Stephen
Terry, Director
Blessed
Are Those Who Believe
Commentary
for the November 16, 2024, Sabbath School Lesson
"You who are trying to be justified by the law
have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace." Galatians 5:4, NIV
Before I retired in 2007, I worked
as a state employee in a two-story office building that had a lunchroom with a microwave
kitchen, a gym, and some small training and storage rooms on the second floor.
On the ground floor were all the work offices and cubicles. Central to those
offices was a small kitchen with a coffee machine, a microwave, a sink, a
refrigerator for storing lunches that needed to be kept cold and vending machines
for snacks during breaks and to supplement lunchtime cravings.
The snack machines offered a
variety of snacks for different prices. We would put in our money, select the
snack, and it would drop into a bin at the base of the machine ready for
retrieval and enjoyment. Sometimes, due to vagaries with the machine or the
snack packaging, the snack, though paid for, failed to drop into the bin. We
all knew when this happened because the frustrated employee could be heard all over
the office banging on the machine, trying to get the snack to drop. Sometimes
this ploy was successful. Sometimes it was not. When that happened, the
employee would put a post-it note on the machine letting the vendor who
refilled the machines know that he had paid and received nothing. Usually, the
vendor would reimburse the employee.
In many ways, life is viewed just
like the employees viewed that vending machine. We put in what is required, and
we expect to receive what we have earned. We go to school and earn the requisite
diplomas, so we expect life to reward us with a career and all the things that
a career makes possible -- marriage, a home, children, education for those
children, family travel, adequate family medical care, and eventually a comfortable
retirement. If we fail in achieving those things and someone quips, "Life is
not fair," we are likely to respond negatively on a level commensurate with the
amount of effort we put into making it fair. In short, we demand that life be
transactionally just. When it is not, we demand to know the cause and set about
vilifying those in charge, even if they had little to do with the actual events
in question. Politically, we see this as whoever is president when we are
unhappy is at fault. While such scapegoats are popular, they have about as much
to do with our unhappiness as the governor of our state had to do with a candy
bar not falling into the vending machine bin in our office.
The point is that a
transactional basis for life is not a formula for happiness. Eventually, a
transaction will fail just like those vending machines. When it does, rather
than questioning such an approach to life we place metaphorical post-its everywhere
demanding redress, even if the event itself was trivial. When this goes on for
a prolonged period, we explode, like the proverbial Karens who seem to blow up
over trivial offenses without reason, only to suffer embarrassment and loss of
respect as a result. Sometimes it is our bad choices that bring us to that
point. Sometimes it may be the bad choices of others who we may not even know.
Yet those choices affect us and upset the transactional expectations we hold
sacred. We know how remote these things can be. For instance, we know that when
someone gains a job in China, Korea, or Mexico, in our global economy, it can
mean someone else does not get an equivalent job in the United States. We may
have learned our trade or professional qualifications at a cost that demanded
we seek employment to recoup, and when that fails, we decry the lack of justice.
The transactional justice model has failed us again. Over such things, the
governments of countries rise and fall. But despite the changes, transactional
justice is never complete.
When we consider the Bible's
perspective, God is often portrayed as a heavenly
vending machine. We pray or are obedient to some
requirement and expect reciprocation from God. In other words, as human beings,
we bring our same demands for transactional justice to our relationship with
God. This is why we struggle with theodicy. How can we accept that God is fair
if he allows the transactional model to fail? And if the holy grail of life is
transactional equity, how can we accept the existence of a God whose actions
deny the validity of the pursuit of that quest? Because transactional equity
has become so ingrained in whom we see ourselves to be, we can readily see the
demands for obedience in the Bible as a condition for blessings, but we fail to
see all who, in its pages, recognize that such equity is a phantom and even question
God about it. Those Old Testament questioners, though revered for their faith
and commitment are nonetheless outliers when it comes to weighing them against
our demands for justice. Instead of embracing the inequity and seeking
understanding therein, we convince ourselves that if we can force everyone to
be just and equitable in their dealings with everyone else, the problem will be
solved. How can we continue with such thinking when throughout the history of
humanity, we have never succeeded in that despite myriad attempts? Even killing
off those who will not comply as Stalin did when millions questioned his
ill-conceived pursuit of societal perfection that did not achieve its end, for injustice
always abounds despite those efforts.
Incarnating into this milieu,
Jesus revealed the only thing that we have control over in this ongoing
inequity is ourselves. Changing governments does not solve the problem, even
though we might claim it will. Passing coercive laws will not solve it. That
will only fill the prisons, something we have been particularly good at doing in
the United States. Even the defeat of enemies both internal and foreign will
not solve it. We like to think if we can only get people to follow the Decalogue
of Exodus, chapter 20, or Deuteronomy, chapter 5, we could have a perfect
society, but we cannot even manage to accomplish the love required to fulfill
the two greatest commands, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind,
and being, and to love our neighbor. As simple as that is, it should tell us
something about ourselves. We cannot provide the transactional equity we demand
of others. As the Bible says, we are all sinners. We know we should be loving,
but when those transactional expectations fail, our love fails also. Instead of
loving, we become demanding. In that failing, we reveal, we do not know God. As
the Apostle John said, "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is
love." (1 John 4:8) If we are all sinners as the Apostle Paul taught, (Romans
3:23) then we are all guilty of failure to love. Forcing ourselves to be
obedient to the Decalogue does not solve the problem. It is possible to obey
every one of the commandments and still be a miserable, unloving cur.
And what happens when we have
done all of that and still fail to find what we consider to be transactionally
equitable? Jesus met such an individual. (Matthew
19:16-22) A young man came up to him and asked how to receive eternal life.
Jesus told him to love God and love his neighbor. He assured Jesus that he had
done that since his childhood and asked what else? Jesus told him to sell all
that he had and follow him. When the young man frowned and left, he revealed
that his greatest love was of his wealth. Like the Pharisee with the Publican,
we might feel we are not like that wealthy young man, but we should ask ourselves,
what would we be willing to give up if we had to choose between that and loving
God and our neighbor? Too many prefer to keep track of offenses and pile them
up as though they represented great wealth. We are offended that God did not
provide transactional equity by answering our prayers. We add that to our stack
of grievances until we convince ourselves he does not exist else he would have
provided that equity. We behave similarly toward our neighbors. Someone does
not say or do the right thing at the right time, and it goes into a pot that
simmers with grievance until the meal is well cooked and ready to serve its
poisonous broth into a relationship that may have been close but drifted as the
score of grievances increased.
Ironically, we may admit our own
failings and rely on God's grace to escape the equitable justice we so rightly
deserve. Why then do we find it so difficult to extend similar grace to others
without keeping score? The sad thing about keeping score is that even one
imagined wrong held in the heart can not only destroy a friendship, but it can
also eat away at our happiness like a cancer. God grants us his loving grace
despite our failings so that we might do the same for others. How are we doing
in his school of grace?