Reading posts on a forum of people re-examining their faith practice brings me such delight. So many are discovering grace. It has prompted thoughts on when, more than a decade ago, we embarked on a similar post-church journey. A journey that has led to an intimacy with God as Father, Jesus as friend, and Holy Spirit as constant companion; relationships of substance and joy I had never thought possible.
You may remember Jesus talking to his disciples about a change in the relationship. “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends, for all things I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). From slave to friend, now that is a change in relationship: in a sense from hired hand to part of the family; from slave quarters to dining room. And in case you are thinking job promotion, no, something much more significant than good servants being rewarded, it is an invitation of grace not merit, and it opens up the prospect of knowing what our Father is doing.
I lived the better part of my life as a good servant – I knew what I had to do, so I did it. It was the ‘right’ thing to do, it was part of ‘filling my place’ and ‘fitting in’. I had no yearning to know more, and besides I hardly knew the Father so didn’t need to know what He was doing. All pretty much sweetness and light, until … Yes, until that desperate cry that will probably resonate with many of you: “Where is God in all this mess?” Isn’t it wonderful how God shows up, for he wants us to know what he is doing, but we have to be close enough to see where his focus is. Thus a change in the relationship, from slave to friend.
Jesus tells us what a good servant looks like. It is in the story of a man with two sons, one a real loser and the other a real servant. Although a son, he saw himself as a servant, he was doing the right thing – working in the fields instead of realising he actually belonged in the house knowing what the father was doing. The father was looking afar off, there was something on his mind of great import; a loser looking for substance, something he could hang on to. Things the servant/son didn’t know about because he wasn’t there, too busy working. Even the house-boy knew more than he did for it was the house-boy that told him about the father celebrating. Nothing in the story to indicate he wanted to know that anyway, deciding the father was being far too generous with his welcome. Compared to his own dedicated service in the fields, caring for the assets and not celebrating at home with his friends, this waster and trouble-maker was not entitled to anything.
We should celebrate servants like that surely – tireless workers, dedicated servants in the fields, years of service and knowing who was entitled and who wasn’t. So why the letters of resignation? There will be many reasons, all individual and personal. While I didn’t know at the time, I have come to see that while we hold the entitled/not entitled mindset, and the slave identity we think it is what God wants from us. But it is missing what God wants for us. To be close to him, even if this closeness comes after us being afar off, and a waster. And close enough to know what he is doing – getting ready to celebrate, to fill the house with joy and feasting. A celebration of grace, not merit or entitlement.
The good servant in the story was in fact a son, but he saw himself as servant. Important distinction. Prior to his taking on humanity, Jesus had to decide his earthly identity, and considered coming as a god ‘was not his for the taking’. So he took on the form of a servant without ever losing his true identity as son. We see how beautifully appropriate this was, especially in the context of his time when society was so structured, maintaining the fierce distinctions between free-born and slave, with all the attendant trappings of class and hierarchy. Things Jesus said should ‘not be named among us’. So much of his mission was breaking down barriers and building bridges. A mission of grace, where relationship in the family was an invitation to all, not just the entitled.
For all the servant-like dimensions of Jesus life, he never lost his true identity, he took on the form without discarding the substance – closeness with his Father. That’s why he could tell his disciples he had told them everything his Father had said, so that they might know what the Father is doing (notice the tense – not has done, or going to do). Talking as friends that is, not servants.
And this, I believe is a sticking point for those still embracing the entitled/not entitled mindset. When we see ourselves as servants with work to do, not as sons and daughters, the form takes over the substance, and it leads to us not knowing what the Father is doing, and worst of all, not celebrating as family. Does this mean we celebrators don’t serve? Not at all! In fact, we take on the form of servants willingly and serve out of a wonderful sense of deep gratitude that the relationship is secure, and not dependent on how much I do or don’t do.
I know this because I was a good servant, travelling hundreds of miles to church events, working bees on Saturday and often weeks at a time if building work was needed. Never missed going to church, even on holidays. We would tie the sailboat up to a jetty somewhere and get a taxi to church. Proud of the fact that we were the only family in dress-up gear walking along the jetty, for this was part of ‘doing God’s work’. Oh brother, to think of it now. But worse than that, when we left, we still carried the mindset. Mission trips, and even teaching at a remote Indigenous boarding school – Christian of course. Serving and doing. Then grace entered our consciousness more fully and everything changed.
I wish I could tell you how it happens, but I can’t. I can say two things based on my experience, firstly it happens individually. I know people who had a revelation from reading Yancey’s seminal text “What’s so amazing about Grace”, and others, like me coming to it slowly, organically, encounter by encounter, revelation by revelation. And secondly, it is revealed not learned. It is, after all a mindset, a way of viewing things, a window through which we see the world and people we share it with. It is knowing who we are, our identity as sons and daughters, not entitled but through grace.
Free to do what we like eh? Doesn’t sound very Christlike does it. Something else I can’t explain, freedom. For yes, I am free to do what I like, but the qualifier is, being saved by grace, knowing who I am, and seeing the world as I do, what I like to do comes out of a sense of gratitude. Let me give you an example. Our son lives in the US and in the early part of our visit, I sit down with him and we talk deep stuff. This year I found myself saying something that surprised me, yet it was what I meant to say.
My wife and best friend of over fifty years, Robyn, does volunteer palliative care work. One client had a dying concern: who would take care of her reclusive son. Robyn said without hesitation, ‘We will’ and we do. He comes once a week, has done for more than a year now, and we work in the shed, making model boats and planes. The thing that surprised me was what I told my son: ‘I have never done anything that has given me such a deep sense of pleasing God’. I don’t say that boastfully; it is just that it is so different to what I used to do to please Him. Now, we are retired, mid-seventies, so we have time to do such things. Out of the main tide-flow of life, but still in the stream enough to know there are recluses out there everywhere. If not recluses, people who for whatever reason are in a far country wondering about home and family. Hungry enough to eat pig-food, but they are slaves, so in their eyes even the pigs have more value. But not in God’s eyes, and he sends in the writers of church resignation letters. Understanding grace and who we are gives us spare capacity.
Jesus’ mission was to reveal his Father to humankind, because the law and written stuff didn’t do it. Jesus, (the Word) pitched his tent alongside ours, and for me nothing Jesus said and taught portrays the nature and character of his Father better than the idea of celebrating the return of a loser. Not because the waster was entitled to anything (he wasn’t) but because when he turned to inquire of his father, he found what we have found: the very nature and character of God is love, and grace allows us to celebrate being part of the family. And to know what He is doing.
