Lenten Perspective: Accepted

Adapted from a Sunday school lesson delivered at Bethel United Methodist Church in West Greenville, South Carolina on February 5, 2012.

I share these thoughts, hoping they are of help to someone else.

Accepted

Scripture:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God - not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Ephesians 2:8-10 (NRSV)

Why, why are You still here with me?
Didn't You see what I've done?
In my shame I want to run and hide myself
But it's here I see the truth
I don't deserve You...

But I need You to love me, and I...
I won't keep my heart from You this time
And I'll stop this pretending that I can
Somehow deserve what I already have
I need You to love me

From "I Need You to Love Me" by BarlowGirl

To begin this perspective I want to pose a question: What does it mean to be acceptable to God?

In the time of Christ, the Pharisees were a sect of the Jewish people who dedicated their lives to following the the Jewish Law to the letter. They believed that, in order to be acceptable to God, a person must obey each and every one of the 613 rules and regulations found in the Torah, the five books of the Jewish Law. They set an impossibly high standard, and they ostracized those who failed to live up to this standard.

Christ came into the world and turned the world upside down. He showed love, kindness, mercy, and acceptance to the people shunned by the Pharisees, and He saved his harshest critique for the Pharisees themselves, whom He said "load people with burdens hard to bear" and "do not lift a finger to ease them."¹ He compared them to "whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth."² Christ came into the world to fulfill the Law by showing us what following the Law really is, not an endless list of rules and regulations but a way of loving God and other people.


If anyone were to be right with God through following the rules, it would have been St. Paul. Before he began to follow Christ, he kept the Jewish Law faithfully as a Pharisee and did everything he could to guard the Law from those he considered a threat.³ Even so, he was still deeply aware of his own shortcomings. In one letter, he writes, "For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate... Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?"⁴ If anything, the Law aggravated his faults, for he wrote, "For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me."⁵

Martin Luther, at one point in his life, also dedicated himself to following the rules. Looking back, he wrote, "I was a good monk, and I kept the rule of my order so strictly that I may say that if ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery it was I. If I had kept on any longer, I should have killed myself with vigils, prayers, reading, and other work." What Luther found was that, the harder he tried, the more he saw his shortcomings. His good works did not bring him closer to God; in fact, they served to do the opposite. "Love God?" he wrote, "I hated Him!"⁶

To borrow an analogy from one of my favorite books, it was as if Paul and Luther were climbing a ladder to God, but, for every rung they climbed, God had climbed even higher. No matter how high they climbed on this ladder, God remained hopelessly out of reach.⁷

At the beginning of Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis makes two arguments. First, he argues that every human being has a basic understanding of right and wrong. This explains why all laws of morality are basically similar, be they religious or secular. This understanding is not of human creation but was placed within us by some Entity, namely God, who wants us to behave in a certain way. Lewis' second argument is that all humans fail to act upon this understanding of right and wrong. What follows from these two arguments is that humans, because of their moral failures, would seem to have put themselves at odds with the Entity who gave us our understanding of right and wrong.⁸

We can all just forget about being good enough to earn God's favor, because we all fail abysmally. Thankfully, a person is not accepted by God because of his or her works: a person is accepted by God because of God's grace. We all have failed morally and will continue to do so, thus we all need God's forgiveness and grace to redeem us and to transform us. Grace is something that, by its very nature, cannot be earned. Grace is a free gift, given and received with no strings attached. The moment one starts trying to earn a gift is the moment that the gift ceases to be a gift.

According to theologian Paul Tillich, grace is that which calls out to us in the dark times of our lives, saying, "You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!"⁹

Grace can be a bitter pill to swallow. First, receiving grace requires us to be humble enough to admit that we need it. Second, the idea that we are accepted just as we are can sometimes seem too good to be true. I wonder if these stumbling blocks sometimes lead us to add stipulations to grace.

Jesus ministered primarily to the Jewish people, but, in the early days of the church, many non-Jewish people began following Jesus as well. At this time there was a tension between accepting a Gospel of grace and following a Law that the Jewish people had known their entire lives. Some Jewish church leaders began requiring that the non-Jewish followers of Jesus also follow the rules and regulations found in the Jewish Law. Paul sought to counteract these particular teachers, even dedicating the Letter to the Galatians to this issue.

