“During a British conference on comparative religions,
experts from around the world debated what, if any, belief was unique to the
Christian faith. They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other
religions had different versions of this. Resurrection? Again, other religions
had accounts of return from death. The debate went on for some time until C.S.
Lewis wandered into the room. ‘What’s all the rumpus about?’ Lewis asked. In
reply, his colleagues told Lewis that they had been discussing Christianity’s
unique contribution among world religions. Lewis responded, ‘Oh, that’s easy.
It’s grace.’” (Yancey, What’s So Amazing
About Grace? P.45)
Lewis is right. When all that Christianity
shares with other religions is stripped away, all we’re really left with is
grace. ‘Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once
was lost but now am found, twas blind but now I see.’ Martin Luther shared
Lewis’s appreciation for grace in his famous Reformation battle cry: “Solo
Gratia!” “By grace alone” we are saved, Luther argued. Other theologians have
defined grace as ‘the unmerited, undeserved goodness of God.” Some kids in a confirmation
class I led years ago defined grace as “God’s tendency to spare us the
punishment we deserve and to give us something wonderful instead.” I like that
one!
‘Amazing
grace, how sweet the sound?’…Or is it? Well, Grace wasn’t such a ‘sweet’ sound for
the older brother in the prodigal son story, was it? Remember him – the one who
stayed home, who did everything right, who never strayed from his father’s
wishes, while his selfish little brother skipped town with the inheritance and
went on a bender that made Jack Kerouac’s On
the Road look like child’s play? Anyway, when the father in that story
extended grace to that good-for-nothing younger brother in the form of the most
lavish welcome home party anyone had ever seen, grace didn’t sound the least
bit ‘sweet’ to that older brother!
Amazing grace, how sweet the
sound?…Not if you’re one of the workers who worked all day in that land owner’s
vineyard and then watched as the boss paid the johnny-come-lately’s who showed
up an hour before closing time just as much as he paid you!
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound?…Not if you were in that family that
was robbed and probably beaten by that thief who was hanging on the cross right
next to Jesus. I can’t imagine they were any too pleased to hear Jesus assure
that low-life scoundrel a place in heaven, complete with a confirmation number
for that very day!
Careful, thoughtful readers of the
New Testament understand that “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound” only tells
half the story. For in every moment when grace is dispensed, somebody ends up
feeling ticked off or even cheated. In fact, if we are really honest about it,
the parables of grace – like the one I just presented a few moments ago about
the laborers in the vineyard - tick us off too, don’t they? And that stands to
reason, for we live in a world that lives by what Phillip Yancey calls a system
of “ungrace - tit for tat, the early bird gets the worm, no such thing as a
free lunch, people should get what they deserve – nothing more, nothing
less.”(p. 64) That’s how the world we live in operates – a system based on, at
least, the presumption that people should get what they deserve – and that
system, whether we like it or not, is the absolute opposite of God’s system,
for God’s chosen system is based on grace.
So living the way we do in the
world we do, it’s no wonder that we sympathize with the older brother when we
hear the parable of the prodigal son, or with the laborers who worked a full
day in the story of the laborers in the vineyard. It’s no wonder that we
sympathize with the family who had been robbed by that the thief on the cross.
We identify with the people in all these stories who seem to be getting the raw
end of God’s grace-filled deal! But what we’ve got to understand is that it’s
only a raw deal if we’re ignoring Jesus’s most important and unique principle –
the principle of grace. It’s only a raw deal if we fail to see our own sin, our
own shortcomings. That, by the way, is why we confess our sin every Sunday.
It’s not to beat ourselves up; it’s to make sure we never ever forget that
we’ve screwed up too. We’ve hurt other people too. We have failed to do God’s
will too. So in that sense, we don’t “deserve” God’s grace anymore than anyone
else does.
In Christ, God entered a world of
ungrace, and proclaimed that there was a new economy emerging, an economy of
undeserved grace, an economy where, as Phillip Yancey writes, “a widow’s
pennies count more than a rich man’s millions, where an employer pays the
Johnny-come-lately’s the same amount as his trusted regulars,” where a criminal
who repents on his deathbed gets the same reward as the one who lived his entire
life for Christ. (p. 60) Phillip Yancey calls this “the atrocious math of the
Gospel.” Like it or not, fellow
Christians, there’s another side to the initially ‘sweet’ sound of grace. And
make no mistake: if we’re going to call ourselves ‘Christians’ we’ve got to
line up behind God on this one. Perhaps the most bitter pill God requires
Christians to swallow is that we
don’t get to decide who receives grace and who doesn’t. It’s not our call. If
Jesus’ life and ministry are any indication, pretty much everyone gets grace,
except, perhaps, the ones who would withhold it from others. As C.S. Lewis puts
it, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable in others, because God
has forgiven the inexcusable in us…” (repeat) (What’s so Amazing… p. 64)
My dad died of lung cancer about 16
months ago, and he was an interesting character. For now, I’ll summarize dad’s
leanings by saying that he kept Fox news on 24 hours a day, literally! He was
so far on the right wing of things that he made both President Bushes look
liberal. He spent his life in the mainline denominations of Methodism and
Presbyterianism, and to put it as gently as I can, dad was accused of many
things over the course of his life. But the one thing no one EVER accused my
dad of was being open minded. So about two months before he died, I asked him a
question he’d never been asked before…I said, “Dad, let’s say that when you die
you go to heaven. And let’s say that in addition to mom, your parents and
friends, that everyone else is there too. And I mean EVERYONE, dad. Jews are
there; Hindus are there; Buddhists are there; even Muslims are there! What
would you think, dad…? How would that be?”
