Grace, Upon Grace, Upon Grace

John 8:31-36

Then Jesus said, to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They said to him, “We are descendants of Abraham, and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘you will be made free?’”

Jesus answered them, “Very truly I tell you, anyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave has no permanent place in the household; the Son has a place there forever. So, if the Son makes you free, you will be free, indeed.”

---

We can’t deny that it’s hard to be human these days, right? I can make lemonade out of lemons with the best of them, but life on the planet – and in our little neck of the woods, even – is daunting, more often than not, it seems to me. Maybe that’s nothing new under the sun. Maybe I watch too much 24-hour news. I don’t know. But with Reformation on the horizon – the perennial message for which, in my opinion, is simply “grace upon grace upon grace upon grace.” So I’ve been keeping my eyes open for examples of grace lately that stand up, over and against, the hard stuff, and the ways of the world, that seem to win too much of the time.

A few weeks ago, Pastor Cogan had someone, out there in the world, question the fact that we give Needler’s grocery store gift cards to our food pantry clients. That’s not exactly something new under the sun, either. It’s happened before. People know – and have noticed – that sometimes our food pantry clients by pop or cookies or beer with the gift cards we give them, along with the other food we share. They wonder if that’s a good idea… if we should police that somehow… if it’s a waste to give gift cards to people if they’re going to buy anything other than fruits and vegetables, meat, cheese, or milk, I guess … if we should stop the practice of gift cards altogether.

I think it’s an expression of grace … a small act of generosity with no strings attached. Sometimes a person wants pop, or a cookie, or a beer … and the gift of dignity to make that decision is good news and grace, plain and simple, especially when someone suggests they aren’t worthy of it. Grace, upon grace, upon grace.

Last week I had a mother of three call for help with a few nights’ stay at the an extended stay hotel in Greenwood. At least one of her three kids was sick, she had just gotten a new job, but her first paycheck hadn’t come yet. She couldn’t move into her new apartment until the first of the month. She claimed to have called “every church in Greenwood.” And so on and so on…

I’ve heard all of that before. Whether she had actually called EVERY church in Greenwood, I don’t know, but she had surely given the same spiel to enough people that it rolled off her tongue with as much ease and detail as there was apology and desperation in her voice. There are times when I don’t oblige. And I could have been a sucker on Thursday, but I believed her and was able to get her and those kids a couple more nights of safety and sleep thanks to the gracious abundance of our Pastors’ Discretionary fund. Grace, upon grace, upon grace.

And, I heard an interview with the father of one of the victims shot and killed at that bar in Maine, on Wednesday. Through tears and choking on his words, he expressed an unfathomable amount of compassion and understanding for the stranger who killed his child, so violently and thoughtlessly, just days before.

This father said, he believed that, if the shooter had been in his right mind, he would have been a loving person, but that something went wrong. He was sure this man wasn’t born to be a killer and that he was sorry for whatever happened to make him that way. And, even though he had killed his son, he couldn’t hate him for that. He said he believed in the Lord and that he believed the Lord would prevail in the end. Grace, upon grace, upon grace, upon grace.

And because of this man’s words of compassion and understanding and mercy, it seems to me, that the Lord – and the grace of God we’re here to celebrate today – has already won, as hard as that can be to see sometimes. And not just as some high-minded theological concept, or cosmically, somehow, at the end of time, as our faith promises us: that God’s love is greater than this sort of hate; that life wins over death; that light shines in the darkness, and all the rest.

But I mean, that man reminded me that the Lord has won – and wins – here and now, all of the time if we allow it. Whenever someone can muster some measure of grace and kindness and humble compassion in the face of the horrible, ugly, terrifying sinfulness that seems to surround us, God wins. When a person can choose mercy and hope in the throes of such grief, God’s way has won. When a man can choose patience and understanding and empathy instead of all justification for judgement, vengeance and rage, God’s kind of grace and good news has – absolutely – won.

See, we can theologize all we want on Reformation Sunday. We can sing the praises of Martin Luther’s life and work and ministry… about the changes his theological insights meant for God’s church in the world … stuff like grace alone, faith alone, Word alone, the priesthood of all believers, and all the rest.

