First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
March 22, 1998
Scriptures: Matthew 18:24-35, Romans 6:1-4
I happened upon a wonderful story about Albert Einstein, growing out of the days when he crisscrossed the country, giving lectures on the theory of relativity. In order to keep his many commitments, he afforded himself the luxury of a chauffeur-driven limousine. After many months on the road together, the driver said to his famous passenger: “Dr. Einstein, I have heard you talk about relativity so many times, I bet I could deliver your lecture myself.” “Very well,” the good doctor responded. “I’ll give you an opportunity tonight. The people who will be attending this evening’s lecture have never seen me. So before we get there, I’ll just put on your cap and uniform and you’ll introduce me as your chauffeur, and yourself as me. Then you can give my lecture.”
Which is exactly what happened. For awhile, everything went according to plan. But in the question-and-answer session, someone in the audience raised a technical inquiry involving some rather complex equations. The quick-thinking chauffeur replied: “Sir, the solution to that problem is so simple that I’m surprised it hasn’t already occurred to you. And just to show you how simple it is, I’m going to ask my chauffeur to step forward and handle your question.”
There are times when I wish I had such a chauffeur waiting in the wings. This Sunday morning is one of them. For what we have before us is the doctrinal relationship between justification and sanctification. But let me download it into a basic question: “How can it be that the same Christian who can do nothing, by his or his own efforts, to earn God’s favor and grace, is also expected to live a life that approaches perfection?” Underlying this issue is the matter of “good works.” Can we perform them? Are we expected to perform them? Will performing them get us anywhere? And will our failure to perform them set us back?
Last week we said that the love of God cannot be earned. People do not receive it by merit. Neither does it come in exchange for badges awarded, brownie points piled up, sacrifices made, laws obeyed, or even rooms cleaned. God’s love comes as a gift. What’s more, it is spilled liberally (and indiscriminately) upon all who would receive it. What does that mean? It means that God does not pay a whole lot of attention to the question of who deserves it, and who doesn’t.
When the Bible says that the rain falls on the just and the unjust, most people miss the point. For, in biblical lingo, rain is not something that ruins parades, postpones ball games, douses picnics and makes leather shoes curl up and crack. Instead, rain is the stuff that waters the earth, irrigates the crops, quenches the thirst of multitudes, and makes the flowers grow. In biblical lingo, rain is good stuff. Rain is never bad stuff. Rain is equated with “showers of blessing”….that kind of good stuff. So if rain is said to “fall on the just and the unjust,” it doesn’t mean that God doles out punishment indiscriminately. It means just the opposite. God doles out “blessing” indiscriminately….meaning that God doesn’t seem to care who the “good stuff” falls on.
Furthermore, we said that by attempting to earn your way into God’s favor….or work your way back into God’s good graces….you not only prove you don’t know the first thing about grace, but you are probably going to end up as obnoxious as the Pharisees, with a good case of “performance anxiety” to boot. That’s a short digest of what I said last week. If you missed it, grab a copy at the close of the service. A free copy, I might add….free for the taking. I mean, it would be a contradiction in terms to sell a sermon on grace, wouldn’t it?
I was impressed that most of you got the point last Sunday and were kind enough to say so. More than a few of you expressed relief that God is not going to go over your record with a high-powered magnifying glass or take an inspection tour of your soul, wearing white-cotton gloves.
One of our teenagers got the point (sort of), reminding his mother that God could love him whether he cleaned his room or not. Unfortunately, I cannot report what his mother said in response. But one of our mothers got the point, when she told me she was glad her salvation was not going to depend on whether her refrigerator contained green things that were turning brown, or brown things that were turning green. And one of our fathers got the point….powerfully so…..when he said at the door: “Maybe instead of constantly yelling at everybody to tidy up, I ought to tell myself to lighten up.”
But all of those responses raise an interesting question. Does it mean that we can go on living in dirt and filth forever? Is there nothing to be said for tidy rooms, shiny souls and mold-free refrigerators?
Fortunately, Paul thought of that question before I did. And the Church at Rome thought of it before Paul did. For they wrote and asked him: “If grace comes to us when we are at our lowest and worst, why don’t we just stay that way in order to keep grace coming? In fact, why don’t we get lower and worser?” Why doesn’t the teenager (quoted earlier) trash his sister’s room, too? And why doesn’t the lady let the rest of her house (office, car, whatever) go the way of her refrigerator? That way, grace might abound all the more. Or as the college kid said (after hearing the gospel for the very first time): “What a deal! I love to sin. God loves to forgive sin. The more I do my thing, the more God can do his. Surely this is the best of all possible worlds.”
