Debt and grace

"Nothing is more repugnant to capable, reasonable people than grace." - John Wesley

Can you recall receiving a lavish, unexpected gift? You might have longed for it, you might be grateful for it, but you also might have often felt some inner resistance. Receiving often invites the idea that we "owe" something in return. The idea of owing anything to anyone is antithetical to many of us; we are independent and proud. Extravagant gifts, freely given, can be very difficult to accept whether they are from people or from God - like grace.

Owing money, while stressful, is different: It's impersonal, transactional. We live in a linear culture; the "if this, then that" nature of exchanges is like an elegant and efficient line of computer code.

Grace is not linear or transactional; The dynamism of God's grace is not neat. Grace can't be managed - God is generous beyond our comprehension. Oh, that pesky grace; there is no accounting for it. Unstructured and uncontrollable, it simply happens and is not subject to any modulation by human hands.

John Wesley reminds us that "capable" people do not like grace. And we love to see ourselves as capable. The free flow of God's grace is capricious and freely given; what does that have to do with how capable we are? Intentionally or not, we often make it about what we do for God, not the other way around.

Responding to a God who loves us unconditionally and who gives so freely is both a comfort and a challenge. We may profess our faith and try to live it authentically, but doing so is another matter.

As if the enormity of grace weren't challenge enough, God ups the ante and delivers us grace with peculiar bookends. What an outlandish story - a pregnant virgin teenager, her husband and the entirely unlikely appearance of the Messiah as... a baby?

A baby is so tiny, vulnerable and needy; imagine the clutch of His tiny hand around your finger. Yet the baby is our Savior.

The other bookend shows us death on a cross. If this is actually God, why is He struggling through the narrow, steep and stony paths of Jerusalem, with wood lashed to His back, wounds oozing? Is this what we did to our baby? The utter absurdity of God as a baby or a death row criminal is hard to handle. What kind of God is that?

If we pull back and survey the crèche and the cross, we encounter the tension between them as they provide the container for the dynamics of redemption. None of this makes sense, yet it is at the heart of who we are as followers of Jesus. Like any extravagant gift, it is hard for us "capable and reasonable people" to accept.

Enter in grace. This is the very kind of God that we need, an unlikely God who reveals Himself in remarkable ways; being born and dying for us, giving us new life. The gifts of the crèche and the cross are freely given from God. The instructions are simple and, as a result, are very difficult.

This is the comfort and the challenge of grace. God's gifts are bountiful and we can't "pay" off the debt with a transaction. To embrace the crèche is to embrace the cross. Both are tough for us capable, reasonable people.

(12/17/09) [[In-content Ad]]