Grace in the Plural

Grace in the Plural--June 28, 2018

“For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” (Ephesians 2:14)

The thing about grace is that it cuts both ways. 

In the end, that’s a good thing, but it can also make us squirm uncomfortably in our seats, too, in the mean-time.

Here’s what I mean.  Everybody likes the me-side of the grace equation.  Everybody likes to sing about how grace was “amazing” for “a wretch like me.”  It’s great to know that even when I was a mess, and even when I still am a mess, Jesus loves me through it all, and has forgiven me and accepts me.  In other words, when grace is a first-person-singular experience (grace for me, welcome for me, a new start for me), I’m all for it.

But if grace is what allows me to know God has put away the failures of my past, then—and here’s the hard part—grace also gathers in other people into the mercy of God… even people I don’t know, or don’t like, or don’t want to see forgiven.  Grace tells me that I have been brought into the family of God, not by my earning but because of God’s overflowing kindness—and that means that grace is bringing in other people, too, regardless of whether they meet with my approval.  I don’t have to like someone in order for God to love them.

Grace isn’t just first-person singlular (me), but second person (you), and third person (them, too!). And frankly, that can be difficult for… me.

It’s more “fun” to be the returned prodigal son, reveling in the abundant mercy of a forgiving and generous dad, than to see ourselves cast as the older stick-in-the-mud son who wants to poop the party because he doesn’t think his younger brother is worthy of all the attention at his homecoming.  But that’s the thing about grace—if grace is what “will lead me home,” as the song says, then everybody else who’s there in glory will be there by that same grace, whether I would have let them in or not.

That brings the humbling reminder that grace is Christ’s gift to give, not my personal get-out-of-jail card for me and me alone.  Jesus doesn’t have to ask my permission before he welcomes in a Zaccaheus, or a Matthew the tax collector, or an anonymous Samaritan woman who can’t seem to settle down, or self-important Martha, or skeptical Thomas, or blowhard Peter, or insecure Paul.  That puts each of us in our place—and it also, at the very same time, is what makes a place for each of us at the table.  I can’t help but offer welcome to you here in the family of God, because God has welcomed me the same way.  That might be tough, but it is also such a source of comfort, too.

This is the key to what it means that Christ Jesus is our peace.  Not merely that he taught us to live in peace.  Not merely that he made a helpful suggestion that we live at peace.  Not even that Jesus can give us a warm, fuzzy feeling inside that will make us like each other better and therefore be more agreeable.  But Jesus is our peace, because only a Lord who rules by grace can make us able to welcome one another.

If I am still stuck in the old earning-your-way mentality, I will be always comparing myself to the next person, trying to edge them out, get a better spot or ranking than they have, acquire more, do more, etc.  And when that happens, I cannot really be at peace with anyone around me—they will always be threats to me getting enough of what I want.  But Jesus makes peace because he breaks the old ‘earn your way’ thinking by grabbing a hold of all of us apart from what we deserve and simply on the basis of his choosing to love us when we didn’t earn it.  

That's what breaks down the boundaries between us--the radical, wonderful, humbling admission that all of us belong simply by grace.  The wall comes down (or as Ephesians says, Jesus broke the wall down--go Jesus!) because everybody, on all sides, has been gathered into to the beloved community by grace.  For the Christians in Ephesus, who came from Jewish and Gentile (anybody who wasn’t Jewish) backgrounds, all of this was very real and very important.  Each side, each group, had to come to the point of admitting they were there, not because of their own religious accomplishments, but by grace.  And once they could accept it about their group, they realized that Jesus had given the same gift of welcome to the others.  He was their peace.

And this is really the subversive beauty of what grace does.  The Jewish members of the early church had to recognize that it was by sheer divine grace that they happened to be born into the nation, culture, and covenant in which they found themselves.  And the Gentile members of the early church had to see that their inclusion was a gift, too, which they had not earned.  That meant everybody recognizing that the other had been welcomed in already by God, by grace, and that that they themselves had only been included by God, by grace.  There is nowhere you can stand within the beloved community and not be there "by grace," which means that I don't get to say things like, "I have a right to be here, and you don't."  I am here as a gift I did not earn... and that means recognizing when others ask for the grace to be accepted in included as they are, too, they are asking for nothing less than the grace already shown to me, grace which was my only hope already.

Let's be utterly clear about this: among the beloved community, nobody--not a one of us--get to say, "I have a right to be here that I earned, and you don't belong because you didn't earn it."  Among the beloved community, there is only grace... well, grace, among the rubble from a dividing wall that Jesus has already knocked down.

From now on, there’s no comparing anymore between me and you.  There’s no need for fear that if you’re in the group then my place is threatened.  There’s no more pretending that I’m “in” with God because I have the right heritage or do the right deed or even that I have memorized the correct set of religious facts.  That was the vital issue in the first century when the lines were drawn between Jewish and Gentile people, and the same is true for us:  because Jesus has claimed each of us, regardless of our actions, Jesus really is our peace.  That’s good news for me… but not just me.

Grace is given in the plural.

O Christ our Lord, you have already knocked down the wall we put up between one another, and yet we keep building them back up. Come with your gracious bulldozer and break it down again.  Amen