But, in all of that, Luther was pointing us, plainly and simply toward Jesus and to the kind of grace and good news his life, death and resurrection experienced, expressed and extolled for all people.

I also heard an interview with Jeffrey Myers, the Rabbi and Cantor from the Tree of Life Synagogue, in Pennsylvania, which was the site of that hate-filled, horrible shooting and massacre, where 11 people were killed five years ago, this Friday. He was sharing his perspective about the persistence of anti-Semitism in our country in light of the war between Israel and Hamas, overseas. He was talking about how there are still members of his congregation who haven’t been able to return to worship or feel safe in the world, generally, because of the fear and trauma they suffered that day, and because of the continued attacks and threats against the Jewish community in our country still.

When asked something about if, when, or how this might change, or if he had any hope for that change to come, Rabbi Myers said something about his hope that what he called the “silent majority” would become a “vocal majority” and start speaking up and speaking out and speaking more loudly than the voices of hate and discrimination and fear that dominate too much of our public life and discourse.

And that’s my reformation hope this time around. That something will change and be stirred up in Christians like us and in congregations like ours, who claim – like Jesus did – that God’s grace is the way to freedom; that to be loved by the Son – as he says this morning – is to be made free in spite of ourselves and in spite of our sins.

I think we are called, as people of God in this broken, hurting, sad and scary world, to lay claim to the gift of God’s grace – with no strings attached – and to be the vocal majority, Rabbi Myers is hoping for: to proclaim and practice this grace and good news in ways that are extravagant, surprising, and foolish, even, by the standards and expectations of the world around us.

I think we are called to be as aggressively gracious with the kind of mercy, forgiveness and love, we proclaim and long for, as those who proclaim, long for, and practice the opposite. And I think when we have the faith, courage, generosity and hope to put that kind of grace into action, God wins, here and now … and so will we and the rest of God’s children, just the same.

Amen

Enough and We Know It

Matthew 22:15-22

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said. So they sent their disciples, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and that you teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and that you show deference to no one, because you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

Jesus, aware of their malice, said to them, “Why do you put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” So they brought him a denarius. He said to them, “Who’s head is this? And who’s title?” They answered him, “The emperor’s.” And he said to them, “Give, therefore, to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and give to God, the things that are God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed, and they left him and went away.

---

I get that the Pharisees and the Herodians were out to “entrap” Jesus. It happens all the time in the Gospels, you may know. Religious leaders and others were always trying to trick Jesus and get him into trouble. They asked him hard questions about marriage and divorce and about which commandment was the greatest. They present him with seemingly impossible situations, like that woman they wanted to stone to death after catching her in adultery. They watch him spend time with tax collectors, sinners, the unclean, the outcasts and outsiders of all kinds, just waiting to pounce and prove him to be the fake and the fraud and the false prophet they believed him to be.

But what he really shows along the way is that all of their questions, tricks and traps, reveal as much about them as they do about Jesus. What I mean is, they already knew what they wanted to hear – and they always thought they knew what Jesus would say or do. They didn’t expect there to actually be a “correct” answer. In fact they knew there wasn’t a single correct answer Jesus could give, which is why they asked their questions or posed their predicaments, like they did, in the first place.

For the Pharisees, for example, the right answer this morning is, “don’t pay the emperor’s tax.” Faithful Jews should be beholden to God’s higher authority, not that of any government. They weren’t really supposed to even handle graven images like the coin they brought to Jesus, let alone use them for the work of the world’s empire in Rome. That’s the answer the Pharisees wanted to hear.

On the other hand, for the Herodians – who were beholden to the politics and politicians of that same Roman empire – the right answer this morning is, “you absolutely should pay your taxes.” As subjects to the powers that be, it is right and lawful to obey and to pay, as the Emperor demands.

So, in the minds of those who confronted Jesus today – according to their plans – in keeping with their respective world views – Jesus was, to put it theologically … screwed. If his answer favored the Pharisees, then the Herodians would be upset. If his answer favored the Herodians, then the Pharisees would have a bone to pick. And they were all there for it … to catch Jesus in a pickle, get him into trouble, add one more strike to use against him when the time came.

