Mainline Schism (3)

Grace Is a Burning Coal, Not a Dish of Vanilla Ice Cream

In this series, we’ve been working with the idea that the church, or what is termed “the mainline” part of it, is diverging — maybe splitting — into two different streams. One, “faith in Jesus,” while the other is “faith of Jesus.”

What’s the difference? “Faith in Jesus” puts its emphasis on what God has done and is doing in Jesus Christ for healing — saving — human beings and all creation. “Faith of Jesus” puts the emphasis our doing, and a call to follow the teachings and example of Jesus.

That said, this is — theologically speaking — a false distinction as you can’t in the end separate Jesus’ teaching and ministry from his death and resurrection. And it goes the other way as well. You can’t isolate the cross and resurrection from Jesus’ teachings, healings and ministry. If the former is the besetting problem of the “thin Christianity” or the mainline, the latter is more often the failing of the “sharp Christianity” of evangelicalism (see Part 2 for more on those terms.) I, by the way, am partial to the “thick” version, as described by Jonathan Rauch (again see Part 2).

While the “faith in Jesus”/ “faith of Jesus” distinction is a false one theologically, that certainly doesn’t keep us from forming up along those lines. And that makes it a useful tool for analysis and discussion.

For example, I was recently at a mainline, “progressive church,” worship service where the Scripture text was Matthew 28: 16 -20, the final words of the Gospel of Matthew. In the NRSV that text reads as follows:

“Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am always with you, to the end of the age.’”

At that service this was rendered in what was described, in print, as the “abbreviated” form:

“Go everywhere and share love. Teach people to care for one another. And remember I am with you always.”

I guess you could call that an “abbreviation,” but it is really something more than that. Gone is “worship of Jesus,” (along with the provocative, “some doubted”). Gone too the “authority” given to the risen Lord. “Share love” and “teach people to care for one another” is sort of different (do you think?) than “make disciples . . . baptize . . . teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Perhaps singling out this example is unfair, giving one “worship experience” more weight than it deserves. And yet . . . certainly, in this example, “faith in Jesus” has been “abbreviated” to the vanishing point, while “faith of Jesus” itself is, in this rendering, pretty much a dish of vanilla ice cream. Though I like vanilla ice cream, it’s hard to imagine how such a sentiment could get anyone crucified.

The failing of the “faith of Jesus” variety of Christianity, as I have experienced it, is that it seems to assume what we need is mostly reminders to be good. We go to church, if we do, to get advice and instruction to that end. It’s Sunday School at its worst: “Now, children, let’s all be good little girls and boys!” extended to adults. Truly insipid. We’re basically pretty much fine, we only need to be reminded to be a bit better. (Recall that C. S. Lewis said, “Christ did not come to make us better; but to make us new.”)

On one hand, “Go everywhere and share love” may seem, if nothing else, benign. But if you push into a little further it is a re-do of Law. Law is religion as climbing a ladder to get to get to God (as opposed to God coming down, in Jesus, to us where we are.) It is what you must do to get on God’s good side, or to show yourself to be “On God’s side.” Or “to be on/ seen to be on the right side.” Be more loving. Be more informed. Nicer. “Teach people to care for one another.”

The problem with the Law, or what you might call a religion of virtue — a.k.a. “moralism” — is not that it’s wrong in itself. It is that it does not have the power to bring about what it commands. It may do just the opposite. Some of us, told to be “good little girls and boys,” will do just the opposite! Hence, the appeal of the “bad boy,” or “the bad girl.” Besides, good advice, fades pretty rapidly (as noted by the prophet Hosea), as quickly as the morning dew when the sun — i.e., life — gets hot.

The South African Archbishop, Desmond Tutu, once commented that “Christianity is not a religion of virtue.” “A religion of virtue,” said Tutu, “says to a person, ‘if you are good, then God will love you. Christianity is not a religion of virtue. It is a religion of grace.”

