“Let me think. It’s not really fair to the other students, but I want you to do your best work, go ahead and turn in your paper Monday. I won’t count it as late.”
I love these conversations. I get to be the hero, or at least the nice guy, when in reality I had no intention of even starting to grade those papers yet. I was quick to offer grace because grace didn’t really cost me anything. Grace was cheap.
When I think about cheap grace, I think about not taking my own sin seriously. I think of people who are flippant about following Jesus knowing that grace is a pretty sturdy safety net.
I’ve been thinking more, however, about the grace I have to offer. I’ve realized that I’m quick to extend cheap grace. I’m quick to throw out “I forgive you” to the paper cuts; the unkind word, the missed meeting, or the trivial arguments. But what happens when grace is expensive? What happens when the wounds are deeper than the surface? What happens when grace costs me about everything I have to give?
If you have read any of my recent blogs, you know that an injury left me immobile on the couch for a few months. Thankfully, I’m slowly walking now, but in some ways I’m still carrying the couch with me. I made the difficult decision to take the time off for my wounded knee to begin examining the other wounds in my life. One of the themes that I have wrestled with is the true cost of forgiveness.
Grace comes with a high price tag. In a world in which polarization, slander, greed, gossip, and even demonization abound, I am awakening to the reality that these are not mere words but are real wounds inflicted and born by real people. I have been on both sides of this equation. Over the course of my ministry I have witnessed and experienced horrible stories of sin only surpassed by beautiful ones of grace.
Grace means turning the other cheek. I’ve always known that. But turning the other cheek is not a mere pacifistic posture towards wrongdoing, it is a choice to be hit again. Grace is the grit to absorb blow after blow followed by the courage to release them. Grace is a long game. It’s the ability to believe, even when you don’t feel it, that forgiveness rather than fighting is the better way. I’m learning that 70 x 7 is a whole lot of grace to give.
Maybe more importantly, I’m learning how much it costs to offer grace to myself. I am quick to offer myself cheap grace for the small things I can either explain away or gloss over as just part of who I am. But a lot of time alone allows one to examine a little more carefully, to dig a little deeper. I have found that extending grace to myself might be the most costly grace I offer.
To forgive my faults, the deep ones, means that I have to spend time with them but also to acknowledge what it is within me that brings them out. I don’t really mean this in a pietistic way, but in a wounded way. It is the ability to engage who I really am and the ability to let it go. I am learning that offering grace to myself will not necessarily heal my wounds, but they will no longer overtly or subtly control me. Costly grace is the only grace that can truly set me free. And it’s only when I can truly offer myself grace that I am able to extend that grace to others. For they too, are battling their own demons.
Of course this brings me back to our ultimate giver of grace, Jesus. I ponder again the cost of his grace. We’ll get to the cross in a second, but I’m thinking about the rumors that were spread, the hateful things spoken about him, the misunderstandings, the turning away by those who knew him best, and the humiliation of standing in front of sham powers for a sham trial.
The constant presence of grace that flowed from him cost him dearly. It eventually cost him everything. But the ultimate price of forgiveness is what was needed to bring healing, to bring life. God had counted the cost of grace and deemed it and us worth it.
As one of his followers, I have been called to take up his cross. That probably means a lot of things. But as I start walking again, it is an invitation for me to continue my own Via Dolorosa, to continue my own pilgrimage of being a person of costly grace for others and for myself. The cost is heavy, but I believe the journey is worth it.
