Life in the Spirit: Striving
Grace is Given, not Earned
Romans 7:15-25a, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. July 5th, 2020
When someone wants to get to know you they want to know what you do. They don’t start out asking for your favorite sports team, or favorite sundae. They don’t ask what tv shows you watch, or whether you’re a morning or evening person. By and large they’ll ask you “what do you do?” And when they ask “what do you do” they usually want to know your occupation. Like, I’m a pastor. It’s only after that we might ask “what do you do for fun?” You know, like I like to read, sing, walk the dog, and so on. Then we might get into sports teams and sundaes.
It’s actually considered rude in many parts of the world to ask “what do you do?” I’m thinking of France especially. You could ask “what do you do for fun?” and people wouldn’t bat an eye. But asking “what do you do” implies you want to know about their work life. And they don’t want to talk about their work life, by and large. They think work is boring and don’t want to be defined by it. It’s pretty unique to America that we define ourselves and others by the work we do, and don’t bat an eye.
I think the reason we don’t think it’s rude to ask “what do you do,” by and large, is that we are a nation of strivers and go-getters. We Americans have always prized hard work and a can-do attitude. We are a pragmatic and inventive nation, always hopeful in our future. It’s part of why we’ve always thought of ourselves as an exceptional nation. We are the nation of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Steve Jobs. We built the railroads, the dams, the skyscrapers, the internet. We have made wonders all by a little hard work, ingenuity, and a dream.
I’m a striver too, or have been. All my life I knew I was called to pastor. It was a sense that was always with me. So from high school I was making decisions that would benefit me in my steps toward, God willing, being ordained in The United Methodist Church. I participated in extracurriculars, in church committees, went to a Lutheran undergraduate institution where I got my major in religious studies, went to seminary, and all of the sudden my striving had come to an end. The study, the tests, the internships, had all paid off. My call was recognized. I got ordained. And when you get ordained people ask you “do you feel any different?” I don’t know why. They just do. In the weeks and months afterward I felt at a loss. A sense of emptiness came over me. So much of my life had been built in the striving, in the work of becoming a pastor. And I learned how while my striving led me to accomplish a lot, striving alone can make us feel empty if we ever get what we’re chasing after. But God’s grace is not a matter of our striving.
Being a go-getter is so baked into our culture that we may be tempted to think we need to strive for our own salvation. I remember hearing one person tell their kids how they need to do good things in order to get to heaven. We might feel, like John Wesley the founder of Methodism felt, that there is so much more we could or should be doing. John Wesley once engaged in an experiment to see how much money he could save by eating nothing but turnips. He wanted to give his savings to charity. We may not take things to that extreme. But I’m sure I’m not the only one who has felt I need to pray more. I’m not the only one who has felt that I need to give more. I’m not the only one who has felt that I have these nasty attitudes that won’t go away, or these sins it’s up to me to overcome. We take the need to strive and we apply it to our own faith. The trouble is, it just doesn’t work that way.
It doesn’t work that way because of how sin works in our lives. Sin enslaves, and sin corrupts even our best intentions. Paul speaks very powerfully of the reign of sin in our reading this morning. “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” He says. Despite all his striving he finds “in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” He knows the Law, he was an expert in it. He knows what the Law demands. He loves the Law as the very gift of God. And yet, he finds that despite all his striving he is incapable of obeying the Law. Though he knows what is good sin is close at hand, and it has held him captive. If Saul the pharisee, Saul the expert, was caught up in the power of sin who could be set free?
Paul knows how sin works in our lives. Sin radically roots itself into us, so the more we strive the more power sin has. In Paul’s case, he may have had in mind his persecution of the Church. It was precisely out of his zeal for the Law and love for God that he persecuted Christ! “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Jesus asks on that Damascus road. Paul strove to follow the Law, in his own words he was blameless. But in his zeal his went against the will of God. Sin had done its work. Sin makes it impossible for us to reach, or be satisfied in, the things we strive for. Paul says elsewhere in Romans that the wages of sin is death. Sin demands work, it demands striving, and it leads to a great deal of unhappiness. It is sin that commands us like a slavedriver, and reminds us of our guilt.
The things of God do not come by our own work. God does not bestow his blessings on those who’ve earned it, or the ones who scored the highest on their final exams or can bench the most or are the most popular. God bestows his blessings on anyone and everyone. “He makes the rain to fall on the just and unjust alike.” In fact, let’s go farther. Paul specifically says God justifies the ungodly. God forgives precisely those who don’t deserve forgiveness, bestows grace on precisely those who don’t deserve grace. If we deserved grace, would it still be grace? God’s grace does not come by earning it. God’s grace comes by faith. And not just any faith. We who put our faith in Christ and his cross and rest in him, and he grants eternal life. Not just life in the hereafter, but life now. A blessedness now. Joy now.
Jesus says, "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Who among us does not carry a heavy burden? Who among us does not bear the burden of sin? Or who among us does not bear that burden of striving, of seeking to justify ourselves before others. The burden of sin, the burden of striving, the burden of having to rely on ourselves, Jesus wants to take away. Come to me, he says, all. All you that are weary. All you that are carrying heavy burdens. Come to me, and I will give you rest.
Jesus promises rest from our striving. How? “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Jesus’ yoke is not like the yoke we put on ourselves. His yoke is easy. His yoke is the yoke of his gospel. His yoke is the yoke of his grace. As the old hymn goes, “O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be.” It is not the harsh yoke of servitude. But the gentle yoke of God’s blessing and grace. We take that yoke on ourselves when we say “Jesus is Lord.” When we know Jesus as our Lord. When we know he lays down his life for our sake. When we know that he died for me, even me. When we put our whole trust in him, his salvation, his leading. Then we find our burdens gone, then we might shout with Paul “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”