If/ then is the grammatical structure of Law or moralism (and most of secular society). If you play by the rules, are accomplished, possibly perfect, then God (or your parents or society) will love and approve you and your life will be good.

The grammatical structure of grace is different. More of an Inasmuch/ Therefore thing. Inasmuch as you are, despite your warts, foibles and foolishness, beloved of God who is forgiving and merciful, so you by grace (God at work in you) may be gracious/ merciful to one another. The difference is like that between conditional and unconditional parental love. While probably neither of those exists in pure form with earthly parents, still you get the idea.

Grace is not about what we must do in order to be acceptable to God or to ourselves or to insure favorable outcomes. It is about what God does, has done and has promised, on our behalf. It is not good advice. It is good news. “In Christ, there is a new creation . . . all this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” (II Corinthians 5: 17 - 18)

Or Ephesians 2: 8 - 10: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus, for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” Note the agency here is God’s, how often God is the subject of the verbs. God is up to something in your life — even when it isn’t evident to you.

In Isaiah, Chapter 6: 1 - 8, which is a great text, Isaiah has a vision, a vision of God. God is “high and lifted up, the hem of his robe filling the Temple.” Seraphs swirl in flight around God chanting, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is filled with his glory.” The thresholds shake and tremble, smoke wafts in the air. Really, it beats “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” How does Isaiah react to such a vision?

He cries out, “Woe is me! For I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” In God’s presence Isaiah is overwhelmed by a sense of his own sinfulness and that of all people. Before such a God, there are no “good” people, none that can confidently claim to be virtuous or beyond reproach. Then one of the flying seraphs takes a flaming coal and touches it to Isaiah’s lips, cleansing him, so that he may speak God’s word to the people.

Isaiah, in God’s presence, is overwhelmed by a sense of his own inadequacy, his own insufficiency, his own flaws and fallibility, perhaps of his own cluelessness and pretentiousness. I have sometimes had such an experience seeing a play or reading a novel, seeing myself in a not good, but true, light in one of the characters portrayed!

Isaiah did not need advice nor a reminder to be a little better. He needed redemption, a complete reset, dying and being raised, a deliverance from the twin powers of Sin and Death and their rule throughout the land. He needed God’s cleansing grace so that he, a flawed human, might serve as a messenger of God to other also flawed humans. Grace is a burning coal, not a dish of vanilla ice cream.

This is the world of Scripture. We aren’t basically good people who’ve got things under control but who may need a new hack or two or an occasional reminder for betterment. It is both worse, and far, far better, than that. We are sinners in need of redemption. And redemption is very near to you.

It is what Christ brings, victory over Death and Sin in their manifold and persistent forms and disguises. Moreover, this same resurrection power is at work throughout his ministry. Faith in Jesus is faith in his power, in God’s power, to heal the broken heart, to mend the life that is seemingly beyond repair, to cast out demons, to raise the dead.

The failure of “faith of Jesus,” in its present iteration is that it doesn’t take our situation seriously enough. Which is odd given the state of things. I mean, look around!

T. S. Eliot asked, “Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws? She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget. She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft. She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts. They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within by dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. But the man that is will shadow the man that pretends to be.”

To conclude: Faith in Jesus vs. Faith of Jesus, while it may be a useful descriptive tool for the moment, is, strictly speaking, a false dichotomy. This is a both/and, not an either/ or. As an aphorism that is a favorite of mine puts it, “Salvation is all about grace; ethics is all about gratitude.”

Under the press of the Culture Wars, politicized religion, and I guess fear of seeming out of step, some — maybe a lot — of the mainline Protestant churches are offering “progressive” moralism/ legalism in place of gospel.

Meanwhile, “sharp Christianity” stokes fear, a sense of grievance/ victimization, and its own brand of legalism.

This, as I suggested in Part 1 of this series, is not exactly new, but in a time when grace is so urgently needed by an exhausted, overwhelmed and often despairing people, it is deeply regrettable. (Use link for a wonderful essay on “The Grammar of Grace”.)