"Ungrace"

As I prepared the talk for church this morning, I dipped quickly into Philip Yancey's book What's so Amazing about Grace. It's a book I last read when I was on my previous sabbatical seven years ago, but I've never forgotten the sense of the book and the impact it made on me.

Today's topic was "Failure and Restoration" The outline notes I used to preach from are on the church blog.

The central story was the golden calf incident in Exodus 32. As I prepared I knew that what I wanted to talk about was grace. It's so easy to focus on the failure, but a few weeks ago something quite profound struck me. I was thinking about Aaron and his role as High Priest as we wandered around our full-size layout of the Tabernacle and its courtyard. What struck me was that it was Aaron who made the golden calf and yet, because God is a God of grace, it's Aaron who becomes the first High Priest. What amazing grace. The most significant role in the covenant life of the people goes to someone who got it so terribly wrong.

We are not often as gracious with others as God is with us. In his book Yancey talks about ungrace, the refusal to forgive. He describes a family generation after generation deeply wounded by ungrace.  This how I described ungrace this morning:

Ungrace turns forgiveness into something that works for the one who needs to forgive rather than for the one who needs forgiveness. We trade it like a commodity. You give me humility, you take all the blame, you own up to what you’ve done to hurt me, and I might, if I think you’re sincere, if I think you really mean it, I might just forgive you, but there will be conditions. 

I will store up this memory and use it at my convenience to remind you of your failure.

When I make a mistake, I will use your failure to demand forgiveness for mine. I will remind you that your sin was worse than mine ever could be and that mine would not have happened if you hadn’t failed in the first place. I will shift the blame.

We take the story of the prodigal son and focus on the remorse of the son who comes crawling home, forgetting so easily the joy of the father figure. We assume forgiveness is granted because the son prepares his speech. However, his forgiveness comes unconditionally as the father greets him and welcomes him. He does not wait for the son to ask, he simply forgives him.

Grace. like love, keeps no record of wrongs.