Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 20, 2005

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

The year is 1517. The place is Wittenberg, Germany. A young university professor, who is also an Augustinian monk, posts a document on the Castle Church door. The document contains 95 theses that, among other things, contested the Catholic Church’s practice of selling indulgences, which were dispensations to get a soul out of purgatory or to relieve a sinner of the need to do penance. Posting these 95 theses in itself was merely a routine academic practice used to initiate debate on issues of scholarly interest. This document, however, was put up by Martin Luther, and it traditionally marks the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

By the time he posted his 95 Theses, Luther had been on a long and difficult spiritual journey. He had become a monk after being caught in a sudden, violent storm. He prayed to St. Anne, in Catholic tradition the mother of Mary, saying that if God would spare him in the storm he would become a monk. He didn’t die in the storm, so he joined the Augustinian monastic order. Shortly thereafter, however, he became troubled in his soul. He experienced what he called vexations or temptations. He was tormented by the thought that he was a sinner and out of God’s favor. He tried to earn God’s favor and to find spiritual peace by doing everything he could think of. He rigorously followed the discipline of his monastery. He fasted, went to confession frequently, and even tried self flagellation. Nothing worked. Nothing that he did gave him any inner peace or made him feel that he was justified in the eyes of God.

At the time, Luther was Professor of the Bible at Wittenberg University, so he spent a lot of time with the scriptures. One day, while engaged in his Bible studies, he had an epiphany. In scripture, and especially in passages from Paul’s letter to the Romans like the one we just heard, Luther discovered that, as one historian puts it, “God was the primary actor in salvation and that all human beings had to do was accept God’s promised deliverance.” Luther had discovered the centrality of grace. He had discovered that in the cross of Jesus God had redeemed creation once and for all. That’s all there is to it. God’s grace has saved us. There’s nothing left for us to do. Luther had failed in his attempt to earn salvation, but he came to realize that while we can indeed not earn salvation, we don’t need to. God has already done it for us. We can realize and live in that truth or not. That’s up to us. The fact remains either way, however, that God’s free gift of grace saves us, that is, puts us in right relationship with God, or, in more technical theological language, justifies us. The church had lost that truth in the early 16th century. Luther rediscovered it and changed history.

Now, you would think that hearing that God’s grace alone had saved all of humanity, indeed all of creation, would come to people as very good news. Indeed, it is very good news. Yet throughout history, and in our own time, and even in our own lives, we see people struggling with this idea and rejecting it. Somehow it just doesn’t seem right to us that everybody gets saved without having to do anything to earn it. Isn’t religion about doing what you need to do to get into heaven? What’s with this nonsense about us not having to do anything? Doesn’t that mean that even evil people get into heaven? And why should be try to live decent, moral lives if we’re all saved anyway?

These are, I suppose, serious objections to the idea of universal grace from a human point of view. I don’t want to spend a lot of time addressing them this morning. Let me just say that I don’t think that grace is only, or even primarily, about getting to heaven. It is about how we live our lives here and now. And I don’t think any behavior is truly moral if it is done primarily with an eye toward personal gain, even if that gain is postponed into the afterlife. I am comfortable leaving the eternal fate of all people, good and evil, to God.

Rather than spend more time on those objections to the universality of grace and to grace as a wholly free gift from God, I want to suggest another way to look at it. I want to expand on the way of looking at it that Paul suggests in this morning’s reading. In explaining that grace is God’s free gift that we cannot and do not need to earn, Paul says: "Now for one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works [or in some translations 'without working'] trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness." Romans 4:4-5 We could drive ourselves nuts, or rather, I could drive you nuts, trying to unpack Paul’s rather dense prose here. I won’t do that. I just want to look at Paul’s two examples, the one who works and the one who trusts, to see what they can tell us about God’s grace. And I want to look at those examples from the side not of the worker or the one who trusts but from the side of the one for whom the work is done or who is trusted.

Paul first gives us an image of the relationship between God and humans that comes from the world of work and employment. He gives us one who works for wages and the one who pays him. This is a relationship we’re all familiar with. It is contractual in nature. Two people have entered into an agreement. One will do specified work for the other, and that other will pay the worker an agreed upon wage for the work. The work on the part of the one creates a debt on the part of the other. The employer pays the wage, the debt, as he is legally obligated to do. It’s a business transaction. It is the stuff of lawyers and accountants. It is a matter of law. More importantly for our purposes, it is not a matter of love. Love has nothing to do with it. Because love has nothing to do with it, it is not a matter of grace but of earnings and compensation.

It’s different with the other image Paul gives us. In this image one party doesn’t work for the other, Rather, one party simply trusts the other, and that trust is rewarded. Paul doesn’t give us an earthly example of this relationship. Clearly, "the one who justifies the ungodly" here is God; but it seems to me that an earthly example of this relationship is not hard to find. It is, I think, the ideal of the parent-child relationship. Let me speak from my own experience. My children are grown, married, embarked on careers, on their own. They don’t work for me. I owe them nothing, and conversely they owe me nothing. Yet we all know that if the time should come when we are in need, when we need help of any kind, we will be there for each other, happy to do whatever we can for each other. We live in that trust in each other. It’s not a matter of law. Law has nothing to do with it. It is a matter of love.

Which relationship is more meaningful, more satisfying? The business relationship of earnings and payment or the family relationship of love? When I have a plumbing problem, I hire a plumber. The plumber comes, fixes the problem, and gives me a bill. I pay the bill. It’s an obligation, and I meet my obligation. I take no joy in it. I get no satisfaction from it. I’m not moved by it. It’s just a business transaction. But say my son comes to me needing help. Maybe he needs money. Maybe he needs a shoulder to cry on. Maybe he needs a little fatherly advice (not that in this particular case he ever follows it). Maybe he just needs someone to talk to, someone to reassure him of his worth and his value. When he does that, I’m there for him. I act not out of obligation. I have no legal obligation toward him any more. He has done nothing for me, and I feel no legal obligation toward him. He knows that I owe him nothing, but he comes to me trusting that I will be there for him. I act not out of obligation but out of love, and I feel joy and great satisfaction that I am able to help my son, to give him, as much as I am able, what he needs in his life, and that he trusted me to do that. Surely for all of us that relationship of love is far more satisfying, joyous, and life giving, that is the dry business transaction of paying the plumber.

The idea that we must do something to earn God’s grace turns our relationship with God into a business transaction with the plumber. There’s nothing wrong with business transactions, nothing wrong with paying the plumber. Such transactions are proper and necessary. They are, however, not matters of love, and we Christians know that our God is a God of love. We know that God loves us. We even say that God is love. That means that God gives us what we need without our having earned it and even when we clearly have not earned it. It has to be that way if God is to be a God of love. Making God’s grace conditional our anything we must do turns our relationship with God into paying the plumber. Grace as God’s free, unmerited gift to all people lets God be the God of love that we know in our Christian tradition, that we know in and through Jesus Christ.

And that is very good news indeed. Martin Luther sure thought it was. All of his efforts to bring his soul peace had failed. When he finally figured out that he had been justified by God’s free gift of grace all along, he could find that peace at last, and we can too. God’s free gift of unmerited grace can free us, if we will just let it, from anxious preoccupation with ourselves and our personal fate. We can trust all of that to God. When we do, we can get on with living the life of discipleship to which Christ calls us. That is a life of wholeness through service to God’s people. Yet when we understand God’s grace aright, we serve not to earn God’s grace. Grace is not the wage God owes us. It is God’s free gift of love. Thanks be to God. Amen.