A mother reports that her fourth grade son was on crutches when it came time for his birthday. He wanted to take cupcakes to school but couldn’t carry them. When his mother asked his older brother to carry them for him he said, “I could but I won’t.” Spotting a teaching moment the mother asked, “And what would Jesus do?” To which he replied, “Jesus would heal him so he could carry his own cupcakes.”
While that thinking could easily put us in a theological ditch, on Reformation Sunday we do remember the fullness of God’s work for us. A couple weeks ago I mentioned the famous phrase from Ephesians 2:8, “saved by grace through faith.” I mentioned that while most everyone easily agrees that it is God’s grace that saves us, there is not agreement about whose faith it is. Many will claim that the grace is God’s but the faith is the person’s. There is a lot of appeal to that sort of thinking. People think that God has done the work of our salvation and has made it a free gift to us. All we have to do is accept it. That acceptance is then called faith.
As I said, there is a lot of appeal to that line of thinking. It acknowledges God’s saving action and retains human freedom. However, it is wrong. People need only read another sentence to find, “…this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.” In other words, the gift includes the faith. Or said differently, if it is your faith that accepts God’s gift then realize that even the faith you have is also brought about by God.
Familiar as Ephesians 2:8 is, it is a very radical statement. Ultimately it takes away free will. If it is God’s grace and God’s faith then where do we come in? The answer, especially appropriate on Reformation Sunday, is that we don’t.
Church denominations across the centuries have struggled with this. Many come up with sophisticated logic and philosophies to wiggle through it. All of them fall apart in the end, as all philosophical systems, and all human logic in fact, ultimately ends up tripping over itself.
An easy example, two weeks ago I asked our 7th and 8th grade confirmation class, “God can do anything, right?” They all agreed. Then I said, “So if God can do anything, then can God create a rock too heavy for God to lift?” You’ve probably heard that classic old conundrum before. As I expected, the confirmands gave me puzzled looks as their brains tried in vain to come up with an answer!
That simple example shows us how the limits of our intellect can create impossible problems. Ultimately (and fortunately!) God is not bound by the limits of human intelligence.
When faced with the conundrum of Ephesians 2:8 Lutheran thinking has not gone down a path of trying to come up with a sophisticated way to maintain free will. Instead, right from the gate, we accept that all is by God’s love and graciousness.
That turns out to be more than just a philosophical conclusion. It is a conclusion that has real life consequences and applicability.
What did the little boy say to his mother? “Jesus would heal him so he could carry his own cupcakes!” It is a totally misguided answer, yet in a weird way, gets at the truth of what Paul is writing about in the passage from 1 Corinthians that we read. As we’ve been looking at the Corinthian church you’ll remember me saying that they were probably the wealthiest of all the churches Paul founded. Indeed they probably were. But that does not mean that they were all rich. It appears that they came from across the economic spectrum. That’s actually quite remarkable. It also appears that they were making distinctions among themselves, or ranking themselves, but various means. Wealth, social status, abilities, and even spiritual gifts. Thus Paul writes 1 Corinthians 12 as a response.
In verses 4-6 he says, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities [or works] bur it is the same God who activates [or works] all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”
We’ve just been talking about God’s acts of salvation, but what about everything else? Paul argues that all our abilities are from God. They are created and activated by God.
We humans have a way of measuring people according to their abilities. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we create ranks among us. Some of us are more useful than others. I remember when I was in high school I took the ASVAB test; the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. I didn’t take it because I was contemplating a career in the military. I took it for the same reason almost everyone else in the school took it. It meant getting out of classes for a day!
So I get my test results and it says I’m good at all these sorts of things and maybe not so good at other sorts of things. The military needs to know what people are good at so they can match their abilities to the needs. It makes sense.
I remember one guy though, who when he got his results they came back that he wasn’t good for anything. He simply wasn’t smart or skilled at anything. I knew him outside of school and knew he really couldn’t even aim a gun very well. Oh, the armed forces would still take him, but he would be an enlisted man who would do nothing, and if it came to a combat situation, probably the most useful thing he could do would be as cannon fodder, someone to take a bullet that would otherwise go into someone more worthwhile. I don’t like thinking about people that way, but from the human perspective of his value, that’s about all he was good for.
Does that mean that he was a worthless person? Does that mean that God was skimpy in terms of gifting him? Does his economic value equate to his human value?
Let’s hear more of what Paul wrote. In verses 12 and following we read, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
“Indeed the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body…”
And skipping ahead, “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose…”
You can read it all on your own, but skipping ahead one more time, “…the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”
The obscure Reformation theology of salvation by grace through faith has a real living impact for our daily lives. Who are we to think more highly of ourselves because we have more economically or militarily or culturally valuable gifts? And who are we to think less of our selves because we lack economic, or military or cultural gifts? All are made by God. All have been saved by God. Therefore all have value to God.
Now if you’re in a company’s HR department I won’t say the Bible teaches that anyone can do anything. If you’re a manager I won’t say you shouldn’t fire a non-performing employee. That is not the point here. Paul has said there are gifts and people should apply them for the good of all. But a person’s value does not lie in their worldly abilities.
Also, no task is too high or too low. Maybe you are an excellent pitcher in major league baseball. That does not mean you are too skilled to clean toilets.
Paul’s words to his churches go from the high theological to the very practical. It is God’s work. It is God’s gift. It is God’s doing. The limits of our human brains can easily confuse us and make a mess of things, but we are still all one body in Christ.
So yes, the little boy should carry his brother’s cupcakes. But his brother’s leg is healing. In not too long he will be able to carry his own cupcakes, just as God has also made the body able to do.
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