Years earlier, Paul had butted heads with other church leaders at the Council in Jerusalem. At this gathering, early church leaders came together to discern whether or not the non-Jewish followers of Christ should be required to be circumcised and required to follow the Jewish Law.¹⁰ The council's resolution was articulated by St. James:
Therefore I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles¹¹ who are turning to God, but we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood. For in every city, for generations past, Moses has had those who proclaim him, for he has been read aloud every sabbath in the synagogues.¹²

In Fall to Grace, Jay Bakker uses these conflicts in the early church to highlight the concept he calls "Grace Plus." This is the idea that we are saved by "grace plus something else."¹³ For many early Christians, it took the form of grace plus the Jewish Law. For the Jerusalem Council, it took the form of grace plus sexual purity and dietary regulations, both of which were part of the Jewish Law. For many Christians, "Grace Plus" may take the form of grace plus communion every week or grace plus disavowing all the right things or grace plus tithing or grace plus doing good works. None of these things are necessarily bad things, but we should not do them in order to be considered acceptable to God, lest we find ourselves climbing an unending ladder.

St. Paul writes, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God - not the result of works, so that no one may boast." This is a common proof text for the concept of "salvation by grace through faith." Very rarely do people quote the next verse: "For we are what He has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life." Here again we have grace, faith, and good works thrown into the mix together.

It has been made clear that grace and acceptance from God are not a result of good works, so perhaps good works are a natural result of grace and acceptance from God. The relationship between faith and works can be compared to a horse pulling a cart. In this analogy, the horse is our faith, and the cart is our good works. Just as the horse pulls the cart, so also our faith drives our good works. If we perform good works in order to be acceptable to God, then we have "put the cart before the horse," so to speak.

Christ really only gave us one command: to love. When Christ said that the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love each other, He said, "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets."¹⁴ When we truly love, we do not have to worry about any moral law because we fulfill the purpose of the Law with our love. When we love, we extend grace to other people. It is love that gives birth to the good works that should characterize our lives.

If we are commanded to love, can we still say that Salvation is a free gift? Does this command not turn love into a law? Maybe love is not what God wants from us, but instead what God wants for us. Maybe love is not a requirement placed on humanity, but something that humanity, by its nature, desperately needs. Maybe it is for love that we have been created. Maybe it is when we love that we are at our best. Maybe it is love that gives our lives meaning. Maybe anything other than a life lived with love is actually something from which God wants to save us.

The United Methodist communion liturgy reminds us that we don't always love each other as we are called. We receive the bread and the wine, called the body and blood of Christ, to remind us of the grace that God has given us and continues to give us every day. God's grace gives us the opportunity to start over.

Law screams, "Get it right, or else!"

Grace whispers, "I love you even when you don't get it right."


Notes:
1 - Luke 11:46 (NRSV)
2 - Matthew 23:27 (NRSV)
3 - Philippians 3:5-6
4 - Romans 7:14-15,24 (NRSV)
5 - Romans 7:11 (NRSV)
6 - Jay Bakker, Fall to Grace. 2011, Faith Words. pp. 48-49
7 - David A. Seamands, Healing for Damaged Emotions. 1981, David C. Cook. p. 15
8 - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. Book I
9 - Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations. ch. 19
10 - Conflicting accounts of this gathering are reported in the Bible. Compare Acts 15:1-35 to Galatians 2:1-14.
11 - Gentiles are non-Jewish people.
12 - Acts 15: 19-21 (NRSV)
13 - Bakker, pp. 61-62
14 - Matthew 22:34-40 (NRSV quoted)

The image featured in this perspective is of unknown origin but is assumed to be public domain.


If you have any feedback, thoughts, stories, or even arguments to contribute, please leave comments.

Lenten Perspective: The End of the Story

I share these thoughts, hoping they are of help to someone else.

The End of the Story

Scripture:

Because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

Romans 10:9 (NRSV)

Christ is risen from the dead
Trampling over death by death
Come awake! Come awake!
Come and rise up from the grave!

Christ is risen from the dead
We are one with Him again
Come awake! Come awake!
Come and rise up from the grave!

From "Christ is Risen" by Matt Maher

Two of the earliest Christian missionaries, St. Paul and St. Silas, found themselves in a great deal of trouble when they traveled to the ancient Roman city of Philippi. After being harassed repeatedly by a demon-possessed slave girl, Paul commands the unclean spirit to leave her. Regardless of the peace of mind this brings to the girl, her owners are angered because they have been exploiting the girl's possession for monetary gain. The slave's owners take the missionaries before the Roman authorities who order them to be stripped, beaten, and placed into the most secure part of the prison.

Through the night, Paul and Silas, whose feet are in stocks, pray, sing praises to God, and offer their message to the other prisoners. Around midnight, there is an earthquake that loosens all prisoners' chains and opens all prison cells. Seeing that all of the prisoners have been freed, the jailer, knowing that he has failed in his duties, decides to commit suicide. Paul stops him, saying, "Do not harm yourself, for we are all here."

