Date: April 17, 2011
Scripture Lesson: Matthew 21:1-11
Sermon: Reconciling Grace
Pastor: Rev. Kim P. Wells
When I was in elementary school we attended a large United Church of Christ congregation in the Washington, D.C. vicinity. There was lots of programming for children and youth. On Wednesdays after school and into the evening, we had a program called “Expanded Plan.” There were groups, rehearsals, and classes held along with a dinner each week. One Wednesday a friend and I skipped our group and instead went into the girls’ bathroom and rolled the room with all the spare toilet paper that we could find. We had a ball and proceeded with gleeful abandon! As we finished the job, the door of the bathroom began to open slowly and in walked the Director of Christian Education, Marian K. Tate, an elderly woman with graying hair and a slight stoop. She examined the result of our exploits and invited us to her office. Oh boy. Somehow, we simply had not expected to be discovered. We figured everyone was busy in drama group, Bible Study, choir rehearsal, youth orchestra, and Confirmation class. We never expected Ms Tate, or anyone else for that matter, to be patrolling the restrooms. Getting caught was a shock.
So, we followed Ms Tate to her office, bracing ourselves for a severe scolding, maybe expulsion from Expanded Plan, and certainly a call to our parents. At that time, my father was the Conference Minister for the Central Atlantic area of the UCC, a higher up church bureaucrat. That would certainly be embarrassing.
As we sat down, Ms Tate closed the door and sat down as well. She looked at us. We were ready for her to let it fly. Instead, she asked us what changes or improvements we could suggest for the Expanded Plan program. What kinds of activities would we enjoy? She wanted to know how to make the program better so that we would want to participate. Evidently she felt our misbehavior stemmed from boredom. We were flabbergasted! We mumbled something about liking things as they were. We didn’t have any dissatisfaction. Then she sent us back to our group. That was it. No scolding. No calls to our parents. Nothing. She took the tact that our bathroom shenanigans were the result of a deficiency in the program. And that was the end of it. In my young mind, this was pure grace. There was no other explanation.
Well, in a context like that, you can see how easy it is to grow up believing in a God of grace, love and forgiveness. That’s what was embodied in our church time and again in various ways. We were taught love, forgiveness, compassion, generosity, and justice. We were told that all people were children of God, even those people in Vietnam with whom we were at war. God loves everyone no matter what. Each and every human being is created in the image of God, holy and sacred. And we are good. We were shown that Jesus taught peace and non-violence. We were taught that God, unlike people, could forgive and forget. God always gave second chances, and 10th chances, and 70 times 7 chances. We were shown a God of hope and new life. Everyone good and everyone loved. Yes, we were capable of terrible things, but always with the potential and capacity for good. We were not taught that people would be going to hell after they died. Hell, if there was such a thing, was what we experience here when we are not loving and forgiving and compassionate and generous with ourselves and everyone else. That’s what we learned in word and deed at church. We worshiped a God of unconditional, amazing love and grace.
When it came to Lent and Holy Week and we had our special services, and yes, we sang of our sins:
Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee!
Twas I, Lord Jesus, I, it was denied thee;
I crucified thee.
And
My song is love unknown, My Savior’s love to me,
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I, That for my sake,
My Lord should take Frail flesh, and die?
My Lord should take Frail flesh, and die?
And
What thou, my Lord, hast suffered Was all for sinners’ gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression, But thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, My Savior! ‘Tis I deserve thy place;
Look on me with thy favor, Vouchsafe to me thy grace.
As we sang these hymns each year in Holy Week, I knew we were sinful people. We had all this potential for good, like Jesus, and we were squandering it. We weren’t doing enough to help the poor. We were killing people in a war on the other side of the globe. Blacks didn’t have equal rights. Women did not have equal rights. I knew our guilt was our lack of solidarity with Jesus when it came to caring for the sick, the poor, and the oppressed. It was my lack of generosity, my apathy, my collusion with the systems of injustice and violence in society. We weren’t doing enough to make this world the way God wanted it to be: A happy home for everyone.
Growing up in church, we were taught to understand that if Jesus came today, he would probably still be crucified for challenging those in power and authority; for bucking the status quo; for being anti Establishment. And we would probably let it happen. We thought of all the people committed to justice and peace who were being targeted and harassed around us like the peaceful demonstrators in the South and the students at Kent State. Yes, we were taught our potential for denying and opposing God’s unconditional, nonviolent love.
When I heard the stories of Holy Week, I knew it was possible for the same people who shouted, “Hosanna!” to later in the week shout, “Crucify!” I could understand that because I had experienced my own fickleness. I knew about betrayal of principles in a situation of fear. When threatened, I knew that I could say and do things that in other circumstances would seem completely out of character. As human beings, we are, after all, gifted with free will. And sometimes we choose the good, the true, the loving approach. And sometimes we don’t. So I could understand how even the disciples could say they are going to stay with Jesus, and then, when push came to shove, desert him. Faced with fear, worried about survival, an almost instinctual defense kicks in that we have to override to truly take the higher path. I could see going with instinct. I could sympathize with desertion of principles. Our sin, our transgression, that thwarts love and compassion.
For me, the idea that we have free will and choose our path was what made Jesus’ choice to go to Jerusalem so incredible, so moving, so compelling. He knew he was going where there was threat and danger. He really was ready to face death for his friends. He was not going to let fear and intimidation keep him from fulfilling his religious observance of going to the Temple for the Passover. He did not let fear and intimidation keep him from teaching in the Temple, where he had a right as a rabbi to teach. He did not let fear and intimidation keep him from inviting all to be part of God’s universal community of love. He wouldn’t let religious rules about clean and unclean, and gender and position overrule God’s expansive love. He was committed to embodying universal love, regardless of who got upset about it, who felt threatened by it, who opposed it. Like the crowds and the leaders, Jesus made choices. And the choices he made involved staying true to the universal love of God. And those choices led to his being crucified on the cross. Part of what makes Jesus the one I want follow is his constancy, his
purity of heart, his commitment, his choices. To me, he shows us all that we, at our
best, have the potential to be. He is an agent of grace. He says yes to grace, and
yes to love, all the time.
