For the sake of receiving that for which your soul most deeply yearns, what are called to let go of, to release?

Grace is free … but it’s not cheap.

Grace is free,

a gift from God

– not a trade, not a transaction, not a reward, not a bribe –

Grace is not some kind of scarce resource that has value because the demand is high and the supply is low.

Earning, deserving, merit, demerit – these things simply don’t apply when it comes to Grace.
But that’s mostly how we think about it:
God will only love us if …; God will only love them if … ;
How many of us come to internalize that?

But this is not at all what Jesus taught. In fact, over and over again, he showed how the value system of the Realm of Heaven on Earth is a total scandal in the eyes of a transactional logic.

God’s love is free – totally free – an indiscriminate gift, cast like seeds of weeds over everything, to spread and spread and spread, a free gift is always available to anyone who says “Yes.”

A gift freely given which we are free to receive or free to refuse.

But if we’re still stuck in an transactional mindset, when we hear “free” we may think “cheap.”

This is a problem:

Too often folks think that you just have to make a big show out of professing Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior and that’s it, we can go on like we went on before, being petty and self-serving and resentful and judgmental – but now we get to do that underneath a chintzy plastic halo of being among the “Saved.” Or that the church takes care of salvation and we just have to go through the  motions of doing what the institution tells us. 

But before we get carried away judging those kinds of Christians, there’s the other side of the Christian and post-Christian spectrum where grace gets cheapened. God’s Grace is free, God loves everybody, so we don’t need to worry about God imposing any kind of challenge on our lives. This is an easy, lukewarm spirituality of low-expectations. You know, every now and again just try to be more or less a decent kind of person…without the discomfort of an ultimate claim on our lives that compels us to change and grow beyond the bounds of our petty selves, toward the embodiment of universal love.

Grace is free, but it’s not cheap.

Grace is the kind of gift you need to open, empty hands to receive, the kind of gift you can’t receive without letting it into your heart, that kind of gift that will soak through your very being.

When we accept the gift of God’s grace – a gift we find through Jesus –

When we receive the reality into our hearts that the Holy Source of all Life is also the Source of Universal, Unconditional Love … that gift is going to start changing us. It’s going to start working on us, challenging us, supporting us to grow. To grow how? To grow, little by little, as that Grace molds us to grow; to grow, little by little, toward that Universal Love; to grow, little by little, to be bearers of the fruits of Grace. Fruits like mercy, and compassion, and courage, a love that pulls us towards the universal.

For the sake of receiving that for which your soul most deeply yearns, what are called to let go of, to release?

We are like seeds planted in soil, by Grace.
That soil is rich because of Grace.
The rains come and soak into the earth and seep into the seed.
Those rains are good because of Grace.
And because of these gifts of Grace, the seed ruptures.
It breaks open, and its safe hard shelter falls away, it becomes a husk and dies …

That is the cost of Grace for that little seed… an invitation to new life, to casts off what has become old and confining and dead
so that new life can sprout – as a gift from Grace.

More rains come and soak the earth as the sprout pushes out its roots. The sun shines on the new leaves. All this is by Grace.

As the sprout grows it becomes clear it is under the care of a farmer. The farmer has planted this seed, and they tend to the growing plant, for the purpose of producing good fruits.

A healthy plant, you could say, gladly soaks in the grace it is given, it receives the gifts, and gladly dares to grow and root and reach into the sky and produce buds and flowers and fruits.

All this is under the care of the farmer. One of the things that a farmer or gardener or orchardist does is prune their vines or trees.

Sometimes it’s just a dead branch here or there that gets cut away. But in some stages of life that pruning can be quite severe.

It not as pleasant as just sitting back and soaking in sunshine. But the pruning is also a gift of grace, to help that plant fulfill its purpose of making whatever kind of fruit it was put in the earth to produce.