Does that sound ridiculous? If it does, let me remind you that I’m not making it up. We read the very same argument, just moments ago, in the Book of Romans. And we could have also turned to I Thessalonians and read about a strange word called “sanctification,” followed by a foray into Ephesians where sanctification is described as “growing into maturity”…. which is not just any kind of growing, but “growing into the stature and fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).
Obviously, improvement is expected. When I was ordained (half a century ago, or so it seems), I was asked a long list of questions that have been asked of ordinands since the days of John Wesley. I was standing on the stage in Dawson Auditorium. There were a dozen or so beside me. And there were a thousand or so before me. One of them was the Bishop. And the Bishop asked: “Are you going on to perfection?” And while we were still reeling from that question, he asked another: “Do you expect to be made perfect in this life?” Can you believe he really asked that? Obviously, somebody expected something of me.
I would hope we hold similar expectations of ourselves. One of the hymns we sing with gusto is entitled “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.” Unfortunately, most of us pay little attention to the words. So let me tell you how the fourth verse of this Charles Wesley hymn begins: “Finish, then, thy new creation; Pure and spotless let us be.” Now I don’t know about you, but if “pure and spotless” is the stated goal for my life, then my veneer needs more than just a little “finishing.” We’re talking a major restoration here.
Clearly, the Apostle Paul assumes a certain sequence to the Christian life. His argument runs as follows. God finds you huddled in your room. You may be dirty. Your room may be dirty. But God takes you (and your room) pretty much as you are. God tells you that your intrinsic worth has nothing whatsoever to do with the way you (or your room) look. Then God invites you to begin working on the “pure and spotless” business. Makes sense. Sort of.
Consider the little parable of the vengeful servant. The parable begins: “Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.” Whenever you hear the words, “therefore the Kingdom of Heaven is like….,” perk up your ears. It means that I am going to tell you a story about how things will be, once they are the way God intends them to be. Then, make certain that you identify with the right actor in the story. Which means that you shouldn’t identify with the king. I know it would be more fun to be the king. But that’s not who you are. You are the servant. And not just any servant. You are the servant who owes the king 10,000 talents.
I know you’d rather be the king. And I know you’d rather be owed than owe. That’s because you don’t like being indebted to anybody, especially by a large amount. You would have to be abusing drugs or suffering from a gambling addiction to be into the king for that much money. And that’s not like you. Because you pride yourself on the fact that you pay your debts. On time. You never let your Visa balance drift beyond the 29th day. To be sure, you carry a mortgage and car payment. But everyone carries one or two of those. No big deal. But 10,000 talents of debt, that’s a lot. Isn’t it?
Well, let me tell you. It’s a ridiculous amount. I feel sorry for people who read everything in the Bible with lockjaw literalism. For they miss the fact that sometimes (in order to make a good story better), even Jesus says things that are totally off the wall. This is one of them. Ten thousand talents is an utterly ridiculous amount. No one could ever repay that much. And it’s unlikely anyone would ever owe that much. The entire personal fortune of King Herod was said to be only 900 talents. And the combined tax base of Galilee and Peraea (during the time of Jesus) was only 200 talents. The word for 10,000 (“muriun”) represents the largest figure used in reckoning accounts. Jesus is saying that the debt is not only staggering, but laughably so. However, knowing that there are bean counters among us this morning (who expect me to be precise), let it be known that we are talking $10 million here. At the very minimum. Wow! It would Sergie Federov 15 or 20 games to make that kind of money.
What’s the point? Well, there are a couple of points. The first is this. Jesus seems to be saying: “Everybody owes a debt to the king. Even you. You may be doing pretty well by ordinary standards. You keep your nose clean. You stay on the right side of the law. You do an honest day’s work. You make an honest day’s wage. You give part of your check to the church. You treat widows and orphans kindly. And you never spit on the sidewalk. But when your life is measured against what the King has a reasonable right to expect, you’re about 10 million bucks in arrears.” That’s what the point is.
