20140821 REDUCING COSTLY GRACE TO CHEAP GRACE
Reading 1, Ezekiel 36:23-28
23 I am going to display the holiness of my
great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned
among them. And the nations will know that I
am Yahweh --
declares the Lord Yahweh -- when
in you I display my holiness before
their eyes.
24 For I shall take you from among the nations and gather
you back from all the countries, and bring you home to your own country.
25 I shall pour clean water over you and you will be
cleansed; I shall cleanse you of all your filth and of all your foul idols.
26 I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you; I
shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh
instead.
28 You will live in the
country which I gave your ancestors. You will be my
people and I shall be your God.
Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 51:12-13, 14-15, 18-19
12 Give me back the joy of your salvation, sustain in me a
generous spirit.
14 Deliver me from bloodshed, God, God of my
salvation, and my tongue will acclaim
your saving justice.
19 Then you will delight in
upright sacrifices,-burnt offerings and
whole oblations -- and young bulls will be offered
on your altar.
Gospel, Matthew 22:1-14
3 He sent his servants to call those who had been invited,
but they would not come.
4 Next he sent some more servants with the words,
"Tell those who have been invited: Look, my banquet is all prepared, my
oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, everything is ready. Come to
the wedding."
5 But they were not interested: one went off to his farm,
another to his business,
6 and the rest seized his servants, maltreated them and
killed them.
7 The king was furious. He despatched his troops,
destroyed those murderers and burnt their town.
8 Then he said to his servants, "The wedding is
ready; but as those who were invited proved to be unworthy,
9 go to the main crossroads and invite everyone you can
find to come to the wedding."
10 So these servants went out onto the roads and collected
together everyone they could find, bad and good alike; and
the wedding hall was filled with guests.
11 When the king came in to look at the guests he noticed
one man who was not
wearing a wedding garment,
12 and said to him, "How did you get in here, my
friend, without a wedding garment?" And the man was silent.
13 Then the king said to the attendants, "Bind him
hand and foot and throw him into the darkness outside, where there will be weeping
and grinding of teeth."
14 For many are invited but not all are chosen.'
REDUCING
COSTLY GRACE TO CHEAP GRACE
SCRIPTURE
READINGS: EZ 36:23-28; PS 50:12-15, 18-19; MT 22:1-14
http://www.universalis.com/20140821/mass.htm
The kingdom of God
is often portrayed as a banquet. It is an invitation to communion and
friendship. To live a life of love and communion with each other is
possible only when we are in God and God is in us. Thus, the
Kingdom of God is not so much a place, but the fact that God reigns in our
lives, which is one of love.
It is within this context
that today’s parable must be read. This parable must be interpreted on
two different levels, namely, on the level of the life of Jesus and of the
early Church, if we are to appreciate the full import of the gospel.
Indeed, Matthew’s parable of the king who gave a feast for his son’s wedding,
serves to illustrate what was happening in the early Church during his time.
What was the problem of the early Church? There was a two-fold problem;
one was the rejection of the Good News by the Jews, and the other was the
irresponsible Christian living of the Gentile converts.
On the first issue
confronting the Jews, the gospel wants to emphasize the primacy of grace.
This is clearly demonstrated in the history of salvation. God
continuously called His people through the prophets to repentance. The
parable is an allegory of the rejection of the people of God to the covenantal
relationship with Yahweh. In spite of the repeated failures and rejection of
His love, yet God remained patient. He never ceased calling them to
repentance. The parable illustrates the immense and incredible love and
patience of God, that in spite of their rejection and even killing of the
servants that He sent to invite them, God is always forgiving.
The first reading also
speaks of conversion as the initiative of God. It is significant
that it underscores not what Israel was doing for God, but what God would do
for them. God said through Ezekiel, “Then I am going to take you from among the
nations and gather you together from all the foreign countries, and bring you
home to your own land. I shall pour clean water over you and you will be
cleansed; I shall cleanse you of all your defilement and all your idols.
