Faith as Gift

Old Testament Reading for the second Sunday in Advent: Isaiah 55:1-2

Come every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? And your labour for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.

The story of the world is a story of gift. Man receives the gift of his being in a world given to him, designed to bring him to God. “'God is love:' everything has its origin in God's love, everything is shaped by it, everything is directed towards it. Love is God's greatest gift to humanity, it is his promise and our hope (Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate).” God, perfectly loving, does not content himself with showering us with gifts; knowing that our true good is found only in him, he uses those gifts to direct us to himself. But there seemed to be a catch: in order to make us the true beneficiaries of his gifts, he gave us free will. This “risk” is the price of love.

Paradies, Lucas Cranach the Elder

And man fell. Ignoring the intended purpose of God's gifts – union and communion with him, man abused those gifts in an attempt to “be like gods.” And so begins the story of man in the world, of man's using the gifts from God to fight against him. Man used his free will to disobey the one restriction God placed on his gifts. Human history is fraught with this abuse. Man, rather than receiving God's gifts with gratitude, has tended instead to attempt to dominate his neighbors and the world. Whether destroying whole species of animals in circus entertainments or sacrificing the common good at the altar of capital(ism), the story of man in the world is one of domination rather than inhabitation.
This attitude stands in stark contrast to the loved expressed by God who, for no benefit to himself, gifted man into existence. God, who is Love, seeks not his own (I Corinthians 13:5). This love sent Christ, Emmanuel, into the world as the supreme gift of the supreme Lover. This Gift, like all the others, is designed to bring us to God. Through the means of grace, man is able to receive the gift of faith. Through faith, man is able to love and commune with God and his neighbor and to love and inhabit the world.

Charity is love received and given. It is “grace” (cháris). Its source is the wellspring of the Father's love for the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Love comes down to us from the Son. It is creative love, through which we have our being; it is redemptive love, through which we are recreated. Love is revealed and made present by Christ (cf. Jn 13:1) and “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5). As the objects of God's love, men and women become subjects of charity, they are called to make themselves instruments of grace, so as to pour forth God's charity and to weave networks of charity (Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate).

But man's error persists, and he seeks to ignore the giftedness of grace and love and to come to God on his own terms – just as the first man did in the garden. Why? Thomas Merton suggests,

We reject [love] entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, simply because it does not please us to be loved. Perhaps the inner motive is the fact of being loved disinterestedly reminds us that we all need love from others, and depend upon the charity of others to carry on our own lives. And we refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation (The Seven Story Mountain).

The result is a “Christianity” devoid of the sacraments and wonder whose adherents ultimately insist on having a part in their salvation. Rejecting the grace in the gifts of Baptism and Holy Eucharist, they insist on “making a decision for Christ,” “inviting Christ into your heart,” or “having faith.” But,

If justification and sanctification are not just God’s work being done in and for me by Christ, but also my work of responding to God and giving Him my best, then ultimately I am left with despair, because the very best that I have will never be enough to vanquish my sin or to fill the big empty hole that lives inside of me. And I will always be left to wonder whether I really have it, whether I am a real Christian or not, whether I am really saved or just in the queue where they give out salvation to all the good little boys and girls (The Conciliar Anglican).

This despair is the despair of our father and mother in the garden who realized that the fig leaves could not cover their sin. Like our first parents, this despair persists with our efforts to achieve holiness on our own.

Now that you know what Jesus did for you, get out there and stay pure, never falling into your old ways, doing good things. You are God’s hands and feet in the world. He’s relying on you to make the difference. He needs you to apply it in your life. He’s made it possible for you to be saved, but now you have to live that out through your own good works (Ibid.)

This is a poverty akin to spending money on “that which is not bread” in an attempt to assuage hunger. As ever, what God offers freely is so much more.

It is more than just forgiveness. It is more than just a second chance. It is more than we can ever hope to achieve through moral shaming or bucking up. What Christ has done for us is to make it as if we were deserving of His share, not in an artificial way but in a real way. And that good Word, given to the sinner who has become convicted of his or her sin, is quite enough to change the heart and cure the soul. But we don’t believe it. We think there has to be more, so we apply extra bits...the added testimonies and declarations of faith of the Evangelical, or the added social justice and healing of the world of the Liberal. In all cases, it is no longer just Christ. It is Christ plus [insert extra item here]. As soon as we make it Christ plus anything else of our own making, we are doomed (Ibid.)

Baptism is “a death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness whereby we are made the children of grace (1928 BCP).” Holy Eucharist “is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God's action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit (Congregation of Rites, instruction, Eucharisticum mysterium, 6).” Both are gifts of God designed to bring us to communion with him and to help us remain there; both seem hard to accept for that very reason – they are gifts. Accepting faith as a gift through grace brings hope rather than despair.

But if our salvation is God’s work alone, there is both hope and comfort for people in all conditions who can look to their Baptism and know that Christ has saved them, who can look to the Word that has been preached in their hearing and know that it brings faith...Christ is not a possession. His grace is a gift that runs through the hands of the priest like water, into the waiting parched mouths of the people of God. We need not add anything to the mix to make it better. We need only to open our hands and let the living water run through, to open our mouths and drink (Conciliar Anglican, “The Right and Wrong Way to be a Pastor”).

This gift is had without money and without price, yet its worth is infinite.