of its reason for being. Down the other road lies exclusivity, as insistence on “fitting in” drives people away.

How to fix the chaos? Invite people to share in the church’s mission.

How to fix the exclusivity? Welcome everyone – without question.

The “chaos road” is characterized by what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace:

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.
Cheap grace is the preaching of
      forgiveness without requiring repentance,
      baptism without church discipline,
      Communion without confession…
Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross,
grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.[iii]

In a church dominated by ideas of cheap grace, nothing really matters. Bonhoeffer challenged the church of his day (in pre-war Germany) to realize that everything matters; that following Christ is a matter of life and death.

He wrote (edited for inclusive language):

When Christ calls a [person], he bids [them] come and die.[iv]

The balance between welcoming and exclusivity is never easy, and it is never static. Churches constantly swing between the two poles. Healthy churches understand that swing as a response to the mystery we call the grace of God, on guard against both chaos and rigid exclusivity. Healthy churches invite and welcome people to join with them in the mystery of grace: meeting us where we are but calling us ever deeper into a life ruled by the love of God, seeking to be part of God’s mission.

All are invited to this place. All are welcome. And all are challenged to learn day by day the mystery of costly grace, which calls us ever forward into new life in Christ. So today and every day:

Come to the table – all are welcome.
Come to the banquet of the King – all are welcome.
Come to the wedding feast of the Lamb – all are welcome.

Yes, come, but come expecting to be changed.
Come with open eyes and ears and hearts and minds.
Come with your spirit laid bare to God.

Put on the wedding robe of those who seek to know and serve Christ in all things. Come into the mystery of God’s grace – and give thanks.

Amen.

[i] From “Traveling Mercies”
[ii] Matthew 5:17-20
[iii] From “The Cost of Discipleship”
[iv] Ibid.

The economy of Grace

Some years ago I spent a few weeks volunteering full-time at Edmonton’s Bissell Centre, an agency which exists to help the city’s underprivileged people. One of the programs they had was a work exchange program. People could call the Centre looking for day laborers, and the Centre would send workers out as they were available. On occasional days there was more work than people, but mostly there were people left behind after all the jobs had been allotted. Some worked, others did not.

The Gospel reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for September 20 always reminds me of this program. The parable of the workers in the vineyard begins with a farmer needing to bring in his crops. He goes to the town square and finds people available for a day’s work. He hires some and leaves the others behind. Perhaps he grew fearful that the work would not all be done that day, so he returns to the square three times to get more workers, even recruiting some unlucky folk who had hung around until five o’clock because no-one else would hire them. It’s a pretty simple and predictable story — so far!

The twist (there’s always a twist in a parable) comes at the end of work when he doles out payment to the workers. To the astonishment of all and the anger of the early birds, he pays everyone the same amount – one denarius, a normal day’s wage.

The Workers in the Vineyard | The Catholic Word

Now, as my grandson would say, “How is that fair?” Surely there should be equal pay for equal work, and the late comers should not get the same as the first hired. But no, the farmer pays a day’s wage to everyone.

Here’s the rub, as I see it: the pay of one denarius would allow the worker to feed the family for the day. In this economy everyone gets to eat. There’s a parallel here to the story of the feeding of the 5,000: Jesus shows up, and people get fed. It doesn’t matter what we might have done to earn it, how much labour we might have put in, or anything. God is generous to all, even to those whom we may not believe deserve God’s generosity.

The economy of grace is not nice and neat. It can’t be reduced to an input/output table, or the law of supply and demand. God’s grace is poured out on all. Our economy doesn’t usually work that way. Instead, we put limits on how God’s generosity is apportioned among the populace and are often outraged when someone seems to get what they don’t deserve. Are we similarly outraged when someone doesn’t get what they do deserve? It seems to me that such responses tend to be more muted.

In God’s economy, all are fed, all are treated as deserving of respect, all contribute what they can as they are able.

