Appalling Strangeness

You can't conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.

-Graham Greene

Several conversations around this 40-Day Journey with Bonhoeffer have centered around a very familiar theme: This whole discipleship business that he is talking about seems like an impossibly high ideal. And, what is further, it seems like he lifted the ideal so high that he himself was not able to live up to it, what with the whole story of his involvement in a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler. Doesn't his own biography counter the ideal for which he was striving?

I have to say that the timing of these conversations and questions is rather appropriate. Here we are at Day 18, almost halfway in our 40-Day Lenten Journey. We are getting to know Bonhoeffer a little more, and balancing that with, possibly, a few insights about our own lives and how we live. And what is emerging for several of us is this idea that, try as I might, I won't ever be able to live up to what a follower of Jesus ought to do, or ought to be.

Now, if we take a step back for a moment and just ponder this conundrum, we can notice a few things. 1) For some reason we think that there is a perfect ideal out there, and that it is our business to pile up the entire resources of our human experience and reach it. 2) For some reason the effort we expend "trying to be good and reach the ideal" often makes us blind to the presence of Christ in our lives; only looking to Christ when we need some tips on how to live better to achieve the ideal. 3) Doesn't this cheapen the actual grade, and, our word for the day, appalling strangeness of the mercy of God? Because the fact is, try as we might, that ideal will never be reached, and, just as in the best and healthiest of human relationships, God's abundant love can never be earned. It is given. It is given. It is given. It is grace.

The cost of that grace was of utmost concern for Bonhoeffer. He thought of it as worthy of our best attention; our deepest reflection; and the basis of our convictions out of which our most passionate actions arise.

Question for the day:

In what ways do we cheapen the grace and mercy of God?

"The word of cheap grace has ruined more Christians than any other commandment about works...

For integrity's sake someone has to speak up for those among us who confess that cheap grace has made them give up following Christ, and that ceasing to follow Christ has made them lose the knowledge of costly grace. Because we cannot deny that we no longer stand in tru discipleship to Christ, while being members of a true-believing church with a pure doctrine of grace, but are no longer members of a church which follows Christ, we therefore have to try to understand grace and discipleship again in correct relationship to each other."

-from his book Discipleship

Scripture to consider:

What then are we to say? Should we continue to sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead to the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

-Romans 6:1-4

Prayer for the day:

Lord Jesus Christ, I would follow you, no matter what the cost; lead me in the way of true discipleship.

Amen