200 Proof Grace | Lessons from the Last 15
Something is wrong when more people expect to find grace at Cheers Bar in Boston than at First Church on Main Street. Cheers is where everyone knows your name. First Church has a reputation for being where everyone judges your failures.
It’s not that grace doesn’t belong at Cheers or in your workplace or on your team. On one hand, this world is coursing with grace since the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. On the other hand, it is no friend of grace. The serpent’s whisper echoing in every ear, the selfish choices that usually take precedence, and the blame begetting counter-blame all conspire to suck every last vestige of grace out of everywhere.
Grace is noteworthy when you find it at work. Surprise, someone covers one of your failures. Grace is unexpected across the political aisle or when you oversleep for a class or when the driver ahead of you pays-it-ahead covering your morning coffee. Finding grace in other places is like finding cash on the beach. No one promised you’d find a wadded up, soggy-sandy $20 on the beach, but it sure is pleasant.
“A graceless church is worse than a bankrupt bank.”
A graceless church is worse than a bankrupt bank. Church is the one place, the one community, where grace is promised. Christ’s church is the community of the gospel, the good news that God justifies the ungodly freely as pure donation. The reformers called this the chief article. They actually said the church fails and falls if it loses this treasure.
Grace is teaching and tone, action, and attitude. Jesus does it perfectly. “Let the children come to me.” “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.” “Your faith has saved you.” “Have no fear little flock, it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” The church not so much. “No kids allowed.” “Shape up. Try a little harder.” “You can’t take communion if...”
Much of the New Testament is made up of letters to churches. Nearly all of them messed up grace. The Church in Rome thought it was cheap and had an expiration date. The Church in Galatia thought it needed lots of “yeah, buts” added to make it a little more serious and effective. The Church in Colossae obscured grace with fixations on all sorts of spiritual stuff. The Church in Corinth took it for granted. The Church in San Pedro thought it was one doctrine among many. Another Church thought it was mostly connected to prosperity. Another thought it was reserved for the sweet-by-and-by. Another thought that if you did your best, God would do the rest. Your good intentions with God’s grace sprinkled on top.
“Like every church before us, even the biblical ones, we can’t correct our grace bankruptcy without the Donor.”
Maybe the history of humanity, and the history of the church with it, is the history of missing and messing up grace. Father Capon says it straight:
“The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace–bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly.” (Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace)
I have found that harping on grace doesn’t make a congregation more receptive of it. “You should correct your doctrine of grace.” Or, “You should be more gracious” are just the law talking about the gospel. Like every church before us, even the biblical ones, we can’t correct our grace bankruptcy without the Donor. He is our money in the bank. He is the grace we hear in our ears and believe in our hearts. He is the grace on our lips. He energizes our forgiveness. Before you know it, our face even starts to believe it. We might even let a grace giggle slip out after we have ceased taking ourselves so seriously.
Give them Jesus. You can have the rest. Just. Give. Them. Jesus.
Lessons from the Last 15 is a series of articles from Pastor Nathan Hoff on the occasion of his 15th year in ministry at Trinity San Pedro.
“It seems like they need me,” I said pretentiously to a dear family I was visiting in the first congregation I served. Just shy of three years at that Call, I broke the news about our upcoming relocation to Southern California. It was the Fall of 2005, and I had recently received and accepted a new Call to Trinity Lutheran in San Pedro, California. How that family managed not to roll their eyes is more impressive as the years go by. I had a lot to learn.
October 31st marked the 15th anniversary of my installation as pastor at Trinity San Pedro. They didn’t “need” me in the way I thought they might need me. They did need the Gospel, and I needed it too—as desperately as anyone else. I still do and they still do. We are a good match.