I have a book
that contains quite a number of short pieces.
Some of them are articles in various periodicals---journals that might
be religious in nature or some more popular magazines. I occasionally read another piece. Some of the authors I know and very much
like---people like Annie Dillard. Others
I have never seen their names and know nothing about them. One such name was James Van Tholen.
His article
appeared in Christianity Today, a well-known, more evangelical magazine that I
try to read with some regularity. James
was a pastor in a Christian Reformed Church in Rochester, NY. He had been assaulted with a nasty kind of
cancer at age 33. After some months of
chemotherapy, he was able to return to his church. The selection I read was his first sermon
back with his parishioners. It was very
touching and I wanted to share some of it.
I was touched
by his openness and vulnerability. Early
in his sermon he communicated these words.
“So let me start with honesty.
The truth is that for seven months I have been scared. Not of the cancer, not really. Not even of death. Dying is another matter---how long it will
take and how it will go. Dying scares
me.” I resonate with this because I am
pretty much in the same boat. I don’t
find the idea of death troubling, but dying is another matter!
Van Tholen
continues his reflections in the sermon.
This next piece surprised me. He
says, “My real fear has centered somewhere else. Strange as it may sound, I have been scared
of meeting God.” That is crazy, we might
think, since the guy is a pastor and spiritual leader. Again I appreciate his honesty. Indeed, Van Tholen says basically the same
thing. He asks, “How could this be
so? How could I have believed in the God
of grace and still have dreaded to meet him?”
That is a great question! I, too,
believe in a God of grace. We read on to
find out how Van Tholen dealt with his dilemma.
After his
experience of cancer, Van Tholen begins inching his way to an answer to his
question, “how could this be so?” He
tells us, “As the wonderful preacher John Timmer has taught me over the years,
the answer is that grace is a scandal.”
I absolutely love that line and that idea. Grace is a scandal. I don’t think I have ever heard it put this
way and it fits.
Van Tholen
goes further. “Grace is hard to
believe. Grace goes against the
grain. The gospel of grace says that
there is nothing I can do to get
right with God, but that God has made himself right with me…” This fits how I have come to understand
grace. Linguistically, I know that grace
means “gift.” Grace is always a
gift. It is not earned and not a matter
of me deserving it. Grace is a way of
affirming me when there may be littler or no basis for that affirmation.
When I was in
graduate school, I heard for the first time the idea of “prevenient
grace.” I had never heard that language
while I was growing up in my Quaker tradition.
But I knew enough Latin to know the word, prevenient, meant “that which
comes before or ahead of time.” So
prevenient grace is that grace that comes to us before we need it or hope for
it. Prevenient grace comes ahead of
time. I like the image of the door. Prevenient grace is there and opens doors as
we are coming to the doors. We don’t
deserve it, but it is a gift nevertheless.
But why does
Van Tholen call it the scandal of grace?
Why use “scandal” language? Grace
is scandalous because it seems to cancel the judgment of justice. Scandalous grace says God loves us even when
we deserve to be punished. Scandalous
grace says it is ok, when everyone knows it was not ok!
There are
many within the church and even outside religious institutions who secretly
want people to “get theirs!” Some of us
want people to get what they deserve.
Often we don’t like it for grace to come along and cancel out the just
deserts. We want people to hurt instead
of sing Hallelujah! Particularly those
of us who play by the rules and are obedient may want those who don’t play by
the rules to “get theirs.” We want accountability
and God offers grace---scandalous grace.
Too often, I
am the elder son in the Prodigal Son story.
The prodigal comes home after blowing his share of the inheritance. And dad throws a party! That makes some of us mad. That is scandalous! Indeed, it is scandalous grace!
Lord, help me
come to understand more fully and embrace this radical, scandalous gift of
Yours. And maybe some day, may I be able
to grace others in the same way.
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