How should we respond to this divine generosity? Surely not by grumbling about someone else’s good fortune. God has provided for them. Who are we to complain? I am reminded of a verse from “The Servant Song,” one of my favorite hymns:

I will weep when you are weeping,
when you laugh I’ll laugh with you.
I will share your joy and sorrow
till we’ve seen this journey through.

Richard Gillard © Scripture in Song

The journey in and with Christ is not a race with the winner taking home the medal. Rather, it is a journey of fellow-travelers, all seeking each other’s good.

Jesus shows up, and people are fed. Hallelujah!

A Community that Sends

Notes for a sermon preached at Holy Trinity (Strathcona) on August 27, 2017

Texts: Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20

Last Sunday, Fr. Chris spoke of the challenge to the Church to “go out.” There is much more that can be said about this, including Archbishop William Temple’s dictum that the “Church is the only society on earth that exists for the benefit of non-members.” One way of stating our mission: We are to go out to be of benefit to the world around us.

Let’s back this up a step or two, and think about who is doing the sending. What kind of group is it that can send its members out in this way? I take my cue from Paul, and his appeal to the church in Rome, part of which we heard in today’s lesson. The lectionary does us a bit of a disservice, by splitting Chapter 12 between two Sundays, but let’s work with what we have been given.

Paul starts out by saying, “I appeal to you therefore…” That last word should alert us to the fact that what comes next is not some sayings plunked into the text in an arbitrary way. It has a context.

The preceding three chapters (9 – 11) deal with what some contemporary scholars consider to be the central issue of Romans, the question of the fate of Israel. Paul agonizes over the problem, lamenting the fact that most Jews have not accepted Jesus as the Messiah. He ultimately refuses to let go of his faith in God’s fidelity to his promises, concluding that in God’s great mercy, salvation would not be denied to the people of Israel. The section closes with an outburst of praise (curiously not in the Lectionary):

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord?
   Or who has been his counselor?’
 ‘Or who has given a gift to him,
   to receive a gift in return?’
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen.

And… therefore…

If God has been gracious to all, our response should then be to strive to live lives that reflect that grace, not merely as individuals, but in a company of the faithful whose corporate life displays God’s grace. Paul uses the image of the body, more concisely than in 1 Corinthians 12, to argue that we are interdependent—needing each other and rejoicing in each person’s unique gifts. Paul enjoins us “not to think of [ourselves] more highly than [we] ought to think,” but to regard ourselves with “sober judgment” as members of the Body of Christ. I might use “humility” here, remembering that that doesn’t mean self-abasement (“worm theology”), but being honest with ourselves, with our brothers and sisters, and with God, about who we are and what are our gifts.

It is easy to miss how counter-cultural is Paul’s concept of Christian community. He wrote:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God…

The world in which Paul lived was the Roman Empire, one of the most successful regimes in history. This was a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity, enforced by Roman military might. However, the Empire relied on a rigidly structured society, in which everyone knew his or her place, and upward social mobility was almost unheard-of. The subjugated peoples of the Empire could enjoy the benefits of Roman rule so long as they kept to their places. Into this mix, Paul throws a huge measure of egalitarianism. When he calls on followers of Christ to see themselves as no better than they should, it implies that they should regard their companions on the way as their equals, just as Jews and Christians are equal in God’s economy of grace and mercy.

The point of the church, however, is not just to build a community where everyone loves each other. That’s a good thing by itself, of course, but the mission of proclaiming God’s love in the marketplace must be based in a people practicing what they preach. The life of the Christian community is a large part of its message.

Harold Percy, a well-known Canadian writer about mission, has outlined Christian mission in terms of the Kingdom of God. We are called
to proclaim the Kingdom,
to celebrate the Kingdom, and
to model the Kingdom.

