Presuming on Grace
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
October 26, 2003
Mark 10:46-52
I. INTRODUCTION
Maybe this has happened to you: someone you know has asked you for a favor that goes way beyond the scope of the level of your friendship. For example, someone you consider a casual acquaintance asks you to help them move. Often our reaction to such a thing is that it’s a lot to ask of someone you barely know. How presumptuous that can be. Perhaps you’ve seen the Seinfeld episode where New York Met Keith Hernandez asks Jerry to help him move and Jerry agonizes over this sudden and unexpected ratcheting-up of the friendship.
Or maybe you’ve been in a situation where you come back to the dorm to discover that your new roommate has already made use of something you own, your computer, your books, your car, without asking permission. When you ask about it, they answer, “I figured you wouldn’t mind.” And you’re thinking “Figure again, pal!”
II. TEXT: PRESUMING ON GRACE
We’re not comfortable with people presuming on us. It’s why we get so uncomfortable with so many of the things Jesus does—it’s because he doesn’t seem to mind being put upon. Whether it’s a parable about an inheritance-wasting son, or about laborers who work for only an hour but are paid for a full day, or whether it’s the injunction that if anyone should sue us for our coat, we should give them our cloak as well—there is this sense that many of us have that God lets people walk all over him.
I mean, we can understand the reaction of the crowd to poor Bartimaeus that we heard about in tonight’s Gospel lesson. Jesus has a lot of work to do. A tough road ahead of him. Tomorrow is Palm Sunday. Just leave the poor guy alone. He can’t help everybody.
But Bartimaeus refuses to be silent. He insists. And what does Jesus do? He responds. It’s can be almost annoying. We would never be that obnoxious, why does Jesus let this guy get away with it?
III. A SENSE OF CHUTZPAH
We’ve been doing this Christian thing for nearly 2,000 years. In that time, we have developed quite a vocabulary: eucharist, hypostatic union, communion of the saints, prevenient grace, and so on. But there is one word our vocabulary is lacking: chutzpah. A good Hebrew word. Chutzpah. It means “audacity.” Now, there’s the traditional definition of chutzpah is exemplified by the man who kills his parents and then asks for leniency from the court on the grounds that he is an orphan. Well, that’s the common understanding of chutzpah, anyway.
But there is a theological understanding of chutzpah. It’s the ability to be demanding of God, to be presumptuous. We’ve been hearing from the Book of Job over the last few weeks. It’s how Job dares to question God: chutzpah. It’s how Abraham dares bargain with God over the lives of the people in Sodom and Gomorrah. Chutzpah. It’s how the psalmist can write Psalms that are almost angry with God for failing to be God. Chutzpah. It’s how Jesus can dare to ask to have the cup of his death taken from him. And we see it in the way Jesus tells us how to pray. He doesn’t teach us to say, “And, O Lord, we just want to ask, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, for you to please give us this day the bread that we need, that’s all. Thanks for your time.” No. He teaches us to say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Jesus teaches us to pray as those who expect God’s grace.
That’s the key. If we think of God has being distant with only so much grace to go around, then we are likely to bristle at this concept. But if we think of God as someone close, someone with an abundance of Grace, then we’d think nothing of asking for our share.
The crowd surrounding Jesus is accompanying him on the road to Jerusalem, just before Palm Sunday. Perhaps they are already thinking of him as a person of importance, a person of status. A king. Such that they are upset and offended by a blind man who dares to call out and ask for healing. What chutzpah! And yet, Jesus does not rebuke the man, but instead heals him and says, “Your faith has made you well.” Here is Jesus surrounded by a crowd that is about to proclaim him king, and he shows them what kind of king he is, what it means to be called “Son of David.” He gives healing out of his abundant grace to those who simply have the chutzpah to ask it.
IV. JEALOUS OF GRACE
Grace. We protestants talk a lot about grace…
A. The Reformation
Today is Reformation Sunday. It is the Sunday that the Protestant Churches traditionally use to commemorate Martin Luther’s tacking up the 95 theses upon the cathedral door at Wittenberg, which he did on October 31, 1517. (It occurs to me now that it may simply have been a Halloween prank that has gone seriously awry. Be that as it may…)
Luther was protesting the practice of selling indulgences, which were being purchased by the faithful in order to help to shorten the duration of a departed loved one’s stay in purgatory. That’s it. That’s all Luther was protesting on that October day. He was an Augustinian monk, and a devout Catholic. He wasn’t trying to start anything new. He was simply trying to spur debate on the validity of papal indulgences.
It was only when his objections were not favorably met, that things began to escalate. In time, Luther and his followers would engage the broader church in a controversy that no longer focused on indulgences, but instead on Ecclesiastical Authority, the Papacy, Obedience to Authority, Doctrine of the Sacraments, Opposition between Scripture and Human Teachings. As a result the reformers developed a particular kind of theology to address their situation. It was ultimately these theological convictions that led to the split with the Church and the formation of what is now known as Protestantism.
