1 Out of A Million - Reflections on Mission to Uganda

As I said in my first reflection on my Africa trip this summer, many of the challenges facing the church there are the same as what we face here in the U.S. One of those challenges in particular carries greater concern than all the others because it has to do with the Church’s mission and message. I heard it articulated very clearly by a new Ugandan friend during a conversation on one of our long bumpy bus trips. My friend, Michael, said, “I’ve never heard an Anglican priest get to grace before. They always just stop with law.” I was not surprised by Michael’s summation of his experience in the church...it was largely my own experience in church too…I was saddened. He did not just blurt this out of the blue, it was in the context of a bigger conversation we were having addressing the needs and struggles of one of our other team members. This is always the case...moralism, aka law, never works where the rubber meets the road in real people’s lives. It cannot bring about what it demands. When you get down into the pain, heartache, and trauma people are carrying the only word with any healing and transformative power is God’s gracious word of forgiveness and love...the word of the gospel.

Bishop Andrew, Michael, and me

In that conversation I spent a few minutes explaining the distinction between the law and the gospel with Bishop Andrew backing me up. The Lord speaks to us in Scripture through two kinds of words: first, the law and second, the gospel...and through them he does two things to us his hearers. In the law (the commands in Scripture) he exposes our sin for what it is and puts to death any notion of self-salvation or self-improvement, then in the gospel (the promises in Scripture especially pertaining to Jesus Christ) he proclaims our forgiveness, sets us free from the bondage of sin, and gives us new life in him. As Lutheran Reformer Philip Melancthon wrote, “The Law shows us the disease, the Gospel the cure” (Commonplaces 2014: 95).

Dr. Jonathan Linebaugh, author of God’s Two Words, puts it this way:

“The distinction between law and gospel is a way of describing what God does to those to whom he speaks. God has business with the Old Adam and Old Eve: to show them their sin and to kill them as sinners. God also has business at the graveside: to forgive, call righteous, and so resurrect new creatures of faith who are God’s beloved children. God does these two works through two words: He speaks diagnosis and death through the law; He speaks liberation and life through the gospel. Law and gospel, in other words, are not a strategy or technique for reading the Bible; they are not first categories by which we index and interpret God’s word. Rather, law and gospel name the actions of the “living and active word” by which God interprets us, the words that work our diagnosis and death and then work our redemption and resurrection.” (Read Modern Reformation’s full interview with Dr. Linebaugh here)

As Rosa rattled on down one of Uganda’s “roads,” I explained that the work of the church is to preach both of these words to their people, properly distinguishing between them, and giving them in proper order: law then gospel. To preach one without the other is always incomplete. The law without the gospel results only in despair for the hearer for they will never be able to achieve it...and the gospel without the law seems unnecessary, overdone, and at most a nice add-on. Without a clear understanding of the law the hearer doesn’t think they need such drastic intervention, and the gospel basically becomes a kind of saccharine affirmation. It’s like giving a cane to a perfectly healthy and fit person, they may find it to be useful here and there in rougher terrain, but they don’t really need it. To confuse the order is also a big problem. Following the gospel with law, which happens very often in well-meaning evangelical churches, simply re-binds the hearer throwing them back into their old prison cell of trying to be good through their own effort.

As I told my friends on the bus, whether it be confusing the order, muddying the distinction, or never getting to the good news in the first place, the church usually and historically messes it up. We tend to major on law and minor on the gospel. I have attended far too many churches in the U.S. where the sermon leaves a person right where they were when they limped (if not literally, then certainly figuratively) through the door…in the law and stuck with themselves. The focus is primarily, if not solely, on you and your behavior...what you do or do not do. It’s up to you! God is waiting for you to get your act together so that he can then work…or something to that effect. There is very little mention or focus on what God has done for us in Jesus Christ (the gospel). It was at this point that Michael made his diagnostic statement. He was shocked to hear Bishop Andrew and myself emphasizing God’s grace in Jesus Christ for sinners.

In one way, this message is always shocking to hear because as we have often said before on this blog, we humans are addicted to the moralistic/law message. We are addicted to trying to save ourselves through the law. It sounds right to our ears. It is the truest expression of our sin. It is the moment in the movie Dumb and Dumber when Lloyd asks Mary to level with him and tell him what his chances are to be with her. She says, “Not good.” He says, “You mean not good like one out of a hundred?” She says, “I’d say more like one out of a million.” And Lloyd, in his complete dumbness, responds, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance…yeah!” That is our sin with the law. We are constantly holding out hope that we can do it in our own strength…we can be good/righteous without grace. Like Lloyd we keep ourselves in a state of denial…a state of faith really, but faith in the completely wrong thing: ourselves. Even if the chances are miniscule, our sin (the Old Adam and Old Eve as Dr. Linebaugh refers to it) tells us, “You can do this! You just need to work harder. Put in a little more effort. It’s up to you!” And all the time, our sin keeps us imprisoned in the cruelest of cells because it tells us all of our efforts are for the goal of making God happy. That’s why it is so deceptive! Our perceived motivator is pleasing God! We think he will not love us or accept us or forgive us unless we perform at an acceptable level. We got to prove ourselves and earn our way, baby! And so, we constantly give ourselves and each other the law and stop there.

