A quote from Robert Farrar
Capon: “Hell, ultimately, is not the place of punishment for sinners; sinners
are not punished at all; they go straight to heaven just for saying yes to
grace. Hell is simply the nowhere that is the only thing left for those who
will not accept their acceptance by grace—who will not believe that at three
o’clock on a Friday afternoon, free for nothing, the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world actually declared he never intended to count sins in
the first place. What then do I make of, ‘Many are called but few are chosen’?
Just this. The sad truth of our fallen condition is that we don’t want anything
to do with a system of salvation that works by grace through faith.”
***
Isn’t that the truth? We imagine that we like grace. We
think that we are “grace-full” people. We even name our churches accordingly.
Grace Lutheran—we must be into grace here! But when grace comes to us in all
its glory our first instinct is not joy or relief but suspicion. Why have I received such a gift? What have I
done? And if I have received this gift, perhaps I could hold out for something
better. Perhaps somebody else has been given something better than me!
The idea that there is “No such thing as a free lunch” is
an eminently practical principle conceived by suspicious people completely
afraid of grace. This is a parable filled with such people: idiots afraid of
grace. The king sends out an invitation. The works-righteousness side of us
imagines God standing by a door waiting for us to knock. That’s the image Jesus
himself gives us in Matthew 7, but the context of that image was aside things
that seemed rather impossible for us-human beings to do: Judge not; take the
log out of your eye before taking the speck out of our neighbor’s; do unto
others; enter through the narrow gate. All things that sound great. All things
we fail to do, more often than not.
The king sent
out the invitation and we have only to respond, you might say. But the problem
is that nobody comes. Nobody! If
Jesus is waiting for us to knock, he’s going to be waiting an awfully long
time. Then the king doubles down. Let’s share with the invitees all of the
incredible things about this particular wedding feast which they are freely given. They get to eat and drink
and dance from the vast wealth that I possess. This is going to be the best experience
they’ve ever had.
I should pause here, because I think too many of us see
the invitation that Jesus is offering as “grace”—that Jesus died on the cross
in order to invite us to the banquet—and so we read this story as if salvation
is the first invitation and most people will miss out on the party. But the
invitation actually serves not as grace but as the instrument of judgment,
because (skipping forward to the end) “many are called, but few are chosen.” You
don’t get there without the invitation. We think an invitation is grace because
invitations make us feel important, and because invitations allow us the
freedom to refuse, which is the trap we are always falling into with grace.
Grace is not like human love; it’s not something that happens because God is so
smitten with us. Grace is indiscriminate and it spits in the face of those of
us who are big on our own personal achievement. Grace is trophies for
everybody—even those who never competed.
So, what do the invited guests do when the king makes
abundantly clear how awesome the wedding party is going to be? They go
nuclear—not only leaving town and heading back to the farm but also taking the
king’s servants and ripping them to bits. That’ll
show the king what his wealth and prestige can buy him! This is the typical
response of human beings who have received an invitation (a judgment) to a
reward they can only earn by grace: they go nuclear, refusing to acquiesce to
the indignity that is simply showing up. Many are called; few are chosen.
So, in act 3, the king goes to war, obliterating those
who refused the invitation; in short, judging them as incapable of accepting an
invitation that no human being has ever proved able to accomplish, So, he drops
the inevitable boom on their sorry butts. Then, going back to the drawing
board, he invites other, less hoighty toighty, company. One common interpretive
move here is to say that God is going to offer an invitation that some are
going to accept and others will not—that those who have to high a view of
themselves will find themselves in hell, while those who are righteous will
find themselves in heaven. But, let’s not forget that nobody showed up at the first invitation. More likely than that
explanation is that God offers an invitation (again, a judgment) that will
always be declined; in that way, the invitation is well and truly a judgment on
all those who receive it. That first invitation went to all of us, and each of
us turned away. The second invitation, therefore, goes not to other more
righteous folks, but to all those people who God is usually seeking out:
namely, the dead. And they are dead precisely because of their refusal of the
initial invitation, because the king went nuclear and made them dead in the
first place.
The second invitation involves slaves going out into the
streets and gathering lowly creatures prowling on the margins of society, and,
even better, reading between the lines of the parable it half-seems they were
dragged to the party kicking and screaming. Freedom doesn’t really seem to
factor into things .
It’s important to note here that they brought back people
both
good and bad. This is not simply the good little boys and girls who,
through no fault of their own, found themselves down and out. These were people
who followed the law and those who broke it, these were heroine addicts and
middle school teachers. In fact, dare I say that some of these folks—like most
of us—might be a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. Good and
bad; sinners and saints.
In short, these were regular old human beings. That’s
grace. It’s for losers and broken people and those of us who, one way or
another, put on the façade of having it all together. It’s not that we’re
better at accepting the king’s invitation, it’s more that God, having realized
that nobody could manage that initial invitation, said “Screw it.” Next time,
you don’t get a choice. You’re coming, whether you like it or not.
And that’s where we find ourselves with that Capon quote
I read at the start today, standing with that man dressed inappropriately for
the occasion. Please, please, please, don’t read this as saying that you need
to dress nice in order to get to heaven. Some people will, because we want so
badly to have something to do, to make this story ultimately about how
respectable we can be. And Jesus seems to leave the door open to these
interpretations by including this little aside, except for the fact that Jesus’
earlier words in his parables suggest something altogether different. Is the
man without a robe less worthy than the others, or is he simply so
self-righteous that he couldn’t bear the indignity that is grace?
When I say grace is offensive I think you sometimes
imagine I’m speaking in hyperbole. Yet, Jesus goes to incredible lengths to
show us what it looks like to spit in the face of grace. Do I imagine there’s
going to be a wardrobe on the way into the heavenly banquet where we have to
put on a gown before entering? Not really. But, if there is, would you refuse
it?
The thing about grace is that conforms us, and we are
nothing if not nonconformists. But, unlike other things in this world, it’s not
conforming us to what is cool or what is trendy—not iPhones or yoga pants,
thank you very much. Instead, it’s conforming us to Jesus, which is pretty much
the opposite of yoga pants, because being conformed to Jesus is uncomfortable.
After all, there’s a reason we took that fruit from the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil so long ago. God gave us the option of
freedom and we grabbed it and held on to it for all it’s worth. Even now, as it
slowly kills us, we hold it tighter, valuing it above almost everything. Just
as we imagine that an invitation is grace, when it is judgment; just as we spit
in the face of grace; so we imagine the king’s banquet as something other than
what it is. We imagine it as our due, our reward, something we would welcome
with open arms.
The truth? The truth is that you’re all the guests who
took the slaves, killed them, and then ran in the other direction, laughing all
the way about how you showed the king what his invitation was worth. You’re the
good people and the bad people. And you’re all offended by grace. You’d much
rather have judgment—an invitation. Knock, and the door will be answered. Instead,
Jesus suggests, “Yes. I will answer the door. But no fool yet has had the good
sense to knock at it.” Many have imagined themselves doing it, but few have
managed it on their own. Maybe only one. He just happens to be the one telling
the story.
Grace is offensive. And it’s the only thing that matters.
Because all of us have let the invitation slip our minds. Thank God we have a
God who seeks out the lost, who gathers up the losers, who puts us in his best,
and gives us a gift we cannot repay and we never deserved. Your life
accomplishments don’t matter a lick in that banquet. That’s grace. If you’re
offended by that, I’m sorry. The alternative isn’t so great.
No comments:
Post a Comment