"Getting Right With God"

Romans 5:1-5 Story Number One: I think it must have happened during that fourth grade Sunday School class long ago. “Mr. Grassi, how do you get to heaven?” We must have just heard a Bible story about heaven. And one of us asked that question. “How do you get to heaven?” So Mr. Grassi, an elder in the church, explained it very carefully. “To get to heaven you have to work real hard at being good, boys and girls: tell the truth - don’t tell lies, be generous - don’t steal from others, be peaceful – don’t start fights. Work real hard at being good. That’s how you get to heaven.” It made sense to me: God rewards the good girls and boys, the good women and men, too, with a heavenly reward. It was a lot like home, with my Mom and Dad, to earn my allowance and other privileges and rewards, be good. But heaven, of course, must be a wonderful reward, filled with wonderful things, so that choosing to be good boys and girls, good women and men, would be well worth the hard work it takes to get there. Castles in the clouds, endless parks filled with waterfalls and flowers, beautiful music and rainbows. In his letter, Paul talks about living in the glory of God, and all it takes is being a good boy or girl. Story Number Two: I don’t know how this happened, maybe I grew up in a very healthy family where no one had died, but the first funeral I ever attended was the first funeral I led as a new pastor in Rochester. The room was filled with people dressed in black, there were a million flowers, and the women were weeping loudly. I did not know Mr. Licata, the grandfather who had died. I had only been working at the church for one day when the call came in. So I called a few of the oldest elders, who barely remembered Mr. Licata, long inactive in the church, but they said he was a good man from Sicily who loved children and enjoyed working in his garden. It sounded good enough for me, so I basically told all of the people who gathered in his honor that their father and grandfather was a good man, and surely he was enjoying the love of God in heaven that very day. After I said that, it seemed like a cloud had lifted a bit, and there wasn’t as much sadness, because everyone knew that Mr. Licata, a good man born in Sicily ninety years before, had gone to receive his heavenly reward, to share in the glory of God. Story Number Three: One day I got called in to do another funeral, this was quite a few years after Mr. Licata. Stella had died after a long illness. She was a church member and I knew her well. In fact, I knew her too well, she had told me in detail about every ache, pain or hurt she had ever had. In fact she told me about every ache, pain or hurt many, many times over. If I mentioned the name of a person she knew, she could quickly tell me in great detail exactly how that person had hurt her. Maybe it was only an ill-considered comment, maybe she heard it wrong, but Stella felt every word like it was a sharp knife thrust into her back. End of Story: So there I was at that funeral for Stella, and I was stuck. I couldn’t exactly say that Stella was a good woman because all we ever talked about was how badly she had been hurt. I don’t think we ever got around to the good things she had done. So I was stuck, but it was good to be stuck because it got me thinking in a way that I had never thought before. And I came to a new understanding about how we get to heaven. Before I say more about it, let me say that what I learned in Sunday School about the good girls and boys being rewarded by God with heaven was no longer making as much sense to me as it once did. Even before I got to Stella’s funeral I had done funerals for other people that didn’t quite fit the formula of “good boys and girls go to heaven”. I had done the funeral service of a serious alcoholic, a man who had badly mistreated his own family members for their whole lives. I did a funeral service for a man who was just plain mean and violent, and the people who gathered at the graveside wanted to make sure that he was good and dead. I did a funeral for a woman who had been engaged in prostitution at the time of her murder, another a serious drug addict. I have done services for many people who were probably not Christian at all! So there I was feeling stuck about Stella. I really couldn’t claim that Stella was a good girl, or that Stella was a good woman, because all I had ever heard were stories about how badly she had been hurt by her family and neighbors. But I had this insight that I had never had before. It goes like this, Stella didn’t get to heaven because she earned it, Stella didn’t get to heaven because she deserved it, Stella didn’t get to heaven because she had won the reward. Here it is, are you ready? Stella got to heaven because she needed to be there after a lifetime of endless pain. Now all of you should be waving your hands in outrage, because what I just said conflicts with everything you ever learned about getting to heaven, going all of the way back to Sunday School. How dare I throw out the importance of being a good girl or boy! I am a Christian mostly because of how radical our faith is, how much our faith shakes things up in our own lives and in the world around us, sometimes turning our most cherished beliefs on their head. This time at Stella’s funeral was a time when it was one of MY beliefs that was being turned on its head. It was the day when I realized that we cannot earn our way into heaven. Heaven is the result of God’s grace, not reserved for those who deserve it, but open to those who need it. This is Paul’s message that we have now heard in his Letter to the Romans. We are “put right” with God, “justified” in the old translation, not because of what we are doing to earn it, but because God has already taken action in Jesus Christ. So I said to Stella’s family at that funeral that Stella had been received into heaven, not because she deserved it, but because God knew how badly she needed it after a life of hurt and pain, especially when I reminded everyone there that Jesus is the one who takes away all of the hurts and pains of this world. The picture of heaven that I drew that day made sense to everyone who knew Stella. Everyone there knew, that day, that Stella had finally been received into God’s peace and love, and the aches and pains and hurt would be no more. This isn’t such a radical idea, actually. What if I had said outside of a funeral God’s love is unconditional, God reaches out to us in love, not because we have earned it, because we need it. Most of us would recognize this is the explanation of God’s grace, God takes action to save us. So how could heaven be any different? Now some of you bright young people in the church may have already thought of the tough question that needs answering before I can conclude my message. If you can’t earn your way into heaven by being good boys and girls, and that even deeply troubled people might be welcomed there by God, why should you bother being a good girl or boy? Why bother, if it makes no difference? Your question allows me to get to the best part of my message. Knowing that God’s love is so abundant and generous that it includes you even if your life is filled with aches and pains, how could you live your life as if nothing matters? How would you live your life knowing that God acts in THIS way toward you? Grateful, astounded, amazed? So the life of faith does not consist in meeting impossibly high standards, it is living in the love, grace and peace of God. It is living the reward now that you thought was left for the end of the journey. Now let me emphasize this last point especially to any of you who have long believed that God’s love is earned by working harder … on mission, by praying more, by reading the Bible more. God does love the good choices you make, God loves the ways you share and help and work for a more peaceful world, but more than anything else God wants you to simply absorb all the love offered to you in Jesus Christ. God wants you to enjoy the reward from the start. It turns out that what you thought was the reward at the end of the road is actually the starting point. You thought that the door is something you need to open, but it turns out that God has already opened the door before you even thought to reach for the door knob. God’s grace, God’s love, God’s peace is not the end of the road, it is where God starts, with me and with you. God is putting things right in Jesus Christ.