Costly Grace

My devotional time yesterday was spent with a passage from Matthew that tells the parable of the mustard seed.

"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches."
– Matthew 13:31-32

I understand this to mean that life with God – in the now, and in the hereafter – is supposed to be about growing. It's supposed to be about change. As I read and pondered this passage many times over the course of the day yesterday I felt like the passage was telling me that intimacy with God comes when we allow the smallest, most insignificant things in our lives to grow and blossom into shelter and respite for ourselves, and for others.

Over the last year and a half or so, the way I understand God has been changing. I've been wrestling with traditional human conceptions of God. More specifically, I've grappled with the ways that human beings mold and sculpt God into an icon with which they push human agendas. And it all makes me very uncomfortable.

Those plastic WWJD bracelets are a perfect example. Truth be told, they embarrass me. What do they really mean? To me, these bracelets symbolize cheap grace. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the first to define cheap grace in his classic book "The Cost of Discipleship." His definition is as follows: "Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."

When we ask the question "What Would Jesus Do?" do we really even want the answer? Jesus hung out with the untouchables of society. He talked to women and prostitutes and other "moral failures." Jesus spent boundless amounts of time and energy on social justice for the poor and oppressed before eventually being crucified as a martyr.

Suddenly that bracelet isn't looking so attractive anymore. That's alright though. Every time we wear that bracelet and we fail it's all too easy to tell ourselves that it's OK – we're not Jesus anyway.

Cheap grace.

The flip side for Bonhoeffer was what he called "the pearl of great price." He writes, "It is costly because it cost God the life of His Son: 'you were bought with a price,' and what has cost God so much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our llfe, but delivered Him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God."

That stupid bracelet never used to bother me. Now it does. For awhile now it has challenged me to think and wrestle with God. Isn't it enough to ask what Jesus might do?? I don't think it is enough anymore. That dang mustard seed is growing into a shrub.

Maybe a better question would be What Would Jesus Have Me Do?

That's a far costlier question. Instead of thinking of Jesus in the abstract it roots him firmly in the here and now – right in my day to day life. There is no out when I fail. It puts the responsibility of taking up the cross and following Jesus squarely on me.

WWJD grace is presumptuous. WWJHMD grace is humbling. It is also far more difficult and scary.

As Bonhoeffer said, "Costly grace is the Incarnation of God." WWJHMD is the incarnate alive in me.

Damn mustard seeds. . .