The shaking jailer falls down before Paul and Silas. He takes them aside and asks them, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"

Paul replies, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household."¹

It is the jailer's question and Paul's answer to this question that I want to explore. First, I want to pose a question about the jailer's inquiry: From what did this man want to be saved?

Typically, when a Christian claims to be "saved" or says that a person needs to be "saved," he or she referring to salvation from hell, which most people understand to be a place of never-ending torment a person faces after death. This Christian thus interprets Paul's instruction to "believe in the Lord Jesus Christ" in order to be saved to mean that if a person places his or her faith in Jesus Christ then he or she does not have to face the punishment of hell after death. This understanding of Salvation is something that primarily concerns the afterlife.

I do not believe that the jailer in Philippi was at all concerned about what happened to him after he died. Remember that, just minutes before he asked Paul and Silas what he needed to do to be saved, he fully intended to kill himself. He believed that death itself was preferable to whatever awaited him if all the prisoners escaped on his watch. To him, whatever he faced in the afterlife was a sweet relief from whatever he was to face in life.

The jailer did indeed want to be saved from hell, but, to the jailer, his hell was his own life. The jailer was not afraid of going to hell when he died, for the jailer was already in hell while he was still alive.

Now compare the vantage point of the jailer to the vantage point of Paul and Silas. Paul and Silas had been beaten and imprisoned, but through the night they still prayed and sang praises to God. They were bound, bruised, and bleeding, but they were full of joy, hope, and faith. They had every reason to despair, but their faith remained strong. Their legs were in stocks, but they were free, and nothing - not even the might and cruelty of the Roman Empire - could take their freedom away from them. They were so assured of this freedom that they saw no need to flee when the earthquake loosened their chains.

On the surface, it would seem as though the jailer was the free man while Paul and Silas were the prisoners. In truth, Paul and Silas were free while their jailer was the one who was in chains. I believe that the jailer witnessed the freedom that Paul and Silas had in spite of their circumstances and wanted the same freedom for himself. I believe that he desperately wanted to be saved from his own "chains."

When the jailer asked what he must do to be saved, Paul replied, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved." In the Letter to the Romans, Paul restates this instruction: "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." This is not just some theological statement that a person must intellectually affirm in order to avoid an undesirable fate after death. Wholehearted belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ has saving power in and of itself.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came into the world with a subversive message of love, peace, hope, and grace. He demonstrated this message in the way He lived by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and befriending those shunned and shamed by the pious. In His message and in His kindness, Jesus broke the chains that bound the hearts of the people: He broke the stranglehold that the legalism of the religious elite, the oppression of the Roman Empire, and the stigma of sin had on the people.

Angered that Jesus threatened their place in society, the religious leaders took Him before the Roman governor and had Him sentenced to death by crucifixion. With the crucifixion, those who oppressed people with religion and those who oppressed people with military force triumphed over Jesus. In the crucifixion, legalistic religion, violence, oppression, and death won the victory over the peace, grace, and love of Jesus Christ.

The cross was not the end of the story for Jesus Christ: a couple of days later, He was raised from the dead back to life. When Christ rose from the grave, the victory over Him was overturned. With the resurrection, Christ proved to the world that things like violence, oppression, hatred, sin, shame, and even death do not have to be the end of the story.

The Gospel is often summarized with the famous Bible verse: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life."² Eternal life is not only life after death, but also life after life. Eternal life is life that cannot be threatened by the circumstances we face in our lives. When we proclaim that Jesus is Lord and affirm that God raised Him from the dead, we do not simply make some theological statement: we proclaim that, just as the cross Christ bore was not the end of His story, the crosses we bear are not the end of our stories either.

The fact that you are now suffering the consequences of mistakes you made in life is not the end of the story.

The fact that you have done something seemingly unforgivable is not the end of the story.

The fact that you have an addiction you simply cannot seem to overcome is not the end of the story.

The fact that you are now estranged from people you hold dear is not the end of the story.

The fact that you find yourself an outcast in your own community is not the end of the story.

The fact that you have hurt people in the past is not the end of the story.

The fact that you are oppressed, persecuted, and beaten down daily by society is not the end of the story.

The fact that the world around you is seriously messed up is not the end of the story.

The fact that you are dying is not the end of the story.

