Pay it Forward

I named this blog “The Peripatetic Preacher” some time ago, because I have in my life been very fortunate to have preached and taught in nearly every US state and in twenty foreign countries. I have led services and been inside classrooms in churches from Maine to Hawaii, and from Italy to Fiji to Brazil, not to mention on various ships at sea. When I imagined my contributions to Patheos, which have now spanned some seven years, I thought I would spend a good bit of time recounting experiences from these travels as a way to illuminate biblical texts that have always been the heart of what I think I am about. As I look back on my articles over these years, I do not see very much about the places I have seen and the many grand people I have met over my lifetime of what has been a decidedly itinerant ministry.

So, in ensuing second articles that accompany my regular looks at the weekly Hebrew Bible lectionary, I propose to employ some travel experiences that I hope can be useful to preachers and teachers and parishioners as they prepare to lead and participate in churches around the world. Today, I want to recount an experience I had quite recently in my former home city of Dallas, Texas. It was so unexpected and so joyful, that I can only see it as a gift of the Spirit, a sign of the presence of God at a season of the year when that presence is most especially celebrated.

My wife, Diana, and I were visiting our former city, where we lived for over 40 years, for two weeks in late November of this year. We travelled there by car, since both of us enjoy a good old road trip, and because we are retired have the time to take our time going places. We left our new home in Los Angeles on a Monday, heading toward Dallas, some 1500 miles east. We made three stops along the way in Kingman, AZ, a rural bed and breakfast near Grants, NM, and a familiar and well-loved B&B in Amarillo, TX, finally arriving in Dallas on a Thursday. While in Dallas we stayed with several old friends and had a wonderful time catching up with them and sharing the news of our new LA home.

One morning, we were having breakfast in a restaurant near one of our friends’ home. We had agreed before we went to the place that it was our turn to pay the bill, since these friends had been so generous on earlier occasions of eating out. The waitress brought the bill, but before she gave it to us, she said, “Someone has paid $20 of your bill.” Of course, we quickly asked her who this person was, but she said that whoever it was did not want to be identified. We all looked around the restaurant, imagining we would see an old friend or a familiar face whom we could then thank and urge that they did not need to do that for us. But a scan of the place did not reveal anyone we knew. We pressed the waitress again, but she would shed no more light on the doer of this good deed.

I was very grateful for this anonymous gift, being the skinflint that I am, but I was most anxious to thank the person who did this amazing thing for us. After all, things like this rarely, if ever, happen in our lives; in fact, it was the very first time it had ever happened to me. I was grateful, but could express no thanks to the person.

Being a died-in-the-wool theologian, and a preacher to boot, I am forever seeing the events of my life through the lens of the gospel that I have tried to proclaim and live for my over 50 years of ministry. Here was a classic yet still extraordinary act of grace. I did nothing to deserve or earn this gift, and I was unable to express anything about it to the giver of it. It just was a gift, pure and simple, an offering given freely with no expectation of thanks at all. I doubt a better example of what the grace of God is like could be provided, at least in my life of relative ease and comfort. Grace is above all unearned and undeserved, and as such is perhaps the most dangerous idea in Judaism and Christianity.

In all other areas of our lives we are supposed to get only what we earn. When I was a student, good grades came only after hard work. When I was a pastoral minister, a faithful and supportive flock occurred only after my diligent labors on their behalf, or at least what I hope were my diligent labors. When I became a teacher in two institutions of higher learning, I was successful only when I worked at my craft, listened carefully to my students, and evaluated them as fairly and consistently as I could. I then was paid for that labor, certainly more than I was worth, I am sure! But grace is not like any of those examples, and that is what makes it so hard to grasp and believe. It merely comes, and has nothing whatever to do with my labor or my success.

This is what makes that Matthew 20 parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard so difficult to swallow. When all the workers, one-hour workers who have hardly broken a sweat along with twelve-hour workers who are feinting with exhaustion, get paid precisely the same amount of cash at day’s end, it is little wonder that the all-day laborers are furious; you work all day, you get paid for all day! “You have made them equal to us,” they whine, and they are of course not equal at all; one hour’s work is plainly not equivalent to twelve hours’ work. “I chose to give what is mine in any way I choose,” says the owner of the vineyard, “or do you begrudge my generosity” (the literal Greek there is the delightful and stinging “Is your eye evil because I am good?”)? And of course we do begrudge that generosity, because we do not understand or accept the workings of grace.

When that mystery person paid part of our restaurant bill, she/he became an agent of grace. And how do those who finally receive an act of grace like that respond, since they cannot thank the giver? They become themselves agents of grace, or in the argot of the day, they “pay it forward.” In the end, no one becomes a follower of the one called Christ by mastering and accepting a set of doctrines or rules; we follow finally because we have been given the gift of grace, freely and surprisingly and undeservedly. I cannot wait to be a grace agent in a world in desperate need of such agents in every time and place. I can best thank my unknown donor by acting in like fashion.