Notice how this way of thinking about Grace is ecological. As we have been exploring these past weeks, Jesus’ teachings are full of ecological and agricultural images. This is all about dimensions of life that are perfectly natural, the natural longing of our souls, our deepest fulfilment and flourishing.

But of course, we’re not vines or trees or vegetables, we’re humans. As humans, we have free will.

Vegetables can’t be ornery, but we sure can.
We can refuse to soak up the water given to us.

We can refuse to come out of our seeds.

We can be afraid of what can feel like a terrifying risk, the loss of a comfortable if constricting little self with a nice safe hard shell.

We can refuse to put down roots, to accept the ways we are interrelated with others.

We can keep what is budding closed, like tight fists, afraid to unfurl our leaves before the light of the sun, and embrace our dependence on a Holy Power much greater than ourselves.

We can resent the farmer for wanting to prude away the fruitless parts of ourselves, even if they’ve become diseased or become grotesque shackles choking ourselves and others. How dare you say I am not perfect! How dare suggest some part of me is dead weight! How dare you challenge me to let go of the fear that has become my sense of security. How dare you suggest there is a Holy Power much greater than myself, a higher and deeper purpose of my life than what is most convenient for me?

Or we can refuse to give over our fruits to the harvest, convinced we deserve to keep it all for ourselves, for this all was our own doing, owing nothing to the grace of soil, water, sun, clean air and a Godly gardener’s care.

Our good farmer doesn’t force us to do any of it.

We are free to refuse or consent to the pruning shears.

But if we choose to refuse, God may not rescue us from the natural consequences. And these are worse than the pain of pruning. They are. Sometimes we are in denial of this. But they are. Selfish living brings suffering.

Jesus and, before him, John the Baptist used the image of pruning several times in the gospels. These passages have become twisted by folks who are obsessed with condemning people to hellfire, who want to make these passages out to be about the souls of unbelievers burning in eternal torment under the wrath of a judgmental God.

John the Baptist said, “Prove your repentance with the fruit you bear … the trees that do not produce will be cut down and burned.” Is this a threat? A threat made by an angry God?

Remember what kind of fruits we’re talking about here, the fruits of the Way of Jesus:

“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Gal 5:22-23 NRSV

“affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.” Gal 5:22-23 Message

And remember that the heart of Jesus’ teaching is the Sermon on the Mount where he said things like “Blessed are the peacemakers,” “Bless those who curse you,” “Be merciful as God is merciful,” “Judge not lest ye be judged”

It should be clear that the images of pruning are not about arbitrary threats at the hands of a wrathful God. But they are warnings about the natural consequences of being viciously out of joint with a God of love, with our souls, with the souls of others.

It’s a realistic assessment. If we don’t let violence get pruned away, it begets more violence. Greed left to grow becomes a choking weed. Resentment and judgement fester and the rot spreads.

Guilt, shame, self-hatred, hatred of others, the ways we refuse God’s love because we’re obsessed with how we don’t deserve it or how they deserve it don’t – that makes buds die before blossoming. Grasp tightly to the things that deadens our souls, and they will pull us down.

But that doesn’t need to be the outcome. The invitation is always there – always – to receive the care we need from God to cut away what kills our souls, to get free of its dead weight, so we can bask in the sun and the rains of Grace and gladly make those sweet fruits of the spirit.

And we don’t need to do it alone.

Jesus, as the full and complete embodiment of God’s universal love, who gave himself so completely for the sake of the Realm of Heaven on Earth, he said that he is like a grapevine under the care of God. We can be united with that vital source of life and love, like a branch is united with a vine, drawing nourishment from a Sacred Source much deeper and wider and stronger than ourselves.

That Grace is always freely offered. It’s up to us to say “Yes.”

For the sake of receiving that for which your soul most deeply yearns, what are called to let go of, to release? To what are you called to say “Yes”?

Delivered Sunday, September 24, 2023 by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg

*The diagnosis of “cheap grace” was developed by Adam Clayton Powell Sr. and Dietrich Bonhoeffer