21 September 2006

Today grace is looked at through Luther's life and time as examined by Bonhoeffer in "Discipleship."

During the Reformation, God reawakened the gospel of pure, costly grace through God's servant Martin Luther by leading him through the monastery. Luther was a monk. He had left the everything and wanted to follow Christ in complete obedience...
It was God who caused Luther to fail on that path. God showed him through scripture that discipleship is not the meritorious achievement of individuals, but a divine commandment to all Christians. The humble work of discipleship had become in monasticism the meritorious work of the holy ones... Luther saw the monk's escape from the world as really a subtle love for the world. In this shattering of his last possibility to achieve a pious life, grace seized Luther. In the collapse of the monastic world, he saw God's saving hand reaching out in Christ. He seized it in the faith that "our deeds are in vain, even in the best life." It was a costly grace, which gave itself to him. It shattered his whole existence...
Luther had to leave the monastery and reenter the world, not because the world itself was good and holy, but because even the monastery was nothing else but the world.

"The monks escape from the world" was seen by Luther "as really a subtle love of the the world." The world doesn't know what grace is. It does not know it as gift for life and it does not know it as call to new life. Rather, the monastery was a place that allowed the same old person-based focus as the rest of the world. It simply would give a person a retreat place in which that love of the ways of the world could be contained and monitored with credits and debits just like the every day world. When the Word broke into Luther's heart, the system of rewards and punishment for what one did fell apart. There was no place to hide and no place that would be secure. Discipleship would mean living in a new way within the ordinary world - in the work place - in the home - in the many ways we interact within the world. Costly grace bids us to come and live within the bold statement of whose we are and the bold reality of the cross being taken up each and every day.

Connection: By grace we re-enter the world as though we are exactly who God tells us we are. Today is the time that we begin to live as though it is the truth. That will be costly - no matter who we are and what we are doing today. And yet, it is what is called faithfulness.

Lord God, help us to stay put and read into this day the graciousness of your Reign that grabs us and shapes us and gives us the eyes to see the life into which you call us. We may not want to follow therefore, we ask for your Spirit to lead us and pull us. Amen.