That is the story, the understanding of Christianity, that I grew up with. It wasn’t until I went to seminary in my 20‘s and took an introduction to theology course that I was exposed to what is called the “substitutionary theory of the atonement.” I listened as it was explained. My eyes were wide with astonishment. The broad strokes are that people are born sinful, the result of original sin, in the garden of Eden. They cannot save themselves, their transgression is so complete. So, God has to save them. And God decided to do this by sending his son, Jesus Christ, to be crucified and die as a sacrifice for original sin. Jesus, the sinless one, is perfect, and when he dies, his death is good enough to satisfy God, pay God back, settle the account between God and sinful humanity. So the only way back to God, for a human being, born in sin, as we all are, is to believe in Jesus as the one who died for our sins and settled the score with God for us. Having gone to church my whole life, it was only in seminary that I heard of this grand plan for our salvation. For those of you who grew up with this, you must find it astonishing that I knew nothing of all this.
And when I heard it, I have to say, I found it hard to believe. In his recent book, Saving Jesus from the Church, UCC Pastor Robin Meyers cynically explains the plan this way: “The doctrine of original sin gave the church a permanent clientele in a salvation enterprise with no competition. You are born a hopeless sinner and sentenced to eternal damnation unless you ‘purchase’ the only ‘product’ that can save you.” (p. 104) That’s pretty much what the substitutionary atonement sounded like to me. It made people bad. And gave you only one way to be saved. And that was through the belief system of the church. So the church really controlled salvation.
I simply could not and cannot reconcile the God who I met at church and in my family and in the stories of Jesus that we learned in Church School and Expanded Plan with this story of all people being bad, and God having to be paid for their sin, and restitution being made through human sacrifice. If we were all created in God’s divine image, and all children of God, how could we all be bad, to the core, irredeemable, except through this payment scheme? I had learned the story of the sacrifice of Isaac. Wasn’t God against human sacrifice? Was God an accountant? I thought God did not keep score. If God wanted to save us, it surely wouldn’t involve suffering and violence and injustice, the very things Jesus was trying to eradicate. How could a God of love be behind such a scheme?
I also could not accept a plan that gave so much power and control to the church. It solidified control and put the church, i.e. male priests and the hierarchy, in a position of ultimate power over everyone’s eternal fate. Now that’s a leverage point to extract control, power, money, and submission. I grew up in a home that was all about church. My father was a pastor. Then he served over hundreds of churches offering leadership and guidance. I had heard enough stories to write a book about the crazy things that went on in church. I simply could not accept that God would put that much store in this human institution.
I also could not accept the way this story of Jesus being sent to die for our sins seemed to prescribe everyone’s roles. Where was the choice and the free will? It was put across as if Jesus was sent to be crucified and that was it. He had to do it. The disciples had to desert him. Judas had to turn him in. The people had to shout, “Crucify him!” Everything had to take place just as planned ahead of time by God to happen just this way. It is almost as if the people in the story are all puppets. That just didn’t square with the notion of people having free will. And for me, it undercut the significance of Jesus’ ministry because it made him seem like an automaton, programmed for what he did, instead like a human with free will who made choices along the way, choices of faithfulness to God, that came at the cost of his life. I was more moved by a person who would choose such love, than by someone who was simply playing out a pre-ordained part with no choice in the matter.
And, last of all, I found that this scheme was so limiting of God. The God of unconditional love and grace, I believed, could work in all kinds of ways. What about people of other religions? Where was the hope for them? What about people of no religion? Was there really only this one way to be saved? I can’t believe it. This Lenten season, we have reflected on how grace is surprising, and unpredictable, often unexpected, and always uncontrollable. This idea of Jesus being sent to die for our sins as the only way God saves us is for me just too limiting for the God of grace that we see in the Bible and in the ministry of Jesus and in the world over the eons.
For those who grew up with the substitutionary theory of the atonement and for whom it has meaning, I am sympathetic. If it is working for you as a way to understand your spiritual journey, wonderful. If this belief draws you closer to God and to your neighbor, God bless you. If this understanding of grace draws out your goodness, hold on to it. If this story fills you with unconditional love for God’s whole human family and for the world, take it! I would never want to take that away from anyone. I would never say that God can’t work this way.
What I will say, however, is that I cannot believe or accept that God works ONLY this way. I cannot accept that the substitutionary atonement concept is the only way that God saves. I cannot believe that it is the only way to appropriate the unconditional love of God. I believe that our spiritual journey may take us in other directions. God can work in other ways to draw us closer to God and to our neighbor. God can draw out our goodness in other ways. We can be filled with unconditional love for the whole human family and for the world in other ways. We can be agents of grace in myriad ways. In the book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard tells of an Eskimo who asks a priest, “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?” The priest responds, “No, not if you did not know.” To which the Eskimo replies, “Then why did you tell me?” (Cited in Meyers, Saving Jesus From the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus, p. 104) God can work in many ways.
The week ahead is the a time to remember the most compelling stories of our faith tradition. They continue to speak to us year after year after year with multiple meanings and layers of understanding. As we proceed into the week ahead, may we not be afraid to remember and to risk letting ourselves be drawn into the unconditional love of God that we see in Jesus. May we welcome God’s grace and love however it may come. Amen.
A reasonable effort has been made to appropriately cite materials referenced in this sermon. For additional information, please contact Lakewood United Church of Christ.
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