2 October 2006

After a retreat and some illness, it is back to Dietrich Bonhoeffer on grace.

I am liberated from following Jesus - by cheap grace, which has to be the bitterest enemy of discipleship, which has to hate and despise true discipleship. Grace as presupposition is grace at its cheapest; grace as a conclusion is costly grace. It is appalling to see what is at stake in the way in which a gospel truth is expressed and used. It is the same word of the justification by grace alone, and yet false use of the same statement can lead to the complete destruction of its essence.

Grace pulls us into the life of following - discipleship. If everything is simply thought of as white washed before we even act...as though we can go ahead and act as we please because we are justified by grace...then we will not follow Jesus. We will follow whatever we want to follow. One of the aspects of protestantism that has done us no good at all is a sense of rejection of discipline - following. Cheap grace has nothing to do with calling us to follow Jesus. It is a pronouncement made to us that seems to say "now go your own way...you have been saved." And yet, we are never called to go our own way. To do that is nothing more than idolatry - my way and my views and my life becomes the god to which I bow down. Costly grace encourages us to come and follow Jesus and to be bold about that following. It is not something that "let's us off the hook." Rather it is the power that see us through to the cross...and new life.

Connection: When grace is seen as something that is all about me...it is very easy to forget about the way of life Jesus calls us to walk. The power of the Good News is that we are freed up from our self centered ways and able to consider and enter the many ways of living in relationship to others in a way that is guided by the love of God. It is still a strange discipline.

Again we ask that you, O Lord of Life, be the encouragement of this day so that as we walk along the way of your beloved, Jesus, we will be find within our lives the joy of being a gift to others and we will also enjoy the gifts of life freely given to us by others. It makes us a community of great expectation and freedom. Amen.