Home Free

Home Free--October 12, 2018

Then [Jesus] opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." [Luke 24:45-47]

Okay, we need to start with this, just to make sure it is absolutely clear:

YOU are forgiven.

You ARE forgiven.

You are FORGIVEN.

You will notice, I hope, the absence of fine print in those three sentences, as well as a lack of asterisks or conditions.  

That is, after all, the gist of "proclaiming" something, as opposed to making a sales pitch or closing a deal.  Proclaiming something--say, for example, the forgiveness of sins--is a declaration of an already accomplished reality, a statement about how things are, not simply how they could be, a claim about a fact that can be relied upon.  If I am selling you something, by contrast, everything will be conditional:  "If you sign on the dotted line..." or "After you become a paying subscriber..." or "Once you have been approved by the bank..."  For whatever situations that may be appropriate language, none of those is making a proclamation.  Those are all sales pitches.

And, as Jesus takes care to tell his followers heading out into the world, we are not sent to sell anybody anything.  We are here to proclaim a new order of things that is already begun.  We are here, not to say, "You, too, could be forgiven, if only you will do these three things and then recite this prayer from a card," but rather to say, "You are forgiven.  It is a done deal. You are home free already."

As a case in point, consider the most famous American instance of "proclamation," the one that a certain sixteenth president uttered on January 1, 1863 to declare the freedom of all slaves who were, to that point, still captive as owned property by white slaveowners in the Confederate states.  Lincoln's immortal Emancipation Proclamation was clear--he was not making an offer, one which could be accepted or rejected.  Rather, Lincoln saw himself as having the authority to declare outright that "all persons held as slaves are, and henceforth shall be free."  You'll notice that Honest Abe did not leave much wiggle room, at least in his wording.  Yes, we could note that the Proclamation did not include slavery in loyal border states, and yes, we could note that the practical application of the Proclamation depended on enforcement by the Union army.  But in terms of the wording of the proclamation itself, Lincoln doesn't make this freedom conditional on future performance of service to the Union, required military enlistment in order to buy freedom, or an oath of loyalty to the President.  The freedom is unconditional in that sense, and it is treated as a declaration, rather than an offer.

It's worth noting that this is the force of Jesus' word "proclaim" here in the end of Luke's Gospel.  Jesus ain't sending out his disciples (now "apostles" in the sense that they have been "sent") to go recruit club members, to drum up more income in a pledge drive, or to accept an offer of some kind.  Jesus is sending his followers out to declare two things:  "repentance" and "forgiveness," and neither of those is a quid-pro-quo "deal." (This is a good time to remember, too, that pretty much, Jesus is not interested in those kinds of "deals," and even when the God of the Bible does make covenants, God isn't a jerk who tightens the screws to "get more" from the covenant partner--God doesn't leverage divine power to squeeze us, but looks for more and more ways to give life to all.)

"But wait!"  I can hear the protests arising, "Jesus does say that repentance is part of the message, too!  Doesn't that mean that Jesus is saying you have to do something (e.g. whatever counts as "repenting") in order to get something (e.g., the prize of forgiveness)?"

Great question.  And the answer comes in a single word that rhymes with "rope."  Nope.  Repentance isn't a hoop to jump through in order to earn forgiveness, any more than turning into your driveway "earns" you an arrival at your home.  It's not about earning.  It's not about conditions.  It's about recognizing where you already are.   

That might sound like a trite example, but let's stay with it for a moment and poke at it.  Imagine you are driving home from a long day's work, longing simply to be in the familiar comfort of the house where you can put your feet up and rest.  Your car, of course, is the one doing the real work here, so let's not even pretend it is "labor" in any meaningful sense on your part to get home.  But when you have arrived at your driveway, turning away from the main road and turning toward your house is not a condition by which you "earn" or "achieve" your homecoming--it is simply an acknowledgement of where you are now.  You are home--acting like that is true will mean turning from the old course of movement and heading (briefly) in a new direction, usually at about 90 degrees perpendicular to the road.  The turning doesn't earn you a spot at home--the change of direction is simply what it looks like to acknowledge that this house at your left (or right) is yours.

For all the ways we have misused and blunted the edge of the word, "repentance" is really about turning. It is a turning, not of your car to go in a new direction to get into your driveway at which you have already arrived, but of your mind and heart and deepest self.  It is a turning away from whatever direction we had been going, and a turning toward the reality that you are at home with God, drawn into the forgiveness at which you have already arrived.  In his book The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard suggests that the biblical declaration, "Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand!" has the same feel in the Gospels as the host of a dinner party directing the guests to the table prepared by saying, "And now if you'll turn to the left, the dining room is at hand--go on in!"  In other words, the biblical writers aren't trying to sell us on something, so much as they are telling us, "You are home.  The driveway is at hand.  Time to change directions because you are already here."  The only question, really is whether we dare to believe that it really is true that we are home free.

