Thomas J Parlette
“Sequence Maters”
Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17
3/5/23
I am a child of the suburbs. Most of my childhood was spent moving around to various middle class neighborhoods within 20-30 minutes of whatever General Electric Plant my dad was working at. It wasn’t until I was called to my first church as a solo pastor that I lived in a predominantly rural area.
It’s kinda’ hard to think of the Hamptons as a rural area. After all, it’s only about 90 minutes into New York city and it’s famous around the world as a vacation spot for the wealthy. All that is true. But the people who have spent their lives there, generation after generation, still think of it as farmland. Most of the members of the Congregation I served in Bridgehampton, Long Island, were too far removed from farming and agriculture. Many still actively worked the land, selling their produce from farm stands or concentrating on horticulture or vineyards or fruit orchards. So while I was a pastor in that community, I learned a lot.
For instance, I learned the difference between soil and dirt. Dirt was basically dead. You couldn’t grow anything in dirt. But soil is alive. It is full of nutrients. So you grow things in soil, not dirt. That had never occurred to me growing up in suburban USA.
I also learned some economics lessons as well. Like whatever the estimate for a project is – double it for the actual cost.
And then, I’ll never forget one particular lesson I learned when I sat in on a meeting with our Trustees – who functioned like our building and grounds committee. A local farm equipment salesman had been particularly aggressive in wanting to sell us a new mower. He kept calling wanting to set up an appointment and I finally referred him to our Trustees. The elder statesman of the group, an older farmer named John, hemmed and hawed a bit, but finally agreed to talk to the salesman. The Trustees were notified, our custodian Harry was invited, and a date was set.
We gathered at the church and listened to the sales presentation, passed around the brochures, the glossy fact sheets and the pricing guide. After an hour, the salesman asked for any questions. The room was silent. Finally, John spoke up, “We’ll get back to you.” It was clear the meeting was over. They thanked the salesman, everybody shook hands and he left. The Trustees sat down again. After a bit of silence, John asked Harry, “How’s your mower?”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s working ok?”
“Sure is.”
They sat around in their jeans and Carhart jackets for another minute, until John broke the silence. “Well, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
And that was that.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Paul was dealing with that same kind of logic back in his day. That’s what a lot of folks were saying about good works back in the first century. Within the Jewish faith, there was a long tradition of people being justified by works. They would study the laws of the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, and then do their best to follow the law by remembering the Sabbath, honoring their father and mother, and refraining from murder, adultery and stealing. When they did these good works, they would be justified – meaning that they would be put back into a right relationship with God and their neighbors.
The model for being justified was Abraham, a righteous man who was the father of every Jew. He was held up as the symbol of Jewish righteousness. Those who followed Abraham saw him as the finest example of being justified by works. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
But then Paul came along and saw something that needed to be fixed.
Paul made an important discovery when he studied the story of Abraham. He realized that it was simply not true that Abraham was justified by his works. “What does the scripture say? He asked in his letter to the Romans. “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
Yes, Abraham was made righteous by believing God, not by following the law. He was made righteous by his faith, not by his good works.
That was a radical innovation. That we are put right with God through grace, not good deeds. Frederick Buechner writes, “Grace is something you can never get but only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.”
“A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?”
“A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do.”
“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you.”
“There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.”(1)
And that’s what Abraham did. He reached out and seized God’s grace. He believed and then did what God told him to do. He believed in “the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” He believed in the same God who raised Jesus from death to new life, and who calls into existence what may seem to be impossible. In Abraham’s life, that meant he trusted God to give him a child, even though his body was as good as dead. He believed in the promises of God and was “fully persuaded that God had power to do what God had promised.”
Abraham had faith in the God who gives life to the dead. He trusted God. He believed in the promises of God and that God had the power to fulfill those promises. And because of that faith, he was credited as righteous.