B. Luther’s Theology
The cornerstone of Luther’s theology was something he borrowed from Paul: that salvation comes by grace through faith and not on account of works of the Law. Now, to understand this theology we need to understand Martin Luther. Indeed, in order to understand any theology, we need to understand the life of the theologian who comes up with it.
Martin Luther earned his BA 1502, MA 1505. One day while he was traveling during a storm, a lightening bolt struck nearby. He became afraid of sudden death while being unprepared for death, he makes vow to become a monk. His father, as you might imagine, was upset that he became a monk—had hoped he would become a lawyer. Luther was a good monk and a good scholar. He lived a sinless God-pleasing life as best he knew how. But he was tormented by predestination and was desperate to find a gracious God. Because he never felt that he was quite good enough to merit salvation. He tried as best he could, but he never felt that he could meet expectations. He was a man convicted of his own guilt and sinfulness.
The reformation that he sparked helped to give him an opportunity to reflect upon things. In the process came the cornerstones of what would be called protestant theology: salvation by grace through faith and and sola scriptura. The first is the confession that one is justified by God’s grace, not by any human activity. Salvation is a gift. So, no matter how wretched a person might be, the way Luther thought of himself, that person could receive salvation as a gift of God through Christ. It could not be earned, it could not be purchased. It was available to all. To this day, Lutherans consider themselves “saved sinners” a testament both to their salvation by God’s gracious activity and their status as fallen, sinful people.
And since Luther found his support for his theology in Scripture, he began to put more and more emphasis on Scripture as the basis for theology, rather than the tradition of the Church. This is the second protestant principle: sola scriptura, “scripture alone” for matters of faith. Which is why it is the sermon, not the eucharist, which is the centerpiece of our worship. And it is why the Protestants began to pare down their practices: if they couldn’t be found in scripture, the protestants would not validate them as authentic Christian practices.
C. Jealousy
But here’s where the tragedy comes in. There’s something that happens when two groups start to define themselves against each other. What starts out as a nuance, quickly becomes a dichotomy. You can use that in your next paper: “nuance becomes dichotomy”—that’s a good one. It does explain how these things can be so crucial to those on the inside, but not to those on the outside. When I was practicing law I had a Jewish colleague who said to me, “It still surprises me that there are different kinds of Christians.” Our nuances are still nuances to those outside. And I understand that in Japan, the Japanese have a hard time telling the difference between Jews and Christians—there’s a lesson in there somewhere (probably for another sermon).
But because in internal controversies, nuances become dichotomies, the reformers’ emphasis on salvation by grace through faith led to the conclusion that they alone had a grace-filled faith. Protestants would look at their Catholic brethren and say, “You have law and we have grace” or its more insidious variation: “We have faith and you have religion.” The reformers, who wished to emphasize God’s grace, soon became jealous of it.
And this has been the sin of Protestantism ever since. For we have become jealous of grace and we have failed to see it in others. Protestants began to talk of their justification by grace through faith and of Catholics’ “works-righteousness”, that is, justification by ritual works of piety. In so doing, we failed to see that we were fast turning our faith into the kind of “work” we decried. There are plenty of Protestant Christians whose understanding of the Gospel requires you to sign on the ideological dotted line, a sort of “believe this or perish.” They have turned faith into a work, instead of something that comes upon us by God’s grace it is something that we do.
And on top of that, we failed to see the grace evident in religious ritual, in the sacraments, in the traditions and institutions of the Church. We saw grace as something we, and we alone, possessed.
V. THE ABUNDANCE OF GOD’S GRACE
But God’s grace is abundant. It was by grace that God created us, it is by grace that God sustains us, and it is by grace that God will lead us into eternal life. The Creation abounds with grace. There’s enough to go around. Grace can be found in the rosary as much as it can in the prayer meeting. In the outwardly visible actions of those who proclaim social justice through the Social Gospel, and in the quiet contemplative life of the monastic orders.
We are so forgetful that grace is a gift that we quickly become convinced that it’s something we’ve earned, and then we become jealous of it. How often we are like the crowd, shushing a Bartimaeus for presuming to ask for grace. All too often we have sought to keep Jesus and his grace to ourselves, failing to imagine that Christ and Christ alone decides to whom he is gracious. Jesus all but ignores the crowds telling Bartimaeus to be silent. He reacts with a compassion and a grace that humbles us.
It is a grace that moves us toward reconciliation after centuries of division. It’s a grace that ought to encourage us to be a little presumptuous. To encourage us to use a little chutzpah. To actually presume that grace can be found in communities and traditions not our own. And to actually presume a God who responds with abundant grace because we have dared to ask for it.
