Don Friesen
"Three men went to a synagogue to pray — a rabbi, a cantor and a humble synagogue cleaner. They were preparing for the Day of Atonement, and the rabbi, looking heavenward, beat his breast, and prayed, with no little passion, "Dear God, I am but a speck on the ocean of Your countenance; I am nothing!"
Next to him the cantor too looked heavenward, beat his breast, and prayed, "Dearest, omnipotent God, among Your unworthy servants, I am not worthy. I am nothing!"
Nearby, the synagogue cleaner, also a devout man, looked skyward, beat his breast, and uttered his prayer: "Dear God, I am your lowliest servant, least worthy of consideration. I am nothing!"
Whereupon the rabbi leaned over to the cantor and with no little disgust, whispered, "Look who thinks he's nothing!"
Even humility can become a competitive sport, but as a Yiddish proverb states, "Too humble is half-proud."
The Bible's G-list: G is not for Garlic or Gluttony
Today's sermon is brought to you by the letter, "G," and the Bible's G-list contains some interesting words, words like "gadfly," "gangrene," "garlic," "gnat," and "gymnasium".
Despite the letter G's hard, guttural sound, the Bible's G-list doesn't contain a lot of negative words. Oh, there's the word, "gluttony," but I handled that word in another series of sermons, and Dorothy doesn't want to hear another word about it. The Bible's negative G-list includes words like "gallows," "gloating," "gloom," "grudge," and "guilt," but the only ones that might merit coverage in the Ottawa Sun would be "god-haters," "gore," "greed," "gossip," and, of course, "Gomorrah," the biblical venue for both sexual and economic sins.
The Bible's G-list has positive words like "goodness," and "gospel," and "gifts," but the one that stands head and shoulders above the rest is the word, "grace". The word, "grace," and its derivatives occur about 200 times in the Bible.
Biblical References to Grace
Grace is one of the core convictions of the Christian faith, and the Scriptures contain some beautiful passages about grace, some of which we heard this morning. "But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us," says Paul in Ephesians, "...made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him..., so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace...." (Ephesians 2:4-7)
Then there's the answer Paul received from God about a troublesome aspect of his own life, and God's promise to him was: "My grace is sufficient for you...." (2 Corinthians 12:9) Then there is Paul's classic statement in Romans, "where sin increased, grace abounded all the more!" (Romans 5:20) Or the oft-quoted line, "by the grace of God I am what I am." (1 Corinthians 15:10) And there's another promise, in the book of Hebrews, encouraging us to "approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." (Hebrews 4:16)
The word, "grace," is used most often in the Apostle Paul's writings; the word itself does not appear in the Synoptic Gospels, but the Gospel of John tells us that "the Word (that) became flesh and dwelt among us (was) full of grace and truth...." (John 1:14, RSV) Again and again in the Gospel story, Jesus, by his words and actions, pointed to a gracious God, a God of infinite mercy, a God who in the words of the psalmist is "slow to anger and plenteous in mercy...." (Psalm 103:8, KJV)
The Absence of Grace
The idea of grace is a little easier to grasp than the word, "eternity," but perhaps it is most noticeable by it absence. You know when it's missing! Jesus didn't use the word, "grace," but he knew that the absence was not a pretty sight and so he told a short story about two men who went to the temple to pray. It's a negative story about a positive concept. "Two men went up to the temple to pray," Jesus told his followers, "one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector." (Luke 18:10) The prayer of the first was ostensibly a prayer of thanksgiving; he didn't claim to be nothing!" He prayed, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give (away) a tenth of all my income." (18:11-12)
Okay, point taken, Jesus. Not a pretty prayer. A little self-absorbed and standoffish, this one! Point taken. Let's move on to the next story. But Jesus' story, as short as it is, has time to get even more pointed, saying that a "tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'" (Luke 18:13)
Oh, come on! Do you know what tax collectors do for a living? Between elections? The tax collector only served to make the Pharisee look good, the Pharisee's arrogant prayer notwithstanding. Everyone knew the tax collector was a crook! He shouldn't even have been in the temple! He worked for the Roman occupiers. He was paid by the Roman government. And when he padded his accounts — at the taxpayers' expense — the Romans just looked the other way! They didn't even establish a royal commission! If the Pharisee in Jesus' story had any shame at all, he must have welcomed the appearance of a despised tax collector in the story, for it made his prayer ring true! Thank God he was not like that crook!
