Freed to Obey

October 2009

by Gwen Sayler

It was the year we were in fourth grade. Sincere to the very core, my friend Phyllis and I wanted to put our Lutheran and Roman Catholic faiths into practice by serving those in need. Discerning that the elderly in our town could use assistance with chores like raking and carrying groceries, we made a brightly colored poster offering our free services to help them.

Since we assumed that absolutely everyone would want to take advantage of our generous offer, we added a qualification—“This service is for old people only; you must be at least 40 years old to qualify”— before marching down to the post office to put up the poster for all to see. Unfortunately for us, my 40-year-old mother saw it first and down it came. We couldn’t understand why she found our qualification so upsetting. Hurt and disappointed by this obstacle, we gave up our quest to serve altogether.

Now long past 40 and still quite able to rake my own leaves and carry my own groceries, I chuckle at the memory of our abandoned service project and wonder what my mother was really thinking when she made us remove our sign. Our intentions were commendable. It was our sincerely offered qualification that got us into trouble.

The issue of qualifications is very much at stake in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Questions of what Gentiles and Jews need to do to qualify for membership in the Christian community prompt Paul’s proclamation that justification is by grace through faith alone. Neither Jew nor Gentile does anything to qualify for God’s love and acceptance. Membership in the Christian community is open to everyone who trusts that in Jesus Christ, God has acted to reconcile all creation.

Far from being a qualification for faith, obedience is the faithful response of believers to God’s gracious gift to them. To make his point as pointedly as possible, Paul turns in Romans 4 to the patriarch Abraham, reminding his readers that Abraham’s trust (“faith”) in God’s unqualified love preceded and precipitated his obedience to God (his “faithfulness”). What was true for Abraham is true also for those who confess Jesus Christ as Lord, Jew and Gentile alike.

Trusting the Claim

Many of us know and treasure these words of Paul. They are at the heart of the Lutheran tradition. Yet, knowing the words is not the same as trusting that what they claim is true for us and calls for a response from us. The quest for qualifications can get in our way, much as it did for the early Christians to whom Paul wrote. When that happens, we create obstacles that hinder us from sensing and celebrating the fullness of God’s great gift to us in Jesus Christ.

Frank was a diligent, dedicated member of my congregation. Always ready to volunteer for almost any project, he offered to give a Temple talk on stewardship. In that talk, Frank shared for the first time his concern that his adult children were straying from the church and his conviction that somehow their wandering was due to his own unworthiness. He acknowledged that he tithed and volunteered for all sorts of church activities as a way to pray them and himself into heaven.

Frank’s words stunned me. He had always seemed so self-assured in his faith. But he wasn’t. Too fearful to trust that God really had claimed him and his children and loved them without qualifications, he spent his life trying to qualify for a gift that had already been freely given. Frank’s intentions were commendable. It was the obstacle created by his sincerely offered qualification that cost him the joy of sensing and celebrating God’s gracious gift to him. Inwardly he lived in fear rather than faith.

While Frank made obedience a pre-qualification for faith, Rachel qualified her faith in a way that disqualified any connection to obedience. In our congregation, confirmation students were expected to exercise the obedience of faith by participating in service projects and attending parent/student sessions focusing on faithful responses to current social issues (such as drug use, world hunger, sexuality). This expectation made Rachel irate. Rallying other parents to her position, she protested vigorously to the parish education committee that such expectations overstepped the church’s role in believers’ lives.

For Rachel, faith is a private, internal relationship with Jesus. Connecting faith to expectations of service (that is, the obedience of faith) creates an obstacle to the personal, spiritual relationship Jesus wants to have with each believer. Rachel’s protest to the parish education committee had the salutary effect of prompting the committee to articulate more clearly the connection Paul makes between faith and obedience. Unhappy with that response, Rachel left the meeting angry and hurt.

The obstacle created by her qualification of faith cost Rachel dearly. Unable or unwilling to sense or celebrate obedience as the response of faith, she missed out on the joy and privilege of service freely given in Jesus’ name.

The Transforming Gift

Throughout the letter to the Romans, Paul invites and challenges us to let go of self-imposed qualifications and to trust that what God says about us and our calling is unqualifiedly true. Based on his personal experience, Paul is convinced that Jesus’ death and resurrection have changed everything. God’s incredibly gracious gift of love in Jesus Christ has transforming power. Claimed by God and incorporated into the Christian community in baptism, we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to live as the beloved daughters and sons God declares us to be.

