The Width of Grace--May 3, 2022

The Width of Grace--May 3, 2022

"I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind--just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you--so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ." [1 Corinthians 1:4-7]

It's all been a gift.  Everything we have, every skill we possess, every insight we hold, every ability and capacity--even our lives themselves, they are all gifts we did not earn, given to us by a God who runs the universe according to an economy of mercy.  It's all grace.

Paul says as much to his readers in Corinth, and he would surely say the same to us as well.  All that we have, and all that we are, we have received as a gift from God.  Just saying that much reframes so much in our lives, doesn't it?  Acknowledging that all the good in our lives is a gift of God has a way of humbling us and hamstringing our pride.  It means I can no longer pretend that I'm a self-made success story, because whatever good I have done with my life has come from raw materials that were given to me before I had done a thing.  Like Carl Sagan once wryly observed, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."  In other words, for our purposes, every action, every achievement, every accomplishment, and every line on our resumes, these are all only possible with the gifts we have first been given freely by God.  All of what we do is dependent on earlier gifts, graces handed to us before we were aware of them.

For the people to whom Paul was first writing, all of this business about grace is laying the groundwork for Paul to take the air out of their overly inflated egos and their prideful posturing about their own greatness, their own wisdom, and their own strength.  The folks at First Church of Corinth were convinced of their own greatness, their status, and their intelligence, and they were proud to tell you about how great they were on all those counts.  They took it as their achievement, something that puffed them up and enabled them to look down on other people.  They lived in a big important city, after all.  They had wealth and status.  They were a center of culture, of fashion, and of commerce.  They were, in a word, privileged.

And maybe that's the real issue here.  Status, culture, and commerce, these can be lovely things.  Having a disposable income, or being able to buy what you want, or having access to works of fine art, music, and culture--these are not wicked or sinful things.  These are lovely and good things.  But when we fall for the belief that we have earned them, rather than understanding these are good things we happen to have been given access to, apart from our earning or deserving, they sour into the worst kind of privilege.  We end up telling ourselves that WE deserve these good things and that those who don't have them, don't deserve them, and we use the fact that they don't have them as the proof they haven't earned them. An honest set of eyes sees the good things to which we have access and says, "This is more than I have achieved or earned--this is a grace that has been given to me, but also which warrants being shared with others as well."  But a privilege-tainted view says, "These are mine, and that's how I know I'm better than the people who don't have them."  That's where so many of the folks in Corinth were--enjoying the perks of their city's geography and place in the empire, and then taking those as signs that they were inherently better, smarter, and more successful people.  

Of course, much is the same twenty centuries later.  We live in a land and a time with much wealth, culture, status, and success.  We are citizens of the Empire of our day (we call them "superpowers" today, of course), and we enjoy a long list of perks that come with that status. The real trouble comes when, like the Corinthians, we make the mistake of assuming that our success, our wealth, our status, or our place in society is something we have earned, and something that makes us better than everybody else.  We end up using marks of privilege as proof of superiority to everybody else, rather than seeing the good things to which we have access as gifts of grace meant to be shared--and certainly NOT meant for us to brag about.

Before all is said and done in this New Testament letter, Paul will have pulled the rug out from us more fully, and he will remind us that the things we think make us strong, successful, important, or like "winners" are not things we have achieved, but rather gifts meant to be shared. For now, though maybe the farthest we can go today is to take a truly honest look at the good things in our lives, and to see them as gifts of grace beyond our earning, meant to be shared with all.  Maybe the most we can handle is to acknowledge that so much of what we have told ourselves is the product of our sheer hard work and superior character are actually privileges we have been given beyond our deserving--and that such gifts of grace are not our private stashes to be hoarded, but windfalls meant to be shared all around.

Everything is grace in the end.  That is good news to be sure, but it is also humbling news, because it means that our best milestones and benchmarks were made possible by gifts from God, not merely our sheer willpower.  The quicker, and more completely, we recognize that truth, the faster we can quit bragging about signs of our privilege like they are our achievements, and the faster we can share the grace put in our laps with others who are just as beloved of God.  And from there, maybe we can dare to comprehend just how wide grace really is.

It's all been a gift.  It just sometimes takes courage to recognize that it is.

We pray:  Open our eyes to see just how deeply we are indebted to your goodness and generosity, O Lord.