Paul Walker, “Grace: It Either Is or It Isn’t”
A few Fridays ago, Christie and I were out doing errands in the late afternoon. One of which was going out to a barn Whitehall to groom our daughter’s horse and bring her feed. We looked a little sloppy, as you might expect for such a task. We were dusty and may have smelled like horse, but it was nearly 5 o’clock on our way back into town as we passed Duner’s.
Duner’s is one of the few places in town you can get a proper martini, so although Christie thought we were underdressed, I made us get in line a few minutes before Duner’s opened. A man in a crisp suit, with his wife and daughter were in front of us. He looked at us with contempt and said, “I’m sorry, maybe you don’t realize that the service entrance is around the back.” His daughter was horrified. His wife looked like she was used to this kind of behavior. I smiled, walked in, sat at the bar and enjoyed my martini, and silently thanked the man for giving me a great sermon illustration!
In this morning’s gospel, Jesus tells a parable aimed at those who trust in their own righteousness and regard others with contempt. Now, it’s not lost on me that the morning I’m planning on talking to you about tithing during our announcement time is the day the lectionary gospel reading includes a character who gives away 10% of his income, practicing the biblical tithe – the very thing we are urging you to consider this year in our stewardship campaign. But the kicker is that Jesus makes it clear that the tither is the rat in the story -unsavory foil. He’s the guy you don’t want to be like.
He is the one who lists all his outward accomplishments: fasting, giving his money away, praying loudly so everyone will hear, thanking God he is not like the people who need to go in through the service entrance. He actually says, “Thank God I am not like other people”. Yet he is the one who goes down from the temple and back to his home unjustified. He is the one who trusts in himself and regards others with contempt. He is the one who exalts himself and so sets himself up to be humbled.
So perhaps it’s a good thing that before I encourage you to give your money away, you hear this sermon and hear it loudly and clearly. Everyone including myself will remember that the grace of God is absolutely free and it completely transcends the parameters of deserving. Indeed, it travels outside of karma. Grace makes no demands at all, or else it wouldn’t be grace. You may have heard people disparaging “cheap grace.” Cheap grace is thought to be God’s gift that we then take advantage of by not treasuring it and responding in kind.
Well – two points on that. The first is that everyone everywhere does that! And everyone everywhere, if honest, can see a little of himself or herself in the man who looks down on other people. Nobody is even remotely capable of fathoming the depth of God’s gift of grace and not take it for granted. The second point is a point of logic: either grace is a gift, or it isn’t a gift. It’s like being pregnant: you are, or you aren’t and there is no in between. So, it is with grace. It either is or it isn’t. Logically, there can be no cheap grace, because grace isn’t just cheap, it is free, no matter how we respond to it. If it is cheap, it can’t be grace.
God does not demand 10% of your income in exchange for His grace. Not 5% nor 1%. If anything, God wants 100% of you – for all that you are and all that you have comes from His hand anyway. But be that as it may, He is the one who says in the book of Isaiah, "Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost". And anyone who is telling you anything different is selling you something you do not want and for sure it is NOT the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Back to the bible. The parable this morning is a follow up on the one from last week – the parable of the judge and importunate widow. In both parables you have 2 characters who are foils: one holds all the social, financial, and religious cards, and the other either has no hand at all or, more likely, is excluded altogether the game. Today we have Mr. Upright Citizen verses a scurrilous Tax Collector. Tax Collectors back then skimmed a little of the top for themselves. What’s worse it that the were Jews who were taking money from their own people at the behest of an almost certainly corrupt government. Like the widow from last week, the tax collector is nobody’s idea of a role model.
The difference in the parables is that judge in last week’s story, though a foil to the powerless outcast, knew himself to be a cad, with no fear of God and no respect for people. This week’s cad, the loud guy in the suit, seems to have no idea that he is rotten on the inside. He wears his good deeds on his sleeve, sure that they would impress God and everyone within shouting distance. Whereas the guy who knows himself to be a sinner through and through, looks down at his shoes, talks only to God, and cries out the only true thing about himself: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
God, be merciful to me, a sinner. If you only say one thing to God your entire life, that is what you say – because it is true for all of us. The tax collector’s prayer is answered; his honesty is met with mercy, and he goes down to his house justified. Note, there is no mention of reform here. That is because grace is grace no matter what. It either is or it isn’t.
In Jeannette Walls memoir, “The Glass Castle”, she recounts her traumatic childhood – mentally ill mother, alcoholic father, poverty, you name it. But somehow, she emerged out of this to land a job in New York as a writer, covering movers and shakers. When she was urged to write her own story, she was terrified – certain that if people knew the truth about her, she was be totally shunned and lose everything she worked so hard for. Instead, the opposite happened. People embraced her. You might say that she told the truth about herself and was met with mercy.
Telling the truth about yourself seems like a bridge too far, doesn’t it? Those secrets you want no one to see? Well, a good start is using the words of the tax collector this morning: God, have mercy on me, a sinner. As the psalmist says, “While I held my tongue, by bones waisted away, because of my groaning all day long. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not conceal my guilt. I said, ‘I will confess my transgression to the Lord. Then you forgave me all the guilt of my sin.’”
God did answer the psalmist’s, the tax collector’s, and our prayer when Jesus took the sin of world into himself as we hung on the cross. He took the tax collector’s rightful place on that cross. He took your rightful place on that cross. He took mine, too. He gave 100% of Himself for you, for the world He loves. His act of love is impossible to “repay” – 10% or otherwise. His grace is only to be received. And I’m grateful that we are all here today to receive the amazing grace of God.
Amen.