Tuesday Sermon: Cheap Grace

          Dietrich Bonhӧffer is one of the most famous pastors and theologians of "our time" – meaning within the last century.  By the age of 25, he was already a professor of systematic theology, and in 1933, with the rise of Hitler, he became a leading spokesman for the Confessing Church – the center of Protestant resistance to the Nazis.  In one of his seminal works, The Cost of Discipleship he attacks what he called "cheap grace," meaning grace used as an excuse for moral laxity.

          Now one of the main focuses of the Reformation was that we can't earn grace.  Grace, by its very nature, is the unmerited favor of God.  But the two readings this morning exemplify what Bonhӧffer refers to as "cheap grace." 

          In Numbers, "the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, 'Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.'"  God had just rescued them from 400 years of slavery; He had given them the laws to guide their lives, food every day, water to drink, and was leading them to the Promised Land.  They already lived in the grace of God, and yet, expected more.  Rather than praying and asking God to help them find additional sources of food and water, they complained.  They spoke against God and His chosen leader.  In this instance, they had no thankfulness, no gratefulness for what God had already provided them, and had already promised them.  They were uncomfortable and expected God to fix it.  Their faith was in evidence only in their complaints.

          In John, the people said to Christ: "'Who are you?' Jesus said to them, 'Why do I speak to you at all?  I have much to say about you and much to condemn; but the one who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.'"  God's grace is literally standing in front of them in the form of the gift of His Son, and still, they don't get it.  They're more interested at this point in finding fault than in trying to understand, and have faith in God.  Again, they put no effort into living into the grace provided to them from God. 

          Now, Bonhӧffer went in a direction that most theologians and pastors will tell you was the wrong way to go to ensure that the grace he was provided from God was not "cheap grace."  His actions were literally exemplifying his own condemnation of man.  Interestingly for a clergyman, he participated with a group planning not just the overthrow of Hitler, as at that point, he was an employee of the Military Intelligence Department.  He was discovered and arrested in 1943 and after the failed attempt on Hitler's life, he was sent first to Buchenwald and then to Schoenberg Prison.  He had a relative high in the government that helped keep him alive, but that relative was later implicated in anti-Nazi plots himself.  On Sunday April 8, 1945, he had just finished conducting Sunday services in the prison, when the soldiers came for him.  He was hanged the next day, less than a week before the Allies reached the camp.

          Bonhӧffer refused to be placed on the prayer list of the Confessing Church after his imprisonment in 1943. Bonhoeffer believed that "only those who were imprisoned because of their proclamation or actions in the service of the church belonged on the prayer list, but not those imprisoned as political conspirators," he said.  He accepted that his actions were not those of a man following God's plan.  He knew that he had fallen short of the grace of God, but also that every man does.  As he was led away, another prisoner reported that he said, "This is the end -- but for me, the beginning -- of life."

          Take a look at Hymn 695 in the hymnal.  Bonhӧffer wrote these words shortly before his death:

By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered,

and confidently waiting come what may,

we know that God is with us night and morning,

and never fails to greet us each new day.

Yet is this heart by its old foe tormented,

still evil days bring burdens hard to bear;

Oh, give our frightened souls the sure salvation

for which, O Lord, You taught us to prepare.

And when this cup You give is filled to brimming

with bitter suffering, hard to understand,

we take it thankfully and without trembling,

out of so good and so beloved a hand.

Yet when again in this same world You give us

the joy we had, the brightness of Your Sun,

we shall remember all the days we lived through,

and our whole life shall then be Yours alone.