Free Gift

Jon Burnham preached this sermon from Romans 5:12-19
on the First Sunday of Lent, Year A, February 10, 2008
at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas

Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive but in the case of salvation it is more blessed to receive than to give. Like a card game where the deck is stacked against us, Adam's sin lays us low. Yet, in the world to come, we will play with a different deck of cards, one in which Christ is our partner in the salvation story. In the meantime, we get all tied up in the legal language of our false self versus our true self. Let's try to untangle this web this morning. We'll start with the offer of God's so-called free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. I say "so-called free gift" Christian faith is based on a free gift that isn't free.

We excel at giving but are not as good at receiving. Receiving implies lack, need, interdependence. Receiving goes against our lone ranger image of ourselves as self sufficient beings. Receiving highlights our imperfection and we prefer to think of ourselves as able to handle things pretty well on our own. Many of us are not interested in free gifts. We rarely use coupons when we shop because we are experienced enough to know that nothing is free. Let me clarify that statement. "Nothing" is indeed free but who wants nothing? Something worth having is never free.

The very term, "free gift," that Paul uses so often in this text, brings negative images to mind. The term "free gift" implies a cheap or worthless gift. Free gift is a sales term that reeks of huscksterism and hints that whatever is being proffered is not worth a dime. Free "gift" is a term that comes with the junk mail where the hidden agenda is to sell us something we do not want or need. We know from experience that nothing is free and this is certainly true in regard to God's gift of salvation in Christ. This "free gift" is not free at all. The so-called free gift of salvation through Christ cost Jesus his life.

Likewise for us, , if we take advantage of God's free gift of salvation, it will cost us our false self. That is why Paul contrasts the words "death" and "free gift" in his letter to the Romans. Our false selves must die if we are to live into God's free gift. What is the false self? According to Thomas Keating, our false self consists of our emotional programs for happiness. We are conditioned from early childhood to do certain things to be happy. For instance, our cultural conditioning teaches us that if we buy the right consumer item, such as the correct brand of toothpaste, then we will be enjoy exciting romantic relationships with beautiful people and be happy for the rest of our lives, or at least until it time to once again brush our teeth with the magical toothpaste product that makes our happiness possible. Multiply this kind of message by thousands and possibly millions of times, all delivered to us in scientifically efficient multi-media messages including print media, radio, television, and the web, and you have but one example of how our emotional programs for happiness are programmed into us from earliest childhood by outside forces whose only interest in us is our ability to pay a couple of dollars for a tube of toothpaste once a month, thus increasing values for share holders in the company that produces the product. We are scientifically manipulated from earliest childhood, programmed into purchasing happiness, and this is but one example of how our false self is formed. It is this false self that must decrease while gospel values increase if we are to live into God's free gift of salvation.

God's salvation program, the way out of the matrix of the false self, is only possible because of one man, Jesus Christ. In Paul's understanding, this one man, Jesus Christ, undid all the damage done by the one man, Adam. It was one man, Adam, whose sin brought sin and death into the world so that many died and judgment and condemnation came upon all humanity because of the disobedience of this one man named Adam. But in the greatest come back in the ledgers of human history, it is one man, Jesus Christ, whose obedience to God brought down the grace of God as a free gift available to all who are willing to step out of Adam's sin matrix and into Christ's grace realm. Through one man's obedience, many exercise dominion over life as they decrease their false self system and increase their true self system. Our true self is that part of us that is our basic core of goodness. Our true self is very closely related to our Christ self to the extent that it is hard to tell where our true self ends and where our Christ self begins. This one man, Jesus Christ, enables the possibility of justification, which is getting our true self back in the driver's seat.

The great theologian of the Reformation, John Calvin, taught that the purpose of the law is to show us our inability to keep the law, thereby demonstrating our need for Christ, the one man who was able to beat the false self system and break through into union with God. Because of Christ's pioneering work in the field of salvation, all of us are now able to break through sin and death and as Paul puts it, exercise dominion in life. Or, as Thomas Keating puts it, because of Christ we are aware of and able to diminish the false self system with its emotional programs for happiness.

Janis Joplin sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" and that is sound anthropology and theology in a nutshell. When we have diminished our false self programs for emotional happiness to the point where there is nothing left to lose then we experience the freedom of salvation in Jesus Christ. Lent is a time for spiritual detoxification and part of the spiritual detox program involves diminishing the false self system. Here are some suggestions for how to diminish the false self system for emotional happiness. First, you may take up the practice of centering prayer. Come to the church library at 4:00 P.M. today and you will have an experience of centering prayer. It is a method of prayer designed to move us toward an experience of the contemplative dimension of the gospel. At its heart, Christianity is meant to change our hearts, to move us toward an alternate reality that is not based upon our false self system that we absorbed from the scientific manipulation of the greatest marketing companies in human history. Christianity intends to break us down from Adam's way of sin and self-reliance, and bring us into Christ's path of grace and God-reliance. This path from Adam to Christ is neither free nor quick. The invitation comes as a so-called free gift but the implication is that if we receive the free gift then we owe everything in return.

This is the way life works in God's economy. God comes to us in the form of Jesus Christ and gives us an offer of the free gift of salvation. Before we receive that free gift offer we are responsible for reading the fine print which includes this disclaimer: "By accepting the free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ I hereby relinquish all claims to happiness that I previously enjoyed under Adam's false self system. Furthermore, by accepting God's free gift of salvation I acknowledge my own tendency toward sin and my inability to completely rid myself of the sin that resides as a cancer in my soul. Therefore, by accepting God's free gift of salvation I hereby pledge myself to diminishing my false self system which is based on sin and leads to death; and I hereby profess my desire to follow my true self program for happiness that includes dying to my false self in order to live into the realm of God." I know, this legal terminology is hard to parse, but Paul was a Pharisee before he became an Apostle, and Pharisees were schooled in the law and had legal minds and used legal language.

If we are the client then Christ is our attorney, and when we come to trial before God at the final judgment, then we will discover to our great relief that our attorney is also the judge. Christ is both our heavenly legal representative and our heavenly judge. As John Calvin put is, our judge is our redeemer. So as we struggle through this life striving to diminish our false self system and live into our true self system, we have the peace of mind of knowing that when push comes to shove we have an ace in the hole when it comes to eternal salvation. Adam may have stacked the deck against us and all humanity but Christ beat Adam at his own game. And the Holy Spirit will teach us how to run the table when it comes to the interplay between the free gift of salvation and the diminishment of our false self program for happiness. In this world the deck may be stacked against us, but in the world to come, the cards are stacked in our favor. Maybe that is what Paul meant when he referred to the free gift of God's salvation in Christ.

So we end where we began. Our future in heaven is secure thanks to Christ, our judge and redeemer. Relieved of having to carry the burden of wondering about our eternal salvation, we are then free to serve God while we live in Adam's world. The free gift, in the end, is the gift of the freedom to serve God in this world, knowing that when the cards are down, we will come out winners in the game of eternal salvation. This is God's version of Texas hold 'em. God holds us through thick and thin, through life and death, and brings us safely across the Jordan into the promised land. Along the way, our lives are a series of diminishments of the false self's program for happiness. A falling away of Adam's rule and a coming to terms with the fact of our own mortality and the hope that in the end, as Teresa of Avila said, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."