Lent 2A -- what is a gift anyway?

A couple weeks ago we heard David Rhoads of the Lutheran Seminary in Chicago "perform” the book of Galatians. It was enlivening to hear that familiar book with new ears, all at once, but what grabbed me most were his concluding remarks, in which he spoke about the power of the Gospel to free us. So often in the church we have defined the “problem” as guilt, a category that made sense, perhaps, to first-century Jews and our immigrant forebears. But increasingly our culture has lost a sense of guilt -- or pathologized it where it exists. Shame, on the other hand, is alive and well for people across the cultural and religious spectrum. And the Gospel, Paul makes clear, frees us from shame as well.

This came to mind reading the second lesson from Romans for this Sunday, where Paul in his later letter details how Abraham was reckoned as “righteous” through faith. This is a dense enough passage as it is – a daunting one to preach, especially since one has to exegete Genesis at the same time. But I'm considering it. In our Lutheran framework, the focus on being “righteous through faith” has so often turned faith into just another – if more vaguely defined – work. It wasn’t Abraham’s circumcision that saved him, the argument goes. It was that he believed God. For a modern person struggling with faith defined as believing the Creed, that’s not good news. It only leaves us feeling unable to spiritually measure up, not good enough – in other words, ashamed.

But what if this righteousness that God gives truly is something given? What if, as Paul writes, God “justifies the ungodly”? Not the believing, repentant ungodly, just the plain old, mixed-up, not even sure I want to believe ungodly?

If that is so, then we, like Abraham are living into a whole new reality, one that doesn’t fully exist yet, like the child and country still longed for. And living into that reality, created by God and held in God’s hands, is all the righteousness we need.