Grace Alone

This morning is Reformation Sunday, a day we remember Martin Luther’s 95 Theses being nailed to the church door in Wittenburg, 95 objections against church abuse and corruption, and return to 5 theological principles that undergirded the effort to reform the church and eventually led to the establishment of Protestantism. Those 5 theological principles were known as the “solas” – the things that alone the church must affirm. “A sinner is justified by grace alone (sola gratia) through faith alone (sola fide) for the sake of Christ alone (solus Christus), a truth revealed to us in Scripture alone (sola Scriptura)” all for the glory of God alone (soli Deo gloria).
This morning’s Scriptures each have two characters, one who believes he has earned his justification, and one who knows he is a sinner, and in each story the one who is sure he is right with God looks down on the other one.

The first is the story of Adam and Eve’s children, Cain and Abel. Abel is a shepherd, and Cain a farmer. At the time of harvest, they each bring an offering to God. God is pleased with Abel’s offering and does not look with favor on Cain’s. It is then that Cain experiences one of those crucial moments when your decision sets a course.

We tend to move on to the horror of Cain murdering his brother Abel…but, let’s back up. When Cain was born, there was much rejoicing; he was the fulfillment of God’s promise, the hope of his parents, the one who would follow in his father’s footsteps and work the ground. When his brother was born, his parents named him “vanity,” he was born in vain, an extra mouth to feed, Cain was the one to fulfill God’s promises. So, he grew up in the shadow of his older brother. The two brothers work hard and in gratitude for their harvest they brought an offering to God. Abel’s is pleasing to God. Cain’s is not. And Cain is angry.

God sees that Cain is at that intersection of making a critical decision and counsels him, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?” I’ve often wondered why Cain’s offering wasn’t as pleasing as Abel’s. Did he not offer the first fruits? Did he keep some of the best fruit for himself? Did he keep back part of it and not give the whole tithe of 10% of the harvest? Or was it his attitude as he made the offering? Was it given grudgingly rather than joyfully? Was he focused on all he had done to produce the harvest and not on gratitude for all God had provided that made the harvest possible?

Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with Abel’s offering. The reason Cain’s offering was not pleasing to God had to do with the Cain’s offering. God asks Cain, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?” Cain is the one who has not done what is right in his offering. “But,” says the Lord, “if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” The sin crouching? Pride. Cain was too proud to look in the mirror and really see himself and his offering for what it was. So, instead, of reflecting on what he has done and what he could do better, he blames his brother, the original othering. Maybe he justifies his disdain with thoughts of how much easier Abel has it just looking after sheep – Abel didn’t have to till the hard ground and plant and then haul water to keep the plants growing – he just led his sheep to fields to graze and streams to drink. Maybe he blames Abel’s offering for making his look bad. Whatever justification he has, Cain cannot see his own failure, and looks at Abel, whom he is sure doesn’t deserve God’s favor like he does.

The more I study Jesus’s parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, the more I see it as a contemporary retelling of the story of Cain and Abel. The same sin is crouching at the door of the Pharisee in Jesus’s parable, pride. The Pharisee is pretty impressive – and he knows it, especially compared to that tax collector over there! Surely God sees it! Born in comparison instead of reflection, Cain and the Pharisee look at someone else rather than themselves for their worth. And they think, “Surely God sees it too – I am SO much better than him!”

Rev. Chelsey Harmon points out that “The Pharisee assumes God sees these people (and himself) the same way that he sees [them]. [He’s] able to point out the faults of everyone else, able to list off his spiritual resume, what’s left for him to work on? What’s left for God to do but praise [him] and thank him for being so awesome? Doesn’t God see?
“But that’s the thing, isn’t it? God actually does see [the Pharisee] – in the same way that God sees the [tax collector, and every other sinner, robbers, evildoers, adulterers]. God sees each as his children, his creatures, the objects of his love and redemption. It doesn’t take more [grace] to redeem the tax collector than it does to redeem the Pharisee.”
It just takes openness to receive grace.

Abel was not expected to amount to much. Abel brought his sacrifice without faith in himself, just humility, offering the best that he had to God. And the tax collector? The tax collector comes beating his breast, despised by his community for being a sell-out. He works for the Romans, the occupation, the oppressors, whether he has always been faithful or he has just undergone a change of heart, we don’t know. Maybe he inherited the job from his father and their family was already outcast and he had no other job opportunities. Or maybe at one point he relished the earning potential and didn’t care about the people left destitute as he squeezed them for taxes and his healthy commission. We don’t know what his spiritual resume includes, but now, he can’t even come to the Temple court. He stands at a distance; knowing better than to get too close to the presence of the Lord. He won’t even look up to heaven, as he beats his breast and cries out “O Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

And he is transformed. Not because he is more virtuous than the Pharisee, but because he is more open. C. S. Lewis once said, “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and of course, as long as you are looking down, you can’t see something that’s above you.” God can transform a person who knows they need mercy. Jesus ends the parable with a reversal: “The tax collector went down to his home justified rather than the other.”

Not because the Pharisee wasn’t what we would label a good person. He came to the Temple when he was supposed to – he had a star in every box on the attendance chart. He had a pin for his work with the less fortunate and a certificate for his excellence in Scripture memorization. He had given his tithe and made his sacrifices. But it isn’t what we do that makes us right with God. It is grace alone that makes us right with God, and we all need it.

Miraslov Volf, a Crotian Protestant theologian, has a new book out this fall, The Cost of Ambition: How Striving to be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse. Turns out, it is very human of us to want to be confident that we are just better than somebody else or some other group. In the Preface he writes, ““It takes only a quick perusal through the Bible to see that striving for superiority is a dominant theme in the story of human suffering and wrongdoing.” Then, to illustrate the point, he briefly retells the Cain and Abel story about what happens when our sense of being superior is challenged and how it leads us to violence as we try to preserve the lie that we are better than someone else.

God sees us, every bit of us, the bright shining moments and the dark, shadow ones. There is no intrinsic difference in you and any other person who draws breath. We are all children of God, and we are all saved by grace alone. There is nothing in us and nothing we do that moves God to forgive us. Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). And to the Romans Paul writes, “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace” (Romans 11:6). To be saved by grace alone means you do not save yourselves. Christ does. Christ has. Christ came not to condemn the world, but to save it, if only we will admit we need saving.