I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you; I shall remove the
heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead. I
shall put my spirit in you, and make you keep my laws and sincerely respect my
observances.” Note the many “I”s in the passage. Initiative and
power come from God alone. Salvation is primarily the work of God, not of
man. It is God who, in His mercy and love, takes the first step to
reconcile sinners with Him. Of course we know that this divine wisdom of
God is fully shown in His sending us His only Son, Jesus Christ, who pours
forth His Spirit upon us at our baptism. Only in the Holy Spirit is man
fully united with God and with his fellowmen.
But the irony is that man
does not want to receive this relationship as grace. When Jesus
told this parable, it was addressed to the Jews, especially the Chief Priests
and religious leaders. They wanted to make themselves right before God by their
own merits. They emphasized the importance of good works. They were
invited to the banquet. They continued to persist in their stubbornness
expressed in their total disregard of the invitations and the murder of the
servants. They rejected the grace of God. They wanted to repeat the
sin of Adam; to be saved without God’s assistance. The truth is that
eternal life and faith are God’s grace.
Similarly, this same invitation
was extended to the Gentiles. The parable tells us that the
servants were told to “go to the crossroads in the town and invite everyone” to
the wedding. “So these servants went out onto the roads and collected
together everyone they could find, bad and good alike; and the wedding hall was
filled with guests.” This parable refers to the situation in the early
Church where the believers were no longer Jews but Gentiles. They too
were nobody, yet God chose them to share in His life by offering the gift of
baptism. As the response in the responsorial says, “I shall pour clean
water over you and you will be cleansed.”
However, the more insidious
danger facing the Church was that what was supposedly to be a free gift of God
was taken lightly. In the words of Deitrich Bonhoeffer, costly grace
had become cheap grace. He wrote, “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow
on ourselves … the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance …
grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus
Christ, living and incarnate… “. This was the case of the extreme
Augustinians and Calvinists where the over-emphasis on the grace of God became
an excuse for complacency and even licentious living.
Indeed, the tragedy is that
although the early Christians had received baptism, they were not living out
their baptismal calling. They did not put on the wedding garment, a
symbol of the baptismal garment. It is important to note that when the
king noticed the man who was not wearing a wedding garment, he said to him,
‘”How did you get in here, my friend, without a wedding garment?” And the
man was silent.’ Why was the man silent? Because he was
guilty! He was careless and lazy. He had no excuse for not wearing
the wedding garment because it was customary that when one is invited for the
wedding, the garment would be also provided. Not putting on the garment
would be a sign of arrogance, insult and also a sign that one does not wish to
join in the feast. Thus, his silence said a lot about his recognition of
irresponsibility and shame.
We too, can take our
baptismal calling lightly. In fact, this is the situation of many
Catholics. Costly grace, which is given through the death of God’s only
Son, has become cheap grace. We have been given the gift of
baptism. We are responsible for keeping our baptismal garment untainted
on earth until we enter the fullness of eternal life. But after our baptism, we
do not continue to grow in faith, both in our spiritual life and our knowledge
of the faith. We are irregular in prayer life and disinterested in
learning more about our faith. We fail to make full use of the
sacraments, Eucharist and reconciliation, or to pray and read the Word of
God. Most of all, we do not live an authentic Christian life.
Yes, once again, we must
take heed of the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Costly grace is the
gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for,
the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls
us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it cost a man his life,
and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”
In this way, the prophecy
of Ezekiel is fulfilled when God declared, “I mean to display the holiness
of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have
profaned among them. And the nations will learn that I am the
Lord.” So holiness is the work of grace. It is God who makes us
holy through the Holy Spirit living in us. But this does not exempt us
from giving a free response by cooperating with His grace.
WRITTEN BY THE MOST REV WILLIAM GOH
ARCHBISHOP OF SINGAPORE
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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