The interesting thing is that we don’t even give the law correctly. We are always jockeying and negotiating with the law to try to make it more doable. We’re always in constant search of the line that marks the point of no return…the one we cannot cross because if we do it means we have sinned, we have failed at being good. I grew up in the church so one of the most memorable arenas in which this played out for teenagers was dating. What was the appropriate amount of physical interaction with your girlfriend or boyfriend and what wasn’t? Where’s the line? This varied greatly depending on your particular church and family. Holding hands is ok, but kissing is not. Kissing is ok, but “heavy petting” is not. Who came up with that term by the way? ‘Cause it’s awful! I’m having PTSD right now remembering the most awkward conversations I ever had as a teenager with youth leaders and adults talking about “heavy petting.” Ugh! Then there was the whole running the bases metaphor, which I don’t even know if it is used any more. Which base is too far? On and on it went, battling with your raging teenage hormones that are screaming out with Olivia Newton-John (God rest her soul) “Let’s get physical, physical!” and just trying to stay behind the moving line of sexual righteousness with your main squeeze. Ah, the memories…

Headband!

You may not have worried about that particular line, but you have many others that you have worried about over the years…that you are worried about right now. We all live under the law in its various manifestations in this life. Even if you don’t believe in God or objective truth or moral standards or what have you…you still live under the law. It just takes on a different shape according to what you think is good and not good, and it is all a shadow and echo of the true law of God. And we all play around with the definition of the laws in our lives too. Always trying to adjust the line a bit, so that we can continue to be with Lloyd believing that there’s still a chance…that we can still be good on our own. Law-lite if you will. The church loves the world of law-lite. Trying to lighten the load a little bit in some kind of quasi-grace to make being a good Christian palatable, not too heavy…but that is not grace at all.

Jesus comes in and blows up the game! He rips the warm cozy blanket of denial right off of us as we lie in this bed of law-lite and exposes us in our nakedness before the actual standard of God’s perfection. No more jockeying over where the line is and where you stand in relation to it. He says if you even look at another person with lust in your heart, you’re already headlong over the line! You’ve already committed adultery with that person. If you have ever called someone a fool or poop-head or dumb-dumb or stupid or many other worse things (which we all have), then you are guilty of murder! You have devalued that person in your heart and essentially wished they would just disappear, at least for a moment (Matthew 5:17-48). The actual law is not one with which we can negotiate. It does not have varying degrees nor is it up for interpretation. Jesus lays it out without compromise and without nuance. He does this because he knows there is no hope for us in the world of law-lite, in a world of quasi-grace…it is exactly where our sin and the Devil want to imprison us because it will always keep our faith in the wrong thing…in ourselves. It is the great irony of our attempts to be gracious to each other by trying to lighten the law…it doesn’t alleviate our problem with sin it only tightens the chains it has on us, keeping us ever more deceived into thinking that this is what God wants from us…this is how we get better…this is how we get his love that we so desperately need.

Law-lite: Just like the real thing, but with less calories

Jesus, however, actually is God! And HE came to free us. He brings the law with full force because he wants our sin to be seen exactly for what it is. It’s killing us! “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:4-6). We never give the law at full force because we know none of us would survive if we did. Our denial would be broken and the game would be over, and, as I said earlier, the result would be despair. Our faith and hope in ourselves would be crushed, and we would have no more answers. Our fear of the law given at its highest pitch is due to the fact that we don’t understand the power of the gospel either. As we have said they go hand in hand…if our preaching of the law is anemic and compromised, so is our preaching of the gospel. When Jesus shows us the depths of sin in our hearts, he is preparing us for the great liberating news that he is the one who has come to change hearts. He is the one who takes our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. As Dr. Linebaugh said “law and gospel name the actions of the ‘living and active word’ by which God interprets us, the words that work our diagnosis and death and then work our redemption and resurrection.” He preaches the law to its highest pitch in order to then give the pure, unadulterated, 100 proof gospel of his unconditional forgiveness and grace. You are forgiven. You are loved and accepted not because of anything you have done or will do, but because of everything Jesus has done for you. He has taken your place, has become sin for you, and has died for you putting your sin to death. He has risen from the dead bringing an end to death’s reign. And he has set you free for freedom’s sake, no strings attached (Gal. 5:1).

This is the Church’s true message and mission: to preach God’s two words fully in order to bind up sin and set the captives of sin free (Luke 4:16-21). “Who the Son sets free is free indeed” (John 8:36). Amen.

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