Sermon: Cheap Grace

2015 September 27
by Rev Ana Levy-Lyons

[powerpress]http://www.fuub.org/home/home/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Cheap-Grace.m4a[/powerpress]

Cheap Grace

Ana Levy-Lyons

September 27, 2015

First Unitarian, Brooklyn

 

In the early 20th century, Dietrich Bonheoffer was often lying awake at night. He was a Christian theologian and he was a liberal, but he was worried that the liberalization of theology had gone off the deep end. The Universalist idea of salvation for everyone had gotten pretty popular among mainstream Christians – that everyone was saved no matter how much they sinned in their lifetime. Now, just anyone had God’s grace without having to do anything to earn it. To Bonheoffer, this risked trivializing the message of Jesus – if you didn’t have to do anything to be a Christian, then Christianity was meaningless. As he lay awake, he came up with a term for it: “cheap grace.” He defined cheap grace in the following way: “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”

 I don’t know about you, but to me that actually sounds pretty good. What he’s calling “cheap grace” is kind of exactly what we are talking about here in Unitarian Universalism. Let’s look at his definition: “cheap grace is forgiveness without requiring repentance…” Yup, that’s what we talked about last week: check. “Baptism without church discipline.” That’s what we did a little while ago for little Henry: check. “Communion without confession.” We have various forms of communion here throughout the year and we certainly don’t need to do anything to qualify first so: check. “Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.” Check, check, check.

 

Cheap grace, without the snarky name, is very much at the core of Unitarian Universalist theology. The Unitarians taught that God is one and that ultimately we are all one. All of our differences and distinctions are temporary. We don’t need to cling to any particular form of life including our own. The dinosaurs went extinct, the polar bears will go extinct, humans will go extinct and only cockroaches will be left and eventually we’ll all get put back into the cosmic blender and become something else. It’s all good. The early Universalist mystics taught of an eternal love, so enveloping that all creatures, without exception, will be gathered into its warm, healing embrace. We’re all made of the same stuff, come from the same source, and share the same destiny. We don’t have to do anything to earn our salvation. We are pure light.

 

Bonheoffer contrasted what he thought of as vanilla Christianity with what he called “costly grace.” He wrote about how Jesus had demanded of his followers that they put down their plows and leave their homes and their families and follow him. Jesus had predicted that they would be persecuted in his name. Jesus had high standards for his followers – they needed to become humble and put God first. They needed to feed the poor and try to make the world a better place. That was what it meant to follow the path to true salvation. Christians should come together to grow spiritually, care for one another, and work for social justice and stewardship of the earth. Or… wait… was that Jesus or is that our purpose statement here at First U?

 

The idea of cheap grace sounds good to us, but so does the idea of costly grace. We Unitarian Universalists certainly feel called to work hard through our faith. We believe in tempering our own greed and caring for the poor. We believe in making sacrifices in order to heal the earth. We believe in challenging ourselves intellectually, spiritually, emotionally to become the best, most evolved version of ourselves that we can possibly be. We don’t believe that it’s easy or that it doesn’t matter because we’re all saved anyway. And yet we believe that we are all saved anyway. So which is it?

 

At the heart of our faith lies this paradox. On the one hand, Unitarian Universalism describes a perfect world. Unitarianism paints a picture of sublime oneness. Universalism paints a picture of sublime love. It’s a world in which, as I say at the end of my benediction each week, we are all one and we are all loved. Grace is not just cheap, it’s free.

 

On the other hand, as we all know, the world is not one at all. The world is divided by war and hatred, racism and poverty. Violence of all kinds divides us every day. And everyone isn’t loved in this world. Children are abandoned. Adults are lonely. People are hated and even killed for who they are. Through this lens, Unitarian Universalism is not a current reality at all but a dream – an aspirational vision. And through this lens, Unitarian Universalism requires us – calls us – to do the hard work of moving toward that aspirational vision. Grace is cheap; grace is costly. Which is it?

 

There’s an old folk tale that may offer an answer. It’s called “The Wish Ring.” It’s a story of a peasant farmer and his wife and a mysterious bearded man who gives them a magic ring that contains one wish. To use their wish, they need to go to the forest and turn it three times and make the wish. But that whole setup is so European-pastoral-romanticized-agrarian-heteronormative, I thought we might update it a little. Instead of The Wish Ring, this is the story of The Wish iPhone:

 

Once upon a time in a land far, far away called Rowan County, Kentucky, there were two women, both freelance out of work graphic designers, who were very much in love. They had waited a long time to get married, first for same sex marriage to become legal, then for Kim Davis to go to jail. But now they finally had their license and they had a beautiful wedding. During the wedding, a stranger stepped through the crowd. He was clearly not from there because he had an ironic mustache that looked much more Greenpoint, Brooklyn than Rowan County, Kentucky. He handed the newlyweds a silver iPhone and said to them, “Because your love is so true and so strong, I am going to bless you with this magic Wish iPhone. You can only turn it on and use it once to make one wish. To use your wish, just text what your wish is to “God” (G-O-D) and it will come true. Remember, you only get one wish, so use it wisely. And then he disappeared into the crowd.

