Grace Is Not a Bargain!

All across the city pastors are using the story of the rich young man (Mark 10:17-34) as a basis for an annual “stewardship” sermon. In many churches, autumn is the season for Stewardship Sunday. Stewardship is the euphemistic word many preachers use because they find it difficult to talk, cleanly, about money as necessary for engaging in efficient mission and for performing effective ministries.

You can bet your bottom dollar, if you compare notes with your friends, some will tell you their preacher spoke of a new commandment Jesus issued to the rich man. Oh, they won't be talking about verse 19, where Jesus says, "You shall not defraud..." they'll be talking about reading between the lines, where some preachers hear Jesus say, "Thou shalt ante up!"

So much of religion is about answers to questions no one ever asks and blind faith in answers that are both incomprehensible and irrelevant. Even more “good” religion is about rules and leaving your brain at the door. It's about repeating the right creed, performing the right cultic acts, and living out the right ethical code. Ever since the 4th century, when the Emperor Constantine saw a vision of a military shield emblazoned with the cross, and the inscription, "By this sign you shall conquer," Christianity and culture, Christianity and government, have been joined at the hip.

In service to the empire, theologians who were baptized into the life of the Christ who said, "Love your enemies," have concocted the theory of the just war. In service to the empire, pastors who were baptized into the life of the Christ who said, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all," have erected membership rules to separate and sort insiders from outsiders. In service to the empire, Christians who've been baptized into the name of the Christ who answered the question, "Who can be saved?" by saying, "For mortals it is impossible," have constructed some very curious God-talk. If they bother to talk about salvation at all, rather than saying something about what God has done for them, they say things like:
• I've decided to follow Jesus
• I gave my life to the Lord
• I made Jesus my Lord and Savior.

So much of what’s peddled as “good” religion stands on a simple-minded bargain that goes like this: "Keep the faith, be good, obey the rules, God will bless you and life will treat you well." But what happens when the hollow promise of that bargain is revealed for the fraud that it is?

What happens when the bottom falls out of your life? You're suddenly confronted with suffering you can't understand; or you're experiencing a tragedy you simply can't bear? Worse, what happens when you're overcome with the feeling that you're not quite as good as you think you are?

It's religion in service to the empire that causes us to misunderstand and to misrepresent that what stands at the center of Christian faith is not a symbol of worldly success, but of suffering and rejection - the cross. Christian discipleship means adherence to the person of Jesus, and therefore submission to the law of Christ, which is the law of the cross. Paul wrote, in 1 Corinthians 1 …we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Look what happens when we prefer the world's power to God's power in the cross of Christ.

I went to a banquet where I was handed - on a silver platter, if you will - a chance to witness to what it's like to live life on the foundation of Christ and to dwell in the security of God's gracefulness toward me. Since the banquet benefited a religious charitable organization it seemed reasonable to assume that everybody in attendance was open to some God-talk. I was wearing a name tag that identified me as Reverend Jeff. So it also seemed reasonable to assume that people with the unfortunate luck of the draw to find themselves seated next at a table with a Reverend would at least tolerate, if not expect, to hear a little God-talk.

Here I was, sitting with five strangers, trying to make some polite, how-do-you-do banquet talk. This was my chance to let these folks know:
• what my life is founded on
• the direction my life is oriented toward
• where my security comes from.
But did I ask these folks:
• what's God been doing in their lives lately
• when they knew God sent their mate to them
• how their work testifies to God's gifts to them
• where God's calls them to minister in the Kingdom?
Uh-uhh! In keeping with religion's service to the empire, I behaved like the kind of civil reverend our culture reveres.

I didn't meddle. I asked each person, in turn, what they did for a living. I made heroic efforts to expand wealth-making networks, “Oh you have a teacher's license but you can't find a teaching job? Well I heard that both the Westfield -Washington and the Hamilton school districts are scooping up every male elementary teacher they can find. I've got friends up there. Would you like me to get you their names?"

That's exactly how this revered rich man approaches Jesus. Life, the rich man says, even a life deeply immersed in faith's way of living, is a transaction. Life, even a godly life, is about:
• achieving security on our own
• establishing our self-assurance
• earning our self-sufficiency.

Now one danger of living this way, living self-secured, self-assured, and, self-sufficient, is that it cuts us off from grace. When you stand here, just so sure that whatever needs to be done, you can do it. Whatever you need, you can supply it. With enough money or education or ability or goodness, you'll be able to secure your own future. With investments or larger barns, we'll be able to relax. We will be somebody.

Cut-off from grace, life becomes an achievement earned or a product purchased, rather than a gift gratefully received and shared. God becomes unnecessary, or becomes simply another product to be used for personal goals. Resources become tied to identity. We become what we own, know, or produce. Riches become gods, and the foundation of our identity and security.

When persons are valued for their exchange in the marketplace, the result is insecurity and competitiveness. If our worth is based on what we know, or own, or achieve, we're always going to be insecure, because our value will always depend on what is uncertain and temporary. Then we'll spend all our days looking for some "good" teacher to validate us from the outside in - not the inside out - but rest assured - we won't be looking for - or finding - Jesus. Instead of loving one another, sharing with one another, nurturing another's well-being, we’ll compete with one another, use one another, abuse one another and discard one another. The rich man had put his life together this way.

Meeting a rabbi who lived life as grace - as a gift to be received, celebrated and shared - a gift available without price - threatened the essence of the rich man’s being. Faced with the rabbi’s world, where life is all gift, left the rich man with no earning power. In the economy of Jesus’ God, the coin of the realm is sharing, humility and thanksgiving. The rich man only traded in hoarding, self-sufficient arrogance and smug pride. So, a now shocked, rich man, went away grieving.

Peter, more than a little perplexed, asked, "Who then can be saved?" Jesus answered, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible." Life is a gift to be humbly and joyfully received, not a thing to be purchased or a prize to be earned.

It's really hard for folks attached to things, rather than in relationship with people, to enter the new life God offers. With people you either love 'em or leave 'em. But money and things offer many more options. Money and things cause us to shift our priorities away from other people. If security and worth are rooted in our achievements and our stuff, achieving more and maintaining and increasing resources become our driving motivations. We can't let up. We can't relax. We can't give sacrificially - we can only give out of our excess. Giving on any other terms threatens our security and our sense of worth.

The Bible is clear. We simply cannot know the God of Jesus Christ, the God whom Jesus identifies as the only One who is good - and so good to all - apart from relationships with the poor and the powerless. God has chosen the poor, the least, the most vulnerable, those whom the world considers "the weak" as special friends.

A distinguishing characteristic of the God of the Hebrew Scriptures is that Yahweh hears the cries of the poor and takes decisive action to defend the orphans and widows and immigrants. God chooses relationship and intimacy with the slaves, the nobodies, to deliver divine liberation and salvation. In Jesus Christ, God comes closest to us in vulnerability and poverty.

God's special friendship with the poor is not a rejection of the rich, but it is one of the clearest signs God's given to us that life is not in riches. Life is in God's grace. So if you say you're:
• believing a creed that says only this grace gives identity and worth
• practicing cultic rituals that say only this grace gives identity and worth
• behaving by a code that says only this grace gives identity and worth
please answer this question: How much money and how many things can you afford to put between yourself and that grace?

How we struggle to answer that question, alone and together, doesn't identify whether or not today is stewardship day. But how that grace transforms us - freely and powerfully - each day, and how we share that grace - generously and powerfully - every day - does define whether or not we're disciples of Jesus Christ.