The Lopsided Deal Maker--February 28, 2024

The Lopsided Deal Maker--February 28, 2024

"[Abraham] did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith 'was reckoned to him as righteousness.' Now the words, 'it was reckoned to him,' were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification."  [Romans 4:19-25]

Most deals in this life require both sides to bring something of value to the table.  

If I want a fancy coffee drink from my local coffee shop, I will need to bring the cash to the counter to pay for it, and a large mocha latte will cost a pretty penny more than watered-down industrial-pot coffee in a Styrofoam cup from a hotel's complimentary breakfast nook.  If I want to hire someone for a job, they'll need to bring a strong resume and set of skills, and I'll have to have adequate money to compensate them for their time and expertise.  Even kids in the elementary school cafeteria trading the contents of their lunches know you have to bring something good to the lunch table to trade: nobody will trade you their candy bar if all you've got to offer are stale candy message hearts leftover from Valentine's Day.  It's just conventional wisdom that any deal worth making requires you to pony up something of comparable value to what the other party is offering. That's just good business sense.

But of course, the God we meet in Jesus has never been bound to our notions of conventional wisdom.  That's why God's kind of deals--or "covenants," to use the traditional biblical language--so often strike us as strangely disproportional. God never makes a deal where God demands as much from us as God gives, because, well, to be honest, there's nothing we can ever give that matches God's extravagant goodness.  And in fairness, there's nothing God needs that we can offer, so God is never going to be able to get anything close to symmetry or parity in a covenant with us.  If God is going to relate to us (and God seems committed to that), God is going to have to be willing to live with getting far less out of us than God gives.

Or maybe, God just isn't interested at all with "getting." Maybe God is willing to give everything for our sake and simply calls us to trust that God's provision is enough.  In fact, how about we strike that "maybe" out of that last sentence altogether? Because to hear the apostle Paul tell it in this passage from Romans that many of us heard this past Sunday, this is exactly the sort of covenant God made with dear old Father Abraham, and it is the way God makes covenants with us, too.  God promised childless centenarian Abraham not only children, but a homeland, and blessing for all families of the earth.  And what did Abraham have to do for his part?  What did God "get" out of this deal? Precisely nothing.  The most Abraham could do was simply to trust that God was giving everything and that the promises were true.  Even his trust wasn't pointed inward at himself, but at God. That is to say, Abraham doesn't have "faith in himself," or "believe that he could do it" in order to achieve what God was giving. Abraham doesn't "have confidence in confidence alone," like Fraulein Maria sings in The Sound of Music, either.  In fact, when ol' Abe looks at himself, he knows he's just barely on this side of the grave.  Paul's rather brusque way of saying it is that Abraham's own ninety-something year-old body was "as good as dead," and yet he didn't waver in trusting or "weaken in faith"--that is to say, trusting God.  

That's it.  That's the most that Father Abraham himself brings to the table with God: trusting God to do everything.  And God, for God's part, says back to Abraham, "Ok. You've got a deal. We're square."  Or to put it in the biblical language, "God reckoned Abraham's faith to him as righteousness."  And in God's unusual kind of deal-making, there are no other strings, conditions, or terms.  There is nothing more Abraham has to "pay" in exchange for all this favor from God.  It's a lopsided (honestly, one-sided) covenant where God does all the giving and Abraham simply trusts it's true.

Well, from there, Paul says that this is how God still operates, and that this is the same way God has dealt with us in Jesus.  Paul uses Abraham's case as an example to say that God has never been in the business of quid-pro-quo deal-making, but always gives extravagantly costly and precious gifts to folks like us who only bring our empty-handed deadness.  Jesus, Paul says, was offered up as God's most costly gift--laying down his own life for our sake--and what we bring to the bargaining table is... well, simply the trust that God has done it all.  This is the kind of covenant God makes: where the infinite cost of God's own life is offered, and the most we can possibly do in return is to say, "I will trust your promise that this is for me, for all of us."

Our older brother in the faith, Martin Luther, made a similar point in his famous Heidelberg Disputation.  In the theses for that debate, Luther wrote, "The law says, 'Do this,' and it is never done. Grace says, 'Believe in this one,' and everything is already done." This is how God makes covenants--putting it all on the line at the cross without a thought for what God "gets" in return.  That sort of lopsided deal-making will get nixed every time among the moguls on Shark Tank, but our hope hangs on it.  And apparently it's the only kind of covenant God makes.

In a world full of loud voices who tell us only to do something for someone else if they are going to do or give something back to us of equal or greater value, it is a countercultural thing to cling to a God who gives, at great price, all we have ever needed, and leaves it to us only to trust.  But that's what it is to be claimed by the gospel: we are people who dare to believe that God makes such covenants, bringing everything of value to the table and putting it all in our hands with only the dare, "Trust me--I've got you covered."  Here are God's terms: we bring our empty-handed deadness to the bargaining table, and Jesus lays down his own life to give us back ours.  It might be horrible business sense, but it is news so good it makes you weep.

Believe it.  That's all there is to do.

Lord Jesus, enable us to trust that you've given everything for our sake, and let us live in that trust all our days.