Wednesday, 3 December 2014

20140821 REDUCING COSTLY GRACE TO CHEAP GRACE

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.
27 I shall put my spirit in you, and make you keep my laws, and respect and practice my judgments.
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.
13 I shall teach the wicked your paths, and sinners will return to you.
14 Deliver me from bloodshed, God, God of my salvation, and my tongue will acclaim your saving justice.
15 Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will speak out your praise.
18 In your graciousness do good to Zion, rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
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

1 Jesus began to speak to them in parables once again,
2 'The kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a king who gave a feast for his son's wedding.
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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