But as far as the message being proclaimed, it's all a done deal.  The forgiveness has already been declared.  The debts are cancelled.  It is, as Jesus said in his first sermon at his hometown while quoting Isaiah, "the year of the Lord's favor," and the captives are all going free, while the jubilee trumpet is wiping the slate clean.  And because the forgiveness we are proclaiming is an accomplished fact, the word about "repentance" is simply the call to everybody to turn into the driveway because we are already home free.  

So for us who call ourselves followers of Jesus, here is the challenge on this day: we are dared to announce the naked reality of grace, not as a sales pitch, a negotiation, or a special offer for paid subscribers.  And the naked, unadorned truth of grace is simply this: you are forgiven.  You are forgiven.  You are forgiven.  That message can be taken anywhere and everywhere, to everyone, regardless of their behavior, their status, their placement on the nice or naughty list, their age, gender, race, class, or Hogwarts house placement.  It can be spoken, free and clear, without asterisks and without conditions, because from God's perspective, it is a done deal.  It is not an offer being made, pending your acceptance--that's not a "proclamation."  It is a declarative sentence in the indicative mood:  You are forgiven.   Turn into the driveway, because you are home free already.

There are certainly going to be folks who don't like that message. It will sound too easy. It will sound too reckless.  It will sound like it doesn't take the "importance of sin" seriously enough.  It will sound, they will say, like "cheap grace," misusing one of Bonhoeffer's essential (but now terribly abused) phrases.  We should be prepared that others will think we are saying that it doesn't matter what we do in this life, or that we are giving people permission to wallow in wickedness.  Don't worry--that is exactly what they said to the apostles when Jesus sent them out into the world announcing that everybody--men, women, rich, poor, Jews, Gentiles, zealots and centurions and everybody else, was included in the community of Jesus. That is exactly what they said when folks read Paul's words that "While we were still enemies, Christ died for the ungodly."  And it is exactly what led the Respectable Religious Crowd to call for Jesus' death because he kept going to dinner parties with the most notorious "tax collectors and sinners" without first requiring that they change their lives as a condition of being in his presence. The radical proclamation of Jesus' message--"repentance and forgiveness for all nations"--has always been accused not sounding enough like a "deal" to our sinful, self-serving ears.  And Respectable Religious people have always felt the need to try and help God leverage divine power to "get" more from the negotiations with sinful humanity... and all the while, God has been saying, "I don't need your help to get anything more--you are forgiven, the whole lot of you."

So, knowing that the objections will come, we will simply respond like this: You are home free.  And when you are home free and believe it to be true, you turn the car into the driveway, not as a precondition or a prerequisite, but because you have already arrived.  If we dare to face the truth that we have needed such grace, that will be good news.  And those who are so preposterously full of pride (among other things) that they do not believe they have ever needed forgiveness, they will not believe the announcement that they are already forgiven, and will end up stalled out in the road just beyond the driveway and the mailbox, thinking they are impressive and great because they have never turned the steering wheel.  And that will be a damn shame--but mind you, it will not have been a failure of God's forgiveness, which has already always been there, declaring like a GPS device, "You have arrived at home."  The arrogant imbeciles who do not believe they have ever needed forgiveness will run out of gas at the edge of the yard.  But the forgiveness is not a conditional offer--it is a proclamation, like Lincoln's, that we are all already set free.

So hear it now, friends, Romans, and countrymen: you are forgiven and home free.

And hear it now, you notorious "sinners," outcasts, mess-ups, addicts, schemers, and crooks: you are forgiven and home free.

And hear it now, you Respectable Religious Crowd who are so afraid of the free gift that is their only hope:  you are forgiven and home free.

And hear it now, even you self-absorbed arrogant blowhards who don't think you need to be forgiven: you already are, and you are right at the driveway.  You are forgiven and home free.

See?  The challenge is not that we have to come up with different wording or fine print for different audiences.  The real challenge for us who have been sent by Jesus is to dare to speak the same bald-faced declaration of forgiveness and freedom and speak it to every ear we find.

Lord Jesus, let us dare to believe your proclamation that we are forgiven and home free already, and then let us dare to take your message to all the world, without fine print or conditions.