All would have been well had not Jesus added a moral to the story, saying, "I tell you, this man" — referring to the tax collector — "went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted." (Luke 18:14)
Point taken! But just in case Luke's readers were as dense as the Pharisee in Jesus' story, Luke added an introduction, saying, "(Jesus) told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt." (Luke 18:9)
It's a story repeated often in our churches. Consider two modern individuals who went to church to worship and pray. One was a conservative Christian, the other a liberal Christian. The conservative Christian went into church to pray and said to God: Thank you, God, that I am not like that liberal over there, who wants the Church to do all manner of other things with which I don't agree. A liberal Christian came into the same church, and said to God: Thank you, God, that I am not like that conservative Christian over there — she and her friends are so literal — and so narrow-minded! The temptation to think that our agenda will save the world is no respecter of persons or political leanings.
Jesus' story of the two men who went to the temple to pray is from an archive of gospel stories that we might call "Grace-less, In-your-face, Gospel Stories," for the story itself lacks grace. This is not a feel-good story, and it's not a simple story. If it was, Jesus simply could have added, Alright, people! Let's get out there and be humble!
Now, if you get something from this story that would encourage your humility, well, by all means, go for it! The Pharisee's problem, however, is not that he is showing off. Jesus tells us that the Pharisee was "standing by himself". (Luke 18:10) It's hard to show off with-out an audience! No, the problem seems to be that the Pharisee really believed that his stack of good deeds was enough to save himself. And he believed that if only everyone else would do what he did, well, that would save the whole world!
Jesus' story may be about humility — one of the men certainly had it; the other definitely did not — but it's a great story about the nature of grace. The tax collector had nothing going for him; he was a loser! He was a cheat! He was a weasel! A wastrel! A fraud! A traitor! The Pharisee was impressive, even without the tax collector for background. He went to the Temple several times a day. He took the lessons and sermons seriously. He was a man of prayer and spiritual discipline. He was not an extortioner — like the other guy — in fact, he was a fair, law-abiding guy whose word was dependable. Atop all that, he was generous; he gave away a tithe of his income! I mean, how many of us put aside a tenth of our income for others?
Let's pretend that when Jesus first told the story of the two men in the temple it was a much longer story. Perhaps — work with me, here — perhaps Jesus went on to tell his disciples that these two men died and both were mourned by their respective communities. The Pharisee's funeral was a very high-class funeral, and many attended, and all were dressed in their black and under-stated but expensive finery. On the other side of town, hardly anyone showed up for the tax collector's funeral, and those who came were dressed shabbily. It was an altogether shoddy affair — but — who cares?!? They're both dead! And what happens after their death is out of their hands! Death is the great equalizer! If there was any difference at all between the Pharisee and the tax collector before their deaths, it was that the tax collector already knew everything was in the hands of God. What happens to them now is dependent upon God! It's totally dependent upon the grace of God.
You Can't Earn Grace!
Ephesians tells us, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — (it is) not the result of works, so that no one may boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)
We do not deserve God's grace; we cannot earn God's grace. But it sure is hard to wrap our minds around that idea. We're desperate to be independent. We're like the fool who was in a hurry to arrive at a new job interview. He woke up later than intended, and after a quick shower, gulped down a piece of dry toast, got in his car and took off. When he arrived at the place of prospective employment, however, he could not find a place to park. He kept looking, driving around and around the block, but he could not find a parking spot. Desperate, he prayed, God, if you find me a parking spot I will go to church every Sunday and I will never lie again. Two minutes later he found a spot and said aloud, with relief, Never mind, God, I found one!
Frederick Buechner wrote, "A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do." (Beyond Words) This is especially difficult for Mennonites to understand. Ever since Martin Luther came across the New Testament notion that we are justified by faith and saved by grace, we've been nervous. What if someone doesn't even make an effort to please God? Surely that makes a difference. The nature of grace, however, is such that it doesn't make a smidgen of difference — which led one person to conclude that sometimes grace stinks! (Nathan Nettleton) If you are a high achiever, keen to strut your stuff, trot out your vocabulary, air your opinions and all manner of other signs of your efforts and intelligence, then this grace thing comes up a little short! It's a little annoying to see someone who puts little effort into something win all sorts of accolades. It's offensive! It gets up your nose!
Grace tells me that no matter how hard I work, no matter how much I achieve, and no matter how spectacular my accomplishments, God will regard deadbeats and layabouts and losers as being worth just as much as me! I get no extra bonuses, no special commendations, no citations of special merit, no additional rewards, no place of special honour, and I will enter heaven to no greater applause than those who scraped in by the skin of their teeth and never put in a hard day's work in their lives! I may "speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, ...have prophetic powers" (1 Corinthians 13:1-2), and preach the gospel in ways that captures people's imagination and wins their hearts, and builds up the church — but in heaven I will be ranked no higher than the idiots who can't express biblical teaching in other than vague modern cliches and do nothing to build up the church.