 

The couple stared at the iPhone in their hands. Cynical and proudly jaded as they usually were, this was their wedding day, and there was something about this mysterious stranger that made them believe that he was for real. They took the phone home with them that evening and one said to the other: “Well, we’ve been out of work for a long time. Maybe we should wish that we get a huge contract that makes us so much money that we can retire.” They agreed that this was a good idea and they sat down together and were about to turn the iPhone on when the other said, “Wait. Let’s not waste our wish. Maybe we should just work together a little harder and a little smarter and see if we can build our business. We might really need the wish later.” So they agreed and they started working together, harder and smarter, and pretty soon their business grew and they were making enough money to live comfortably. The iPhone sat in a special place on their bookshelf. It gave them great comfort to know that it was there.

 

Years went by and the couple deeply craved the love of children in their lives. But IVF wasn’t working and they were starting to despair. They brought out the iPhone determined to use their wish for children. But at the last second, one said, “Wait. Let’s not use our wish just yet. Maybe we could try to adopt a child and give a loving home to someone who really needs it. We might need our wish later.” And so they worked hard to find an adoption agency that would allow them to adopt, and they adopted two children – a brother and sister. Now their household was full of love and the joys and tribulations of parenting. Their lives had a new sense of purpose. The iPhone sat in its special place on their bookshelf. It gave them great comfort to know that it was there.

 

The family was happy, but they had few friends. They felt pretty isolated in Rowan County, KY. They wanted to raise their children in a community of like-minded people where they could be themselves. One said to the other, “Let’s use our wish to just transplant our lives, just as they are, instantly to Brooklyn, where I hear there’s a great Unitarian Universalist congregation.” They were just about to turn on the phone, when the other said, “Wait. Let’s not use our wish just yet. Maybe we can start a fellowship here and it would serve all the people like us in this county who are lonely and looking for a spiritual home.” And so they started advertising worship gatherings in their living room and within a few years, they were surrounded by a warm, growing community of spiritual people who were so grateful to have found each other. The iPhone sat in its special place on their bookshelf. It gave them great comfort to know that it was there.

 

The couple grew old together and as they were nearing death, they drew their children close and told them the story of the Magic Wish iPhone. They carefully handed the phone to them, saying, “This magic iPhone has brought incredible happiness and untold riches into our lives. Guard it carefully, cherish it, pass it down through the generations, and it will bring blessings to you and your children and your children’s children too.”

 

This is the practice of Unitarian Universalism in a nutshell. We know that in our back pocket we have a get out of jail free card. We have a magic silver iPhone with a wish; we have, not only cheap grace, but free grace. And yet we are called to never use it. We are called to act as if we are self-determining, self-creating, and self-redeeming. We are called to work hard on our own and in our communities to bring about a better world. To pray like everything depends on God and work like everything depends on us.

 

These two dimensions of Unitarian Universalism challenge us to see with a bifurcated spiritual vision. We are challenged to toggle between two ways of seeing, two ways of knowing: the one way in which we are perfect and everything is perfect just as it is, and the other in which we are broken and we live in a broken world that desperately needs our help. Both are true. And it’s a marker of spiritual maturity, I believe, to be able to hold both simultaneously in tension and in paradox. Coming here to worship can help us do that – the music, the prayers, the words, the candles, the togetherness. It gives us a taste of oneness and love before we plunge back into our daily lives and try our hardest to be the best people we can be. Sabbath practice toggles between the two: the week of striving and then a day when everything is already perfect and there’s nothing to strive for. We do our work in this world always in light of our spiritual vision.

 

We know at the end of the day all our mistakes will be forgiven, and we don’t have to lift a finger to earn the love of the universe. This knowledge, this vision, this promise, this faith sits in a special place on our bookshelf. We know it’s there and it gives us great strength and great comfort. But while we’re here, for the time we’re here, it’s incumbent on us to try to realize that vision here on earth. It’s our work to bring a little bit of that cosmic love and light into this dimension. So Mr. Bonheoffer, you do not need to worry about us Unitarian Universalists: we’ll take our cheap grace but we’ll also take our costly grace. We’ll live with a foot in each world – things as they are and things as they ought to be. And we’ll spend our lives working to narrow the gap between the two.

Comments are closed.