November 6, 2022 All Saints Sunday 2 Timothy 1-3:9

“Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.”  (2 Timothy 1:2b)  These are the greeting words that we read in 2 Timothy a few minutes ago.  We probably didn’t pay much attention to them.  They are, after all, ‘church words’ found in the Bible.  It’s the kind of thing biblical authors say.  But let’s not run by these words too quickly; for they are, in fact, (or they should be) very problematic for us.

The first word is grace.  That’s definitely a church word.  We don’t use it often outside of church.  Perhaps we come across it in insurance when we talk about a grace period after payment is due.  And that is indeed appropriate.  Grace means unearned favor.  It means that someone likes you, or approves of you, or gives you benefits even though you haven’t earned them; or earned them yet.

The second word is mercy.  Mercy is not a word used by an innocent person.  If you’re in a court of law you don’t beg the judge or the jury for mercy unless you’re guilty.  You’ve done something wrong.  Consequences are coming.  And you’re asking to have them lightened or lifted.

The third word is peace.  We use that word quite often.  May people use it as a greeting or as a goodbye.  It means an absence of open hostility.  It means that you’ll work together for a common goal.

Okay, so what?  Paul wishes Timothy grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.  What’s the big deal?

The big deal is why?  If St. Paul, perhaps the greatest missionary of the early church, is writing to St. Timothy, another of the greatest missionaries in the early church, why is he starting off with grace, mercy, and peace.  Isn’t Timothy already a super holy guy?  He’s called a saint after all.  Why would a saint need grace, mercy, and peace?  Isn’t he good enough to deserve to be in God’s good books?

Here is where these words start to cause us problems.

I’m not an expert in medieval Christianity, but there seems to have developed a belief among them that the saints were super holy people whose lives had built up an abundance of goodness before God.  It was like the saints were super savers who during their lifetimes had amassed huge amounts of goodness in heavenly bank accounts.

Then there were ordinary people - sinners like you and me - who just plain messed up all the time.  Our lifetime heavenly bank accounts were in negative territory.  So we’d pray to the saints to let some of their goodness out of their bank accounts and come into ours.  If you’re a fan of the Netflix series The Good Place you get the idea.

My example oversimplifies things.  It wasn’t that simple, but that was the general idea.  It was a popular idea because it preserved a sense of universal justice.  People did good and bad things.  In order for God to let you into heaven you had to have a positive balance.  If you came up short you weren’t totally lost.  There were ways to get help.

But what does it mean when two of the greatest early saints start off with the words: grace, mercy, and peace?  Of all people, wouldn’t these hero missionaries of the early church have an abundance of goodness before God to draw from?  What does it mean when even the biggest of saints have negative balances before God and need to depend upon God’s grace and mercy?

In art the saints are usually depicted with halos.  They are depicted as looking down upon us and teaching us how to be righteous.  How often have you seen art where the saints are also looking up and begging for mercy?  Perhaps there is some art like that, but not much!

What does it feel like to you to realize the truth – the truth that before God you and St. Paul and St. Timothy would all be side by side looking up to God and asking for grace and mercy?

Most people, and many who call themselves Christian, and certainly all those who say of themselves that they are “spiritual” even if they aren’t religious, believe in a fundamental sense of justice in this world.  They believe that good people go to heaven after they die and bad people are punished.  There’s an understanding of fairness to it all.  You get what you deserve.

            At a recent pastors’ Bible study the Rev. Greg Zajac noted something that he heard said at a funeral years ago.  A friend of the deceased stood up and said, “I’m sure he’s in heaven.  He was the kind of guy who would give you the shirt off his back!”

            Interesting thought.  It fits with a universal sense of justice.  And it’s 100% pure heresy in Christianity!

            Oh how we struggle with the idea of God’s grace!  Oh how we struggle to understand what the simple greeting of grace, mercy, and peace really means!  What does it mean when, by our standards, the best of the best in Christianity still fall abysmally, hopelessly, short of the righteousness needed to deserve God’s love?  What does it mean when the best of the best still have to rely 100% on God’s grace and mercy?

            This is where we have problems.  How unfair is this life?  We talk about grace but insist that there still has to be some sort of merit or deserving going into it.  Surely God can’t love and forgive the things that many people do!  So we add layers to it.  We say they must repent, they must realize that what they’re doing is wrong.  Then they will be forgiven.

            We say that okay, God’s grace is a free gift, fine.  But then a person has to actually accept it as a gift in order for it to work.

            But don’t you see?  In each case we are still wanting to put something of ourselves into the mix.  We want to have some agency in it, some power, some discretion.  That agency gives us a sense of justice.

            But what if the whole of humanity is in a bottomless pit of need that no one, not even the most holy, can ever repay?

            The Men’s Breakfast is watching a documentary on Martin Luther.  They’re at the part where it talks about Luther hating God for this reality. Luther cries out to God that it is so fundamentally wrong to be born into this world and into an unforgivable amount of debt before God.

            In time Luther discovers that he got it all wrong.  And where he was wrong was not some wrong teaching that he had learned in church.  The wrong was something within his own understanding.  The right was grace.

            Here’s the thing about grace.  The only way you can understand it is to realize how big of a mess you are, and the world is, and even the greatest of saints are.  It requires understanding that this fundamental notion of fairness and justice we humans have is just plain out of sync. 

Don’t bad deeds ultimately get punished?
Don’t bad people deserve to go to hell?
What’s the point of being good if it doesn’t mean anything?
            These are all basic questions of humans.  The best thing we can do is just set them all aside.  Do not fret over them.  Don’t dwell on them.

            Grace, mercy, and peace from one saint to another means that they both realize these truths:

They are made in the image of God.  Life is a gift.
God wants good things for all in the world.
God loves humans and the world.  Period.  God wants it all back.
God wants it all to live in love without any regard to a scoresheet.

            That is grace.

            As we celebrate those who have died and gone on before us on this All Saints Sunday we actually celebrate the complete freedom and liberation from our understanding of justice.  Wonderful as our minds, our logic, our sense of justice is, we run up against a truth no one will deny.  No one is good enough to live forever.  By logic death wins, hands down, always; saint and sinner alike.

            By God’s grace, mercy, and peace, death is not a winner at all.  By God’s grace, mercy, and peace, you win.  Accept and believe that.  Focus on that.  Live that.  Leave all the other questions and problems and justice up to God.  For God’s final word is that you are a saint he wishes to save.