Trusting that our self-worth and value are a gift to be received rather than a goal to be achieved, we are free to respond by serving others in Jesus’ name. Our service, the obedience of faith, takes us where Jesus went—into the messy, complex ambiguities of life in our everyday world. Following the example of Jesus’ faithfulness, we are privileged to exercise our faith by caring for the vulnerable and challenging systems that benefit the few at the expense of the many.
 
The mission statement of the school where I teach, Wartburg Theological Seminary, captures well the relationship between faith and obedience in the conviction “justification leads to justice.” Trusting in God’s unqualified gift to us (“faith”), we are free to respond in service and advocacy for individuals and communities without qualification (“obedience”).

A woman I knew only as “Shirley the platinum blond cook” taught me much about how one person’s obedience of faith can make a difference in another person’s life. Shirley worked in the dining hall I frequented during my student years. Money was tight in those days. At the point when I could no longer afford to eat in the dining hall, I began a two-a-day self-devised “meal plan” that consisted of subsisting on ice cream cones and hamburgers purchased from the snack bar. At 50 cents for the whole meal (a sign of how long ago this was!), the price was right, and, while not nutritious, the meal was filling.

After several weeks on this regimen I was summoned to the dining hall by Shirley. There this cook, a single parent living on the financial edge herself, quietly handed me a $25 coupon book for meals in the dining hall. She kept track, and when she saw that the book was running out, she supplied me with another and another until the school year was over.
 
Shirley didn’t have many material assets in this world, but what she had she joyfully shared. I will never forget her example of faith active in that generous act of the obedience of faith.

The Witness of Service

Throughout its history and that of its predecessor groups, Women of the ELCA has borne communal witness to the power of faith active in obedience. By accepting challenges of world hunger and poverty, building global relationships with women and communities in far-flung parts of our world, addressing issues of economic and social import—in many, many ways we have embodied the conviction that justification leads to justice.

Recalling the connection Paul makes between the gift of faith and the response of faithfulness, it is fitting to pause in thanksgiving for the women who have gone before us as witnesses of life lived in faith rather than fear, of obedience freely and joyfully rendered in response to God’s gracious love for us and claim on us.

It is now autumn 2009, a year wracked by economic downturns, political wrangling and fears, difficult discussions within the church. Like the two fourth-grade girls seeking to serve the “elderly” so long ago, we want to be about the obedience to which God is calling us in this time and this place. Unlike the girls, we are not so naive about the complexity of our call to service. While raking leaves and carrying groceries are important services for those who need them, we know that the obedience of faith challenges us to enter broader arenas as well.

To serve the elderly faithfully, for example, we need to investigate things like the complexity of health care needs and services, the reality of elder poverty as taxes rise and Social Security income shrinks, and the crime of elder abuse by caregivers unable or unwilling to provide the care actually needed.

In these difficult times, the obedience of faith leads us to address overarching systems as well as alleviating individual needs. Truly, justification leads to justice.

As we serve, questions of qualifications won’t go away. Many of us continue to struggle with deep-seated fears that we are not worthy, that somehow our obedience must be a pre-qualification for God to really love us and claim us as God’s own. Others of us are more comfortable qualifying faith as a personal cocoon shielding us from the world’s messiness rather than sending us out to serve in it. Both sets of qualifications, sincerely offered though they may be, only create obstacles disconnecting us from the fullness of life God intends for us and for all creation.

Over against all the stumbling blocks we may put in the way, Paul’s words are clear: The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ have changed everything. We are not who we were and we are not yet who we will be. God is at work in us and in our world, inviting us to trust and trustfully to act.

Faith and obedience, justification and justice—these go hand in hand. Listen again to Paul’s proclamation: God has chosen you unqualifiedly through God’s surpassingly gracious love for you. God has chosen you and commissions you as an ambassador to a world deeply in need of healing. Complex times call for confident commitment. Called and claimed as we are, it is time for us individually and corporately to act, in the obedience of faith. To what is God calling you? How will you respond?

The Rev. Gwen Sayler is a professor of Hebrew Bible at Wartburg Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. She is a member of the Class of ’71 of the Lutheran Deaconess Community and an ELCA pastor. She cowrote the LWT Bible study for 2008-2009, “The Hidden Hand of God.”