Without hesitation, dad responded,
“Well I wouldn’t like it…not at all!”
“But why not?” I asked. “You’re there…Mom’s
there…God is there and it’s totally amazing! What’s the problem?”
“Well it’s not what I expected.
It’s not what I’d always been taught. I’d feel cheated.”
“But, dad, you’re there!” I
repeated. “You are in! So is mom! How can it feel disappointing or like you’d
been cheated!”
Here, dad hesitated, struggling to
find the words. “I just don’t like the idea that everyone gets to go.”
I think we all feel a little like
my dad, deep down inside. There’s something that sticks in our throat about
God’s grace being showered on everyone.
And I’m NOT saying that I somehow know that heaven is going to be like how I
described it to my dad. But I DO know that we had better get used to that
possibility. We had better get ourselves and our church to the point where we
are OK with God’s grace and mercy, love and forgiveness going to everybody.
I can’t say with any certainty what
heaven is going to be like or who is going to be there. But I’m quite certain
that as followers of Christ we are called, even required to be open to
everybody being at the party. We have to get our hearts and minds to the point
that our love is big and broad enough to embrace the folks Jesus embraced – the
sinners, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the demons, the scoundrels, the
folks that aren’t a part of our religious group.
You know what I believe…I believe
that if you are still alive today, it’s probably because God is giving you more
time to grow a bigger heart. If you’re alive today, it may well be because your
heart hasn’t been BIG and expansive and inclusive enough for heaven, and God is
giving you more time to let it grow.
As our world gets smaller and the
religious complexion of America gets more diverse, more and more people are
asking, “Who goes to heaven and who doesn’t? What happens to all the millions
and even billions of people on the earth who don’t know Jesus or don’t practice
Christianity?” I find it troubling and more than a little ironic that it’s Christians
– Christians whose religion that is based on grace - who respond to these huge
and heartfelt questions in the most grace-less way. How can we Christians, who
have been saved by grace alone, so quickly and callously sink to the quoting of
an isolated scripture verse like, ‘Jesus is the only way to the Father. No one
gets to heaven except through Him.’ Trust me when I say that I have memorized
those same verses, but I’ve also wrestled faithfully and diligently with the
larger Biblical narrative in which they occur, and with what Phillip Yancey
correctly calls “the atrocious mathematics of the Gospel,” I have a different
answer to the question of who goes to heaven and who doesn’t. It’s an answer
that seeks to take grace into account. It’s an answer that takes the parable of
the laborers and the vineyard into account. It’s an answer that takes the thief
on the cross into account. When someone asks me, “What about people from other
religions?” the first thing I say is, “God makes it clear that such weighty
decisions and judgment calls are to be left to Him, not me.” And the second
thing I say is, “But I do know this: the God I worship has a well-documented
habit of extending grace to those who least deserve it – the thief on the cross
who gave an 11th hour confession; that day-laborer who only worked
one hour but got paid for the entire work day, or that younger son, who was
given a hero’s welcome when he returned from his trip to Hedonism III. So if
you’re asking me, ‘Will God welcome people into his eternal party who don’t
really deserve it or who don’t meet some religious standard that makes sense to
me…I’d say the odds are that God probably will. My job is to be ok with that
possibility and to live my life giving grace as freely and as indiscriminately
as my Lord does.”
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
- it’s a great song, isn’t it? But as great as it is, I do wish that John
Newton would have added another verse or two, verses about the call upon each
and every one of us who wants to help build the kingdom of God – the call to
accept and cooperate with God’s indiscriminate scattering of grace. For whether
we like it or not, the God of the scriptures rains His grace down on the just and the unjust, on the saint and the sinner, on the good and the wicked. The kingdom of
God that we’re supposed to be building is a kingdom of grace and love for all, not just for some.
So with all due respect to John
Newton, I’d like to close with my proposed additions to the greatest hymn ever
written:
5) The
grace that Christ has given me, it is not mine alone
His grace is made to ever flow, through me to
all God’s own
6) And when Your grace my rival finds, may I
not bitter be
But pray his joy would equal mine, that day
Your grace found me Amen.
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