When Martin Luther got all excited about the notion of grace, the Mennonites got nervous, and it wasn't until four centuries later, when another Lutheran came along, that they relaxed a little. Mennonites just loved it when Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-45) aimed his big theological guns at cheap grace. Go, Dietrich! Go! We were quite ready to admit that our good works didn't save us; we are saved by God's grace, but we were quite uneasy that someone without good works might claim God's grace.
And it's true, grace can be cheapened. The New Testament warns against those "who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness...." (Jude 1:4) Our Ephesians passage tells us twice that we are saved by grace (Ephesians 2:5 and 8), not by works (2:9), but it immediately adds that "we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works...." (2:10) Our passage from the New Testament book of Titus tells us that grace comes with a training package, saying, "the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and ...to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, ...(for he) gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds." (Titus 2:11-14)
Grace can be cheapened until it becomes nothing but the shoddiest of biblical virtues, but unless grace becomes something else altogether, it is still grace, and grace presupposes that there's nothing you can do to earn it. And it's hard for people like us who depend on our own goodness — but insist we don't — to admit that nothing we have or do impresses God. And it's only when we begin to realize that we're all in the same boat that we begin to catch the genius of Jesus' clever story.
The Odds Are on God's Side
Imagine, if you will, God sitting in the temple at a golden card table in a golden chair and in come these two characters in Jesus' story. (adapted from a story by Robert Farrar Capon) The Pharisee comes across the temple courtyard, right up to God's golden card table, but God is very busy, creating the universe out of nothing, holding the stars in their courses, making the hair on my head grow, and so on. God is doing all these things and He is very busy, but the Pharisee whips out a pack of playing cards and wants God to play cards with him. Now! The Pharisee does a couple of one-handed cuts and an accordion shuffle, bridges the cards and fans them out for God and says, "Let's play cards."
God folds up the deck, pushes them back to the Pharisee, and says, "Don't play me."
But the Pharisee insists, "No, no. I've been very lucky lately. Let's play Black Jack." He deals God a king, and an ace, but God pushes the cards away and says, "Look, I don't want to take your money. You can't play with me. The odds are always on the house here and besides, no matter how full you think your deck is, you're a few cards short of a full deck and you can never win playing this game with me. So why don't you just be like that fellow over there who is looking down at his shoes and realize that you're both losers. And stop this nonsense of trying to prove to me that you're something! You're both losers, but I love you both. Whatever happens to you in this world, I will be with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you — you loser!"
The eighteenth-century John Newton (1725-1807) used an even harsher word to describe himself; he wrote,
John Newton transported more than a few shiploads of the six million African slaves brought to the Americas in the eighteenth century. Some embellished views of this story hold that Newton wrote the hymn, "Amazing Grace" after becoming wracked with guilt over his chosen profession while at sea and that he ordered the ship to be turned back to Africa and all the slaves freed. Many preachers have used this story. Folk singer Arlo Guthrie also tells the story before singing the song, and it's a moving story but it's not true. The truth is that Newton continued to make his living in the slave trade even after becoming a Christian. (1748) He wasn't about to let his faith interfere with making a living. He was hardly the poster boy for the truly penitent. It was only later in life, when he became a minister (1764), that he wrote the moving hymn, "Amazing Grace" (~1772) and in fact, it was only several years after writing the hymn that Newton began to express regret about his part in the slave trade (1780) and to speak out against slavery, which he then did until his death.
A simpler, embellished, glorified story would be nicer, but the grace of God is no stranger to untidy, less-than-nice lives. And perhaps Newton's life still embodies the compelling beauty and attraction of God's grace, for God was incredibly patient with John Newton. Grace, like love, is patient. (1 Corinthians 13:4) God's sustained grace is such that even the worst of sinners can ultimately repent, and change over time.
We are slow to grasp the incredible "breadth and length and height and depth" (Ephesians 3:18) of God's love and slow to appreciate the "immeasurable riches of (God's) grace" (Ephesians 2:7), but the good news is that there's hope for all of us — even those of us who think ourselves better than John Newton.
May God be patient with us, and may God's amazing grace work its redemption within and among us. Amen
"Amazing grace!
Some people are uncomfortable with a word like wretch; it may indicate low self-esteem — as well it should, for the author of that hymn really was a wretch! He was a racist and one who profited from his racism. He was the captain of an English slave ship, making his living trading in the misery of others. The misery was awful; human beings were treated like cattle, chained below decks, laid closely side by side to save space, and if they were lucky, only one out of five died by the end of the time at sea. If an outbreak of smallpox or dysentery occurred, the loss of human life was much greater. And once they arrived on our continent, they were sold as slaves!
how sweet the sound,
that saved a wretch like me!"
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.