When people look at us—a community of people who follow Jesus as the Messiah—they should see a body which strives to behave as if God’s reign is being fulfilled in our midst. Our calling is to be a model of the Kingdom. Of course, models never quite live up to the reality they are pointing to; every church community inevitably falls short of the Glory it is striving to proclaim. But that doesn’t mean we should quit trying!

It grieves me deeply to know that there are people who assert themselves over others by “who they are,” at times invoking the name of our Saviour. We saw some of the symptoms of that in Charlottesville two weeks ago. So-called “identity politics” have no place in God’s Kingdom. White supremacy, racism, anti-Semitism, misogynism, homophobia and their like are evils upon the body politic. When they find their way into Church life, they are toxic to the Gospel we are called to proclaim.

We are followers of Jesus of Nazareth, the one whom Peter confessed to be the Messiah. Jesus came to “draw all people to [himself].” As his Body, we are called to draw all people to him, inviting all to share in the grace, mercy, and unbounded love of the God who cannot let his people go.

God loves ALL his people—and so should we!

Let’s go and show it.

Hiding in plain sight

Reflections on Joseph of Arimathea

Today at the “Saints Eucharist” at Holy Trinity we remembered Joseph of Arimathea. He is mentioned only once in each of the four Gospels (Matthew: 27:57-60; Mark 15:43-46; Luke 23:50-55; John 19:38-42), but all affirm that he gave his tomb for the burial of Jesus. There are various post-Biblical legends about him, including a trip to Britain, where he is said to have planted the holy thorn tree that grows at Glastonbury. He is also said to have taken the Holy Grail with him, and hidden it somewhere in that vicinity. (Holy Grail: the cup used at the Last Supper.)

We had a short discusstombion about this before beginning the Eucharist, focussing on the question of why people thought it necessary to remember someone for things that very likely did not happen, glossing over the one solid piece of evidence about his life. Giving a tomb for Jesus’ burial was an act of devotion and generosity that had profound importance in the Gospel story: why can’t we be satisfied with that? Joseph isn’t alone in this. There are other New Testament figures about whom various legends grew up, mostly without solid attestation, often imputing miraculous lives to these individuals.

The speculation we entertained was that people are often not satisfied with “ordinary” events as a medium of seeing God in action. If we can ascribe super-natural acts to someone, it may be a more obvious way to see the divine at work in human life. We have trouble understanding something as simple as giving a grave for someone’s burial as an “Act of God“. Insurance companies understand that term as something mostly unpredictable and entirely outside human control. But surely Joseph’s simple deed was divinely inspired, advancing the story of salvation history in a small but vital way. No burial = no death. No death = no resurrection. No resurrection = no salvation.

I believe that God is at work in ordinary human lives in ways that most people have trouble perceiving or articulating. Having a cup of tea with a lonely senior is just as much an Act of God as a hurricane. The Kingdom of God — how things ought to be — can be seen in the very small and (apparently) very ordinary. When we see it, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, revealing what was there all along for us to see — hiding in plain sight.

Being one of “the saints” should not mean being somehow superhuman and supernatural. It should rather mean being a person whose life displays what God intended for human life — sometimes apparently very ordinary, but touching other people in a way that makes God’s ways visible. If we look with the eyes of the spirit, we will see God at work in all sorts of people around us, not necessarily in the supernatural kind of miracle (whose existence I am not denying), but showing forth God’s love, mercy, and grace in many different ways in daily life.

We are all called to be saints — to make visible what God intends for this world. Many who are working out their salvation “in fear and trembling” are all around us. Look for them. They don’t have halos. They don’t always glow with otherworldly radiance. But they reveal to all who will see what holy living is all about.

Joseph of Arimathea did a holy thing: he was a holy person. We remember him for this one special deed.

Look around you today. Who is doing holy things? God’s saints are hiding in plain sight everywhere we care to look, everywhere we turn the eyes of our spirits. See them. Pray for them. Give thanks for them. Love what they do, and do what they love.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God;
everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. (1 John 4:7)

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