According to Paul in this passage, sequence matters. Just ask any elementary school teaching kids to read. Ask anyone involved in the construction industry. Or in my case, I could ask any of three members of my family who teach kids to swim. They would all agree – sequence matters. For Paul it starts with belief. Abraham believed in God. Then Abraham acted on God’s instructions. Then good things happened. And Abraham became known as righteous. The sequence matters.
Next in the sequence is trust. Trust God. Trust that God will do what has been promised. This passage from Romans makes it clear that the best thing Abraham ever did was to trust God. Abraham was righteous by trusting God, not trusted by God because he was righteous.
Finally, we can rest assured that grace is guaranteed. Grace is not earned like wages and cannot be lost like squandered wages. Abraham didn’t receive God’s grace for being a good person, or even for trusting God. He received God’s grace as we all do – as a gift. He received grace because God is God – and that’s what God does. God’s economy does not resemble a market economy, where earnings and expenditures come as a result of effort. Grace, God’s currency distributed with abundance, does not follow predictable human rules, which it means it can’t be fully understood – and usually comes as a surprise.
Anne LaMotte tells a story about a time she was surprised by grace. In the days after the war in Iraq broke out, she was particularly agonized to see the results of war – especially as it effected the children of Iraq. She prayed constantly for the war to end – but she became frustrated that it just dragged on and on. As she writes, “The problem with God – or at any rate, one of the top five most annoying things about God – is that God rarely answers right away. It can days, weeks. Some people seem to understand that life and change take time. I, on the other hand, am an instant-message type.” But she continued to pray – simply, God, help me.
On her 49th birthday, she drove to the store to buy herself a birthday dinner. She says, “I flirted with everyone in the store, especially the old people, and I lightened up. When the checker finished ringing up my items, she looked at my receipt and cried, “Hey, you won a ham!”
“I felt blind-sided by the news. I had asked God for help – not a ham. This was very disturbing. What on earth was I going to do with ten pounds of salty, pink eraser? I rarely eat ham – it makes you bloat.”
“Wow,” I said. The checker was so excited about giving it to me that I pretended I was, too.”
“A bagger was dispatched to the back of the store to fetch my ham. I stood waiting anxiously. I just wanted to go home. I almost suggested that the checker award the ham to the next family who paid by food stamps. But for some reason I don’t understand, I waited. If God was going to give me a ham, I’d be crazy not to receive it. Maybe it was the ham of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”
I waited ten minutes, and finally the bag boy handed me a parcel the size of a cat. I put it with feigned cheer into my grocery cart and walked to the car, trying to figure out who might need it. I thought about chucking the ham out the window near a field. I was so distracted that I crashed smack into a slow moving car in the parking lot.”
“I started to apologize, when I noticed that the car was a rusty wreck, and that an old friend was at the wheel. We had gotten sober together a long time ago, and each of us had a son at the same time.”
“She opened her window. “Hey,” I said. “How are you – it’s my birthday!”
“Happy Birthday,” she said, and started crying. After a moment, she pointed to her gas gauge. “I don’t have any money for gas or food. I’ve never asked for help from a friend since I got sober, but I’m asking you to help me.”
“I’ve got money,” I said.
“No, no, I just need gas. I’ve never asked someone for a handout.”
“It’s not a handout,” I said. “It’s my birthday present. I thrust a bunch of money into her hand. Then I reached into my shopping cart and held out the ham to her like a clown offering flowers. “Hey,” I said. “Do you and your kids like ham?”
“We love it,” she said.
She put it in the seat beside her, firmly, lovingly, as if she were about to strap it in. And then she cried some more and we kissed good-bye through her window.”(2)
Sometimes grace comes like that – unexpected as winning a ham you don’t want and running into an old friend in the parking lot who really needs it.
Paul reminds us today that sequence matters. First believe. Then obey. And God’s grace is guaranteed.
May God be praised for that. Amen.
References:
1. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, HarperSanFrancisco, 1993, p 38-39.
2. Anne LaMotte, Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace, Riverhead Books. 2014, p 255-257.