And, of course, in this instance, it’s all about money. And, of course, both sides of the fence want more of it for themselves. And, of course, Jesus amazes them with his response because he gives them an answer neither side expected or hoped for or believed could be true. Jesus tells them to do both.

“Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and give to God the things that are God’s.” And I think the lesson in that response is pretty simple – and something neither side, and too many of us, too much of the time, want to believe: that there’s enough to go around. That there’s enough to do both. That there’s plenty, and we all know it.

It reminds me of a question I’ve been asked a million times – and that I’ve wondered about myself, along the way. The question goes something like this: “When I decide about my offering … when I do the math about my tithe to the church … do I make that decision based on the “net” or the “gross” of my income?” My snarky reply is to say something like, “If your giving is an expression of gratitude – as it is intended to be – for the grace of God and for the forgiveness of your sins – are you grateful and hopeful that God forgives the “gross” of your sins, or just the “net?”

A more faithful and kind and thoughtful – less snarky – response, though, is to say something like Jesus implies … that there’s enough to be more generous than we are inclined, and we all know it, so give accordingly.

There’s an old joke about Lutherans … that the reason we don’t go down to the river to be baptized … the reason we merely sprinkle each other or cross our foreheads with water, rather than fully immerse one another as part of the sacrament … is because we don’t want to get our wallets wet. In other words, the joke is that we want all the blessing and benefits and abundance of God’s grace in our life, we just don’t want to have to respond to that with our money.

But again, Jesus would say, like he reminds us this morning, that there’s enough, and we know it.

There’s another story about the pastor who addressed his congregation during their latest financial stewardship campaign, telling them about all they were trying to accomplish with their ministry. The pastor told his people, “the good news is that, as a congregation, we have all the money – and more – that we need to do what God is calling us to do through our life together. The bad news is, that money is all still folded up in your wallets, and stuffed in your purses, and stored away in your checking and savings accounts.”

Again, as Jesus would say, and as Jesus showed, there is enough. There’s plenty if we’re faithful and honest and generous in the way God has already been so generous with us.

What Jesus is really calling us to today – and every day – is to be clear about where, in whom, and toward what we put our allegiance. And it’s about more than taxes to the powers that be, for sure. We are beholden to the IRS in more ways than some of us wish, but we are to obey the law, and we are to pray and work and vote in ways that move our government to deal with our tax dollars in God-pleasing ways – which can be a sad, frustrating, laughable proposition a lot of the time, as we know.

Which is why I happen to think it’s a gift to have somewhere else to give our money if and when our tax money doesn’t make God smile.

See, I hope you see the money you give to God through the ministry we share in this place as a blessing for the world around us that “the empire” can’t or will not muster. I’m talking about supporting organizations like Zoey’s Place – our Mission Sunday for the month, just as one example – that actually works alongside government organizations to do good work in the world…

… and, I mean building houses in Haiti, a place whose government is so broken and impoverished it can’t do the kind of work Zanmi Fondwa does with our help;

… and, I mean supporting organizations like Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, Lutheran World Relief, and Lutheran Disaster Response, organizations where our offerings do the work of God in ways our tax dollars just don’t;

… and, I mean feeding people who are hungry by way of our food pantry;

… and, I mean, generally creating a safe, welcoming, loving place of grace and good news and generosity and abundance for all people in a world that is full of so much to the contrary;

… and I mean doing our best as a family of faith to educate, encourage and inspire one another about what God’s kingdom can look like when we get it right in that regard.

We are called to give in ways that bless the world – even when, maybe especially when, the world doesn’t return the favor. We are called to give because we can, not because we have to. And we are called to do that through the Church – and in other ways and to other places, too – with the same kind of sacrifice and joy with which God has first given to us. And the truth, good news and holy challenge from Jesus today is that we have been blessed with enough abundance to do all of this, by God’s gracious generosity and in Jesus’ name.

Amen