Tag: Unconditional love

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 Scandal of Unconditional Love

Notes for a sermon preached at Holy Trinity, Edmonton (Old Strathcona)
Mar. 27, 2022. Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

“If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” – Bishop Michael Curry.

We learn from texts in both testaments of the Bible that love is God’s essential nature, notably in Exodus 34:6f:

The Lord passed before (Moses), and proclaimed,
‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,

Also in the first letter of John 4:7-8:

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God;
everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.

And from Jesus himself, in John 13:34, in the only thing he called a commandment:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.
Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

Today’s we heard one of the best-known and best-loved stories in the Bible about love. It’s most often known as “The Prodigal Son,” but it’s about three people, not one.

It is easy to focus on the younger son, and his father’s joyful reception of him when he returns to the family home. It is a heartwarming account of how much and how unconditionally the father loves his errant offspring. This first scene could stand on its own as a lesson. But then Jesus adds the second scene, in which the older brother refuses to join the welcome. An apparently simple story of restoration takes on greater depth.

The younger brother received a huge gift from his father – one-third of his estate, according to the custom of the time. It would likely have been a large sum, and the father would have had to go to great lengths to free it up. The young man lived high on the hog for a while, and then – disaster struck. Not an uncommon turn of events for people who are unprepared for wealth.

Did the young man repent? The word doesn’t appear in the text, but we are told that he resolved to go home because his life has become unbearable. He rehearses a confession but is never allowed to complete it. His father greets him without condition, without anything but sheer joy at his return. His love overrules everything, even the young man’s waste of the great gift he received.

Things change dramatically when the older brother enters the scene. He can’t even refer to the younger one as his brother and is angered by his father’s behaviour. This reveals the scandal of unconditional love. The father loves both sons, but the older cannot accept the father’s love for the younger. How can he love such an obvious sinner?

I have heard similar sentiments from people over the years. God’s love is a wonderful thing when it applies to us or to those we love or agree with. But when we hear that God’s love extends to some other people – well, it can be very troubling.

Martin Hattersley was a lawyer, a politician, and an Anglican priest. He served as an Honorary Assistant at several city parishes before his death in 2020. His life was profoundly changed when his daughter was murdered in 1988. Out of this came a ministry of involvement in victim support and advocacy on behalf of prisoners. He did not come to it easily. I heard him speak to a clergy gathering, when he talked about the process of coming to terms with the reality of his daughter’s death, and with the troubling idea – born from the teachings of Jesus – that God could still love her murderer. Martin talked about days spent raging at God. He spent days pacing his family room, sometimes in tears, sometimes in visceral anger. How could God love a person who did such an evil thing?

That’s a very important question. I pray none of us ever need to grapple with it in the kind of circumstances that Martin Hattersley did, but it’s a question that I believe is raised every time we deal with people whose actions we see as evil, whether greater or less.

Can we ever see the offender as a child of God, equal to us in God’s eyes? It’s hard; it’s really hard. But we must remember that we are all part of God’s creation, God’s great labour of love, and all human beings are loved by God. Even people whom it is easy to hate – and there are plenty of such people – even they are objects of God’s love.

However…

God’s unconditional love does mean that God loves us – everyone of us – just as we are. But it also means that God loves us too much to want us to stay the way we are. The younger brother is on the road to repentance and a new life. The father deeply loves the older brother, now his sole heir, and he invites him to shed his bitterness and join in the party. Although there is good reason for the older to resent the younger, to continue living with this kind of feeling will only serve to further divide the two. His younger brother wasted the great gift he received, but the older is now in danger of scorning and wasting the great gift of his father’s love.

Loving and praying for our enemies is very difficult. It goes against the grain for most of us, but it’s a significant part of the Gospel imperative. I am reminded of the words of the Absolution from BCP Morning Prayer, which say that God “…desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that (they) may turn from (their) wickedness, and live.” God desires the best for all his children. God desires life for all of us. Out of this desire, when we are on the wrong track, God calls us to a change of mind, a change of heart.

Did the older brother’s heart ever soften? Did he relent and join the party? We are not told, but that is his father’s wish for him. God calls us to join the party, to turn from whatever is keeping us from entering into the fullness of joy.

And let’s remember that Jesus told the story in response to scribes and Pharisees who were upset at Jesus’ welcome of “tax-collectors and sinners.” Who is invited to dine with Jesus? Not just the supposedly holy, but everyone!

Let’s join the party, not condoning the acts of those who do us harm, but praying for them, and looking for reconciliation in the light of God’s love.

May we seek the good of all.

May we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

May God’s steadfast love for all of God’s children guide us today and always.

Enjoy the party!

Amen.