Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 15, 2008

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.

As most of you know, I used to be a lawyer. Well, technically I still am, although I don’t know how much longer that will be true. My being a lawyer means, among a lot of other things, that at one time I went to law school. And like everyone else who’s been to law school I took a first year class in the basic law of contracts. Now, you probably think that a contract is a pretty simple thing. Two people agree that one will do one thing and the other will do something else, usually pay money in exchange for what the first person agreed to do. Well, the reason you think a contract is a simple thing is that, unlike me, you’ve never been to law school. The law can make anything complicated—often for good reason, actually, since the law deals with life, and life is pretty complicated—and contracts are no exception. In a law school contracts class you learn about such esoteric concepts as the peppercorn theory of consideration, liquidated damages, capacity to contract, illegal contracts, duress, and the assignability of contracts. Not simple stuff at all.

And you’re probably wondering, with good reason, why I’m up here rattling on about the law of contracts. This, after all, is church not law school; but I actually have a reason. Whether or not it’s a good reason I leave up to you. Our Scripture readings this morning from Exodus and Romans reminded me of one of those esoteric concepts of contract law. It’s the concept of the “condition precedent.” A condition precedent is something that has to happen before one party or another is required to perform some obligation under the contract. Say I contract with a builder to build a house for me, and the contract says that I have a progress payment due when construction is three-quarters complete. I don’t have to make that progress payment until the construction is three-quarters complete. In legal terms, the construction becoming three-quarters complete is a condition precedent to my obligation to make the progress payment. If the builder sues me for that payment when the work has not reached that level of completion, I can raise the failure of the condition precedent as a defense to the builder’s claim.

And you’re probably still wondering why I’m still spouting legalese at you. So in defense of myself let me direct your attention to our reading from Exodus. In that reading Yahweh, here called the LORD, tells Moses to say to the people “If you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed…you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” Exodus 19:5-6a NRSV What struck me about these words is that they contain a condition precedent. God promises to relate to Israel in a certain way, namely to treasure them and to consider them a priestly people and a holy nation. But God’s promise to do that is conditional. It contains a condition precedent, something that must happen before God’s obligation to relate to Israel in that way is triggered. God says “If you obey my voice and keep my covenant.” That divine “if” creates a condition that the people must meet before God has to do anything. It creates a condition precedent. Obeying God’s voice and keeping the covenant is the construction becoming three-quarters complete before I have to make that progress payment. If the people don’t obey, God has no obligation to them. God’s grace, God’s favor toward the people, here is conditional. God extends grace only if the people do what God wants.

I was struck by the conditional nature of God’s grace in this passage, and I was struck by the stark contrast between that understanding of God’s grace and the one that St. Paul expresses in our passage from Romans. There Paul says: “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand….” Romans 5:1-2a NRSV And he says: “God proves God’s love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8 NRSV (alt.) Here God’s grace clearly is not conditional. There is no condition precedent. We have access to God’s grace, we stand in God’s grace, through Jesus Christ. We don’t have to do a thing. God extended free grace to us “while we were still sinners,” that is, before we had done anything to deserve it, indeed while from a worldly perspective we did not deserve it. Grace isn’t about earning or deserving anything. It is about the free action of God, not about any action on our part. There is no condition precedent.

Now, from what I’ve said so far you think that the difference here is the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament, or even between Judaism and Christianity, but that isn’t really the case. There are places in the Old Testament where God extends grace despite the failure of the people to obey God’s voice and keep the covenant, that is, despite the failure of the condition precedent contained in our reading from Exodus. And there are places in the New Testament, particularly in the Gospel of Matthew and the Letter of James, where conditions precedent to God’s grace are pretty clearly stated. So just how are we to understand these two approaches to God’s grace, one conditional and the other unconditional?

My answer is that we humans seem to have an inherent tendency toward legalism. We tend to think in legalistic ways. We think in terms of a quid pro quo. We tend to approach our human relationships with the attitude “What’s in it for me?” Why should I do something for you if I don’t get anything out of the deal? That, after all, is the thinking behind at least part of the law of contracts, where a promise by one party isn’t enforceable unless there’s some promise by the other party as well. We project that very human way of thinking onto God, and we can’t understand why God would extend grace to us unless there’s something in it for God, namely, that we behave the way God wants us to behave or even think the way God wants us to think. That’s the idea behind the notion, very widespread in popular Christianity, that you have to believe a certain way, specifically that you have to believe that Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Savior, in order to be saved. Quid pro quo. Believe that, God is supposed to have said, and I’ll save you. Don’t believe that, God is supposed to have said, and I won’t. That way of thinking is nothing but a projection onto God of our very limited, human, legalistic way of thinking about things. Many of the authors whose writings found their way into the Bible—both Testaments—did not transcend that kind of thinking.

Yet can we really project that human way of thinking onto God? Isn’t God above such pettiness, such concern about getting something in return for whatever God may do for us? The Old Testament notion of covenant, which so often contained a condition precedent to God’s grace as we have seen, was grounded in certain practices of ancient diplomacy between states, where a powerful state would extend protection to a weaker one in exchange for a promise of loyalty and payments of tribute from the weaker one. The weaker state’s loyalty and payments were conditions precedent to the stronger state’s duty of protection. Is God really that human? Is God really that petty? Paul didn’t think so, and neither do I. God’s grace contains no such conditions precedent. It is free. It is unmerited. It is for everyone.

Does that mean we can do whatever we want? In a sense, yes. Nothing we can do will destroy God’s grace for us. Of that I have no doubt. Of that I can have no doubt, because if bad behavior on our part ends God’s grace, we are all lost. But in another sense the answer to that question is a resounding No! When we are the beneficiaries of such amazing grace, how can we not respond? How can we not respond by trying as best we can, within the limitations imposed by our humanity, to live as we know our gracious and forgiving God wants us to live? Maybe you can say no to God in response to God’s grace, but I can’t. I sure don’t respond perfectly. Far from it. But I try, and I know that you try too. That’s what the life of faith is about. Not trying to fulfill some impossible condition precedent to God’s grace but trying to respond to God’s grace with grace-filled lives.

So let’s rejoice that God is not bound by our human ways of doing things. Let’s rejoice that there are no conditions precedent to God’s grace. Let us give thanks to our awesome God whose love so far exceeds our human understanding. Let us give thanks to our amazing God whose mercy is wider than our imagining. There are no conditions precedent. Praise the Lord! Amen.