All of which is followed by a second point. The king hears your plea. You cry: “Have patience with me and I will repay.” Maybe you even say it twice (while falling down on your knees). And, all things considered, the king should laugh in your face (“Ten million dollars? You? Pay? How?”). But the king doesn’t say that. Instead, he begins to sing very quietly (in his best Rex Harrison imitation): “I’m a most forgiving man…..” And you know what that means. It means that God’s love is abundant enough to cover every moral debt that any mortal owes. That’s what that means. Which is good news.
So what do you do with such good news? You let it spill over onto the next person you meet. Right? Not always….or so the story says. For the servant (that’s you) goes out from the king’s door and doesn’t even get far enough down the road to cut loose with a half-decent “whoopee,” before he meets another servant. And this second servant owes him, not 10,000 talents, but 100 denarii. In other words, not $10 million but….are you ready for this….twenty bucks. So he grabs him by the throat (Mafia style) and says: “Pay what you owe.” In response to which the second servant cries: “Have patience with me and I will repay.” Which should sound strangely familiar. But, when the first servant hears it, it doesn’t seem to ring any bells. Instead, the first servant sings (in an even better Rex Harrison imitation):
I’m a most forgiving man….
But I will never take her back,
If she comes crawling on her knees.
Let her promise to atone,
Let her shiver, let her moan,
I will slam the door
And let the hellcat freeze.
….or send him to debtor’s prison. Which he does. And which, when the king hears about it, leads to his being sent there, too. For one of the uncomfortable side effects in the stories of Matthew’s gospels is that those who don’t shape up get shipped out.
Suffice it to say that once you’ve been on the receiving end of something quite wonderful, it is expected that something equally wonderful will begin happening within you….and through you. Are such things automatic? No. Are they expected? Yes. That seems to be the message of the parable. And what is the standard of measurement? That you will deliver (unto others) nothing less than the king delivered to you.
Which sounds hard. Except that it needn’t be. Because now the pressure is off, don’t you see? Before….when you figured you had to perform all those good works in order to earn love….there was no way you could be certain that love would come. In fact, there was always the fear that it might not. If you did the wrong works….if you didn’t do them good enough….if you didn’t keep them up long enough….if you messed up, even one time….maybe the love wouldn’t be there.
So it became a guessing game. Which “works” would get the best results?
· Would you love me better if I brought up my grade in spelling or practiced the piano three days in a row without being told?
· Would you love me better if I colored perfectly inside all the lines, or if I cleaned my entire room (including the far corners of my closet)?
· Would you love me better if I made the first team, kept all the laws, and used my December paycheck to buy you a wonderful Christmas present?
· Would you love me better if I sacrificed a goat on the altar, gave a lamb to the homeless, or took a tuna noodle casserole to the poor lady on the next block?
Did you ever try to buy a present for someone who stood in judgment over every previous present you ever bought….to the degree that you never knew whether they liked it, kept it, wore it, or felt you’d spent enough money on it? If so, you know that the more “pains” you take to earn love, the more pain you are likely to feel when you don’t receive love. But what if you received it first? What if love was given in such a way so that you knew it didn’t come as a result of your “kissing up”….and couldn’t be lost as a result of your “screwing up.” Wouldn’t there be a certain freedom to do more than you’d ever done before (or become more than you ever were before)? My father used to say: “Bill, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” But the Christian faith proves my father wrong. For that’s precisely the kind of transformation that can happen, once people learn that even sow’s ears can be lovely in the eyes of God.
If you still don’t believe that people can “go on to perfection,” let me offer you a story. It grows out of George Mathieson’s much-heralded ministry in Scotland. When he came to the great downtown Presbyterian church in Edinburgh, there was a woman in his congregation who lived in filthy and deplorable conditions in a cellar. After some months of Mathieson’s ministry, it came time for Holy Communion in the life of that church. In keeping with Scottish Presbyterian tradition, elders made house calls on the congregants in order to pre-register them for the sacrament. When the elder called at this woman’s cellar, he found her gone. After expending much effort, he tracked her to an equally tiny attic room. She was still dirt poor. She still lacked all luxuries and most necessities. But her attic was as light and airy and clean as her cellar had been dark, dank and dirty.
“I see you’ve changed your residence,” said the elder to the woman.
“Aye,” she said, “I have. You can’t hear George Mathieson preach and go on living in a cellar.”
And you can’t have the love of Jesus Christ in your heart and go on living in a cellar, either.
Thirty-three years after ordination, I still know precious little about going on to perfection. But I know that it begins by climbing the basement stairs.