Paul and Silas had found eternal life in Jesus Christ, so they knew that the fact that they were persecuted and imprisoned was not the end of the story. They were able to pray and praise God in spite of their dire circumstances. The jailer in Philippi saw the freedom that eternal life had brought to Paul and Silas, and he wanted this same freedom for himself. He wanted salvation from the chains that bound his soul. By offering the jailer the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, Paul and Silas offered him the same salvation, the same eternal life, and the same freedom that they had.

Christ offered this Salvation and life to the people He encountered in His earthly ministry. He once encountered a "wee little man" named Zacchaeus, who was hated by his community because of his occupation as a tax collector. By insisting on eating with him and staying at his house, Jesus offered him the saving knowledge that that his status as a pariah and his past mistakes were not the end of his story.³

Christ once encountered a woman who had been caught in an adulterous affair. After convincing the mob who wanted to execute her to put down their stones, He said to her, "Go, and sin no more." In this command, Christ offered her, not only the invitation to change her ways, but also the blessing to move on with her life without the stigma of being an adulteress. He offered her the saving knowledge that her mistake was not the end of her story.⁴

Christ offers us the same Salvation, the same freedom, and the same eternal life if we will only accept it. The cross reminds us that "the wages of sin is death," but the empty grave reminds us that "the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."⁵ Our mistakes and our circumstances do not have to be the end of our stories, for Christ offers us life beyond these things, life that cannot be destroyed.


Notes:
1 - Acts 16:16-40 (NRSV quoted)
2 - John 3:16 (NRSV)
3 - Luke 19:1-10
4 - John 9:1-11 (KJV quoted)
5 - Phrases from Romans 6:23 (NRSV)

The image featured in this perspective is of unknown origin but is assumed to be public domain.


If you have any feedback, thoughts, stories, or even arguments to contribute, please leave comments.

Lenten Perspective: God and Volcanoes

I share these thoughts, hoping they are of help to someone else.

God and Volcanoes

Scripture:

Bear hardship for the sake of discipline. God is treating you like sons and daughters! What child isn't disciplined by his or her father? But if you don't experience discipline, which happens to all children, then you are illegitimate and not real sons and daughters.

Hebrews 12:7-8 (CEB)

Bring me joy; bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there'll be days
When my life bring me pain
But if that's what it takes to praise You
Jesus, bring the rain

From "Bring the Rain" by MercyMe

In the 1990 romantic comedy Joe Versus the Volcano, the Waponi people live on a volcanic island and believe in an angry fire god who threatens to destroy the island every hundred years. Joe Banks, portrayed by Tom Hanks, is asked to be the willing human sacrifice necessary to appease the angry fire god. Similar versions of this story have been told in numerous films, cartoons, and comic books.¹

I become really disturbed when I hear the ways that some Christians speak of God. Some Christians have a perception of God that is not unlike the pagan volcano gods portrayed in the media. They describe a God who is growing angrier and angrier and angrier with each sin humanity commits. They speak of Christ's death on the cross much like the human sacrifice necessary to appease an angry volcano god. The catch is that God will still pour out His righteous anger forever and ever and ever on anyone who does not believe in Christ and His sacrifice.

Based on their descriptions of God, one might come to the conclusion that God hates sin a lot more than God loves humanity.

I don't believe that God is like an angry volcano god. Though Scripture does indeed tell us about the wrath of God, Scripture also tells us about the love and mercy of God. Over and over again, the Old Testament describes God as "merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love."² The prophet Micah says that God "doesn't hold on to His anger forever" but "delights in faithful love."³ St. John even goes so far as to say that God is love.⁴

Can a God who is gracious and merciful and who is, by nature, love itself ever become angry with us, His sons and daughters?

Yes, I believe that God does, at times, become angry with us - at least in extreme situations - but I also believe that God's anger originates from God's love. Sometimes people seem to present the holiness of God as an aversion to sin not unlike an aversion to germs a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder might experience. In the book Surprised by Christ, A. James Bernstein argues against this notion, saying, "God hates sin, not because of what it does to Him, but because of what it does to us."⁵ In short, God hates sin because it hurts us. We know from Scripture that God loves us dearly, so it makes sense that God would only want what is best for us. Even so, God knows, as well as we do, that our having what is best for us depends on the choices we make.

Imagine for a moment that you have a child. As a good parent, you love your child dearly, and you want only what is best for your child. Now imagine having to watch your beloved child continually spiral downward, making one stupid, selfish, destructive choice after another. Would you not be angry? Of course you would! It would be unloving for you not to be angry with your child for his or her destructive decisions. If your child's destructive actions did not upset you, I would question whether or not you really cared about your child at all!

St. Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, writes, "God's wrath is being revealed from heaven against all the ungodly behavior and the injustice of human beings who silence the truth with injustice." He goes on to say that "God abandoned them to their hearts' desires" and to "moral corruption."⁶ In this case, the wrath of God seems to be more passive than active. As C.S. Lewis wrote, "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'"⁷

I have a bad habit of letting my car's gas tank run dangerously low before refueling. One night, there was an accident on a major highway in my town, and traffic became congested, even on back roads. Of course, I had let my gas tank run low once again, and, already driving on fumes, I found myself in a traffic jam. Afraid of being stranded, I flew into a rageful panic. Luckily, I was able to get to a gas station. I told my mother about the incident, and she said that this would hopefully cause me to change my ways. I cynically yet honestly told her that I probably would not change my ways until I actually found myself stranded on the side of the road.

One night years ago, while I was watching a talk show, I heard Dr. Drew Pinsky say that there are two situations that will cause an addict to change his ways. Either the addict becomes so disgusted with himself that he is compelled to give up his addiction, or he comes to the realization that if he doesn't give up his addiction, he will die.

Maybe this is true, not just for addicts, but for all of us sinners. Maybe we will only learn some lessons the hard way. Maybe sometimes we have to get what is coming to us for us to be compelled to change. Maybe God has to let us hit rock bottom before we will begin look up at Him once again. Perhaps the wrath of God can be better understood as the tough love of God. Perhaps the punishment we receive from God hurts God more than it hurts us.

Before the people of Israel entered the Promised Land, God gave them a list of blessings they would receive if they did what was right and an even longer list of punishments they would face if they did what was wrong. God then promises them that, even if they do go astray, if they repent and return to Him, they will be restored.⁸ The good news is that punishment and wrath are not God's ultimate goal for the wayward. God's ultimate goal for all of us is our restoration.

God's tough love can be seen in the story of the prophet Jonah, in which God appears to torment Jonah from the beginning until the end. First, God commands Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh and to minister to a people whom Jonah hates. Next, when Jonah tries to run away from his duty, God sends a storm to stop him and a whale to swallow him. After Jonah convinces the people of Nineveh to repent and becomes angry that God decides to spare them, God destroys Jonah's shade tree to teach him a lesson. In this story, God is not just forcing Jonah to do what He wants him to do or simply trying to give Jonah a hard time. God is working to break Jonah of the hatred he harbors for his enemies.⁹

We can also see God's tough love in Jesus' Parable of the Prodigal Son. The father in the story surely knows what his son is really like: he knows that his son is arrogant, rebellious, and self-destructive. When the son asks his father for his share of the inheritance, the father gives it to him and allows him leave home so that he might learn the hard way the consequences of his behavior. When the son hits rock bottom and comes home, the father is so happy to see him he runs to him, throws his arms around him, kisses him, and throws him a welcome-home party.¹⁰

This story does not tell us about a hateful, vindictive, spiteful God who holds grudges. This story tells us about a God who welcomes us back, not when we have completely fixed ourselves, but when we have turned around and made a step in the right direction.

According to St. Paul, "The wages that sin pays are death, but God's gift is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."¹¹ Sins are actions that cause despair, destruction, and death. When Jesus died on the cross, the one who had no sin was destroyed by the sins of humans. In a very literal way, He received the wages earned by the hatred the religious leaders harbored for Him and the violence of the Roman Empire. When He rose from the dead on the third day, he showed that the "wages that sin pays" are not the end of the story.

God hates sin, but God only hates sin because He loves us. Sometimes God even becomes angry with us when we refuse to see the light and refuse to do what is best for ourselves and for others. Sometimes God might even let us get what is coming to us so that we will change our ways. I believe that we are punished by our sins more often than we are punished for our sins, but, if God does indeed punish us for our sins, it is only because we are God's beloved sons and daughters.


Notes:
1 - tvtropes.org: "Appease the Volcano God"
2 - Exodus 34:6, Psalm 103:8, Psalm 145:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2 (NRSV quoted)
3 - Micah 7:18 (CEB)
4 - 1 John 4:7-8
5 - A. James Bernstein, Surprised by Christ. 2008, Conciliar Press. p. 259
6 - Romans 1:18,24 (CEB)
7 - From The Great Divorce
8 - Deuteronomy 28-30
9 - See the entire Book of Jonah
10 - Luke 15:11-32
11 - Romans 6:23 (CEB)

The photograph of the Arenal Volcano in La Fortuna, Costa Rica is attributed to the USGS and is believed to be public domain. The painting The Return of the Prodigal Son was painted by Pompeo Batoni in 1773.


If you have any feedback, thoughts, stories, or even arguments to contribute, please leave comments.