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"Over the Line" Perhaps some of you saw and remember the movie Private Ryan. It’s about a group of soldiers who have been dispatched deep into enemy lines during World War II to deliver one young man, Private Ryan, who is the last living son of a family who has already lost two other sons in the war. Tom Hanks plays the officer leading the mission,. In one scene, he sits with another soldier, remembering some of the men he has lost in previous missions. He knows without a doubt there will be more casualties on this particular mission. Men in his own company whom he knows and respects will die so that one young man he does not know will be able to go home safely to his family. “This private Ryan had better be special,” he says. “He better go home and invent something or find a cure for cancer, do something to make people’s lives better. He had better be worth it.” In other words, he had better be worth dying for. The Hanks character was simply expressing what the old Apostle knew long, long ago. Very rarely will someone die, or put their life on the line for a righteous person. Though for a good person, someone might possibly dare to put their life on the line, offer to die for them. But God has gone far beyond that. “For at the right moment, in God’s due time, while we were weak, Christ died for the ungodly.” “While we were yet sinners, “Paul writes, “Christ died for us.” There is no sweeter message in the Bible. For the ungodly. While we were yet sinners. Christ died for us. I can imagine Christ dying for Mother Theresa. Her devotion, her love, her witness. Her compassion to the dying and the poor. I can imagine Christ dying for Mother Theresa. Or for Martin Luther King Jr. the crusader of human rights. A giant of a spiritual leader. A man who laid how own life down so that others might know the freedoms and liberties their ancestors did not. I can imagine Christ dying for Oscar Romero, the central American priest who was martyred as he consecrated the elements of the Lord’s table before the altar. I can imagine Christ dying for the good, the just. The righteous. The upright. But Paul reminds us that Christ died for the ungodly. The sinful. The stained. The corrupt and the vile. Can you imagine? Can you allow yourself to even imagine who that might include? The ungodly. In this day and age, that’s a pretty sizable lot of folk. Who are the ungodly? Take a look at the news--you‘ll find the ungodly there, to be sure. A corporate executive who greedily accumulated great wealth on the backs of small stockholders and employees. A man who kidnapped two children in Utah to molest them and murder one of them. Al Quaida operatives who bomb rush hour transportation in one of our world’s great cities. The ungodly. Certainly the man who has confessed to violently torturing and murdering 10 innocent people for his own thrills and sadistic purposes? Does Paul mean to say that Christ died for them? Each and every one of them? Even Dennis Rader? The ungodly! How does that make you feel? To tell you the truth, I first wasn’t very comfortable with that notion. I want to draw a line, somewhere, as to how far God’s grace and compassion will flow. I want to limit the amount of God’s goodness. And I want to place that line, well....somewhere between me and the really bad, the truly evil, the most ungodly ones. I want it drawn somewhere between me and Dennis Rader. I want to place that line so that I am safely included in God’s grace, but those who repulse me are far beyond it. That would make me feel better. Christ died for most of us, the less than perfect and sometimes errant folks like me, but leave the ungodly out of it! Wouldn’t that work? Wouldn’t that suit most of us? But God’s grace is not the product of our own goodness, (thank goodness) but is the product of God’s goodness. If mere humans drew the line of who might be included in Jesus’ sacrificial act on humanity’s behalf, well…the line would be drawn depending on who was holding the chalk, now wouldn’t it? What if someone else draws the line and chooses to place it somewhere between themselves and. . . me. Believing that I, after all, am not worthy. Leaving me and my sins out in the darkness. It could happen! People draw lines all the time. An example: Recently, a more conservative group within the United Methodist Church asked the United Methodist Resort at Lake Junalaska to keep out a group of reconciling United Methodists who had booked the use of their facilities. You see, Reconciling United Methodists are those who believe that the body of Christ includes all persons, regardless of sexual orientation, and works to bring about change to the practices and attitudes of persons who are part of the church they love as they pertain to persons who are gay, lesbian or transgendered. Now, I’m not asking you about your own personal feelings on this controversial issue, for if I’m certain of one thing it’s that we are not all of one mind on this matter. What I am asking you to think about is how the Good News Movement is drawing a line to exclude others from using one of our church’s facilities on the basis of believing that they are…well, unworthy, perhaps even ungodly. You see, when fallible, sinful human beings are left to decide who is worthy and who is not worthy of God’s grace, who will be the recipients and who will not, they will often draw the line at the limit of their own tolerance. It works this way: If I’m drawing the line, well, there’s a whole lot of people worse than me, and somewhere, I’ll decide just who is beyond the level that I will tolerate. But then, say someone better than me decides that only those who compare with their level of righteousness will be worthy of being in God’s kingdom. Where does that leave me? Suppose a real saint, a Mother Theresa type decides that only those who have devoted their entire lives to offering compassion to the poor, the hungry and the dying--are worthy. I think you and I know where we would fall, if God’s mercy and grace were reserved only for the pious, the holy, the saintly. Ah--but it is not human beings who determine who will be offered mercy. It is not mere mortals who determine who will be worthy of God’s grace. It is God. And here’s the really interesting thing. If it is God who is drawing the line…then no one can compare. No one is worthy on their merit. No one is worthy on their goodness. We all are unworthy! And this is the amazing thing about God’s grace. Since all are unworthy, since all are ungodly, God decides that all will be saved through the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ. As I think of it more and more, there is something deeply satisfying to know that it is in the end God and not mere human beings who determines who shall be included in God’s mercy and saving work of amazing grace. And I do mean amazing, as in amazing that Christ died for us all--the ungodly, while we were yet sinners. That the amazing grace of God is available to any, to all, who receive it. Thank God we are not being rescued by a grizzled soldier who complains that we had better be worth the trouble it takes to save us. We are being rescued by the redemptive love of Christ who will offer his own life even for the most unworthy and undeserving. Even for us. Should any of us ever doubt--EVER DOUBT....whether God’s grace is broad enough to cover this person or that person, large enough to blot out the hate and sin that stains the human race, I encourage you to think about just how wide the net has been cast, how wide the mercy of God is. Wide enough for every last ungodly one of us. Thanks be to God.
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