[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Cheap Grace

Mike preached on cheap grace this morning, beginning with Dietrich 
Bonhoeffer. Grace is free, Mike said, but it isn't cheap.

The standard response is "Huh?" How can anything be both free and not 
cheap? That's our materialistic way of looking at things. Free means 
that I can help myself without payment; not cheap means that the 
payment is going to be substantial, perhaps even a little scary. It 
sounds ominous.

It's long driven me a little batty when someone caused me grief and 
refused to acknowledge the fact, and I've seen quite a bit of this, 
in part because I was trained early on to believe that this is an 
okay way of behaving. You're just supposed to get over it and move 
on, and if you can't do that, you're being a Bad Christian. (The fact 
that this is pure bait for abuse didn't occur to me until quite 
late.) So let's have the Peace without Confession and Absolution 
because we're all such nice people and never hurt others. Yeah, right.

But grace, while a gift from God, carries a hefty price tag: ego. To 
accept that we need grace means accepting that we're sinners, and we 
just don't want to go there. Nor do we want to accept the notion that 
our egos ought to matter a hell of a lot less than our relationships, 
and that self-righteousness (an ego-thing, if ever there was one) is 
one of Whatever-We-Call-It's best ways of damaging relationships, 
because it truly is all about self.

What was a bit of a breakthrough for me, in Mike's sermon, was a 
different understanding of what grace is about. Grace is God's 
presence in the work of healing and redemption, but God, whose 
manners are quite lovely, only does this if we give God permission, 
which means acknowledging that we actually *need* grace and inviting it in.

In a sin-damaged relationship, grace gets shut out, because one or 
more parties don't want to admit the need for it, because that means 
<gulp!> Not Feeling Good About Themselves. So if the party of the 
first part doesn't accept any responsibility for the sin, it loads 
the entire price of forgiveness on the party of the second part, 
which is meta-sin of the first order. This is why scapegoating is 
such horribly dangerous and damaging behaviour. It's a form of 
spiritual snatch-and-grab: I get to feel good about myself and you 
get to do all the hard stuff of suffering and repentance and 
forgiveness with no help from me.

Which is itself crazy-making, especially when we insist on our 
victims suffering in silence, because otherwise our egos might get 
bruised. Happens all the time.

But ultimately, I think we do end up paying the price of grace, one 
way or the other. Worshipping the ego's need to feel good about 
itself, regardless of reality, is a way towards spiritual oblivion, 
something we'll no doubt finally figure out when we face our Maker. 
That will cost heavily.

But if we can accept that we're screwed up and therefore that we 
screw up, we set can ego down in the corner, where it belongs, or 
send it out to play on the 401 or whatever, and we can actually turn 
gratefully into God's love like a small child turning into her 
parents' arms. One aspect of this is setting down the egotistical 
notion that we screwed ourselves up with no outside help, and picking 
up the humble notion that being screwed up is the normal human 
condition. Over-responsibility is also ego (my favourite flavour).

A free gift, with a substantial price tag. But worth it, worth it.

Thanks, Mike.



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A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in 
no other way. -- Mark Twain