NOT HAVING TO GET IT RIGHT

My favorite Anglican theologian was the late Robert Capon. He, more than any other human being, is the reason for my "migration" -- the word we use in ecumenical circles -- to the Episcopal Church. (But that's another story.) If the truth be told, Capon was a closet Lutheran, and maybe so am I. It's called guilt by association. Lutherans believe that we are saved by grace through faith. That was the basis of all Capon's writings.

I would go one step further and say that, yes, believers are saved by grace. So are non-believers. That is what Christmas-Easter is all about, what Jesus's birth-life-death-resurrection are all about. Jesus was born among us to live, die and be raised up so that we, too, could live, die and be raised up. If he had not been, we would not be, could not be. It’s as simple and as profound as that.

That is precisely Capon's theology: there is nothing we can do to get to heaven when we die: nothing. Try as we might, be good as we can, we will never make it on our own. Conversely, be as bad as we can, we will never lose it on our own. Life-in-death is God's free gift to us. It comes through the grace of God and through and by nothing else. It is as simple and as profound as that.

Now there are those – many of those – who do not want to hear or even believe it, who would call Capon (and me) a heretic. So be it. But they are the ones who want to believe that we can earn our way into heaven. We cannot. It is simple and profound as that.

But somehow we still think we can, believe we have to. We spend so much of our time trying to get it right. We think that if we say the right prayers, believe the right dogma, live the right way, get it all right, we will get to heaven. We won't because we never ever get it all right. Most of the time, I suspect, when we try to define our faith, we come out as heretics.  We have to rely on the grace of God. It is simple and as profound as that.

That does not mean that we should not try, that we should not make the best effort at praying well, understanding our faith better, doing what we know we should. We should. What it does mean is that, in the end, it is only through God's grace that in death we will find life, and only through God's grace. It is as simple and as profound as that.

That's the beauty of it all. That is the reason for the joy that should be in our hearts each and every day. Jesus's birth among us was the first step in this process that removed the need for always having to get it right. The Old Law, the Law of the Old Testament, was full of ways to get it right. Jesus came to tell us that while the Old Law was good, that we should do all we could to get it right, it would never get us where we wanted to go. Only his death and resurrection would. It is as simple and as profound as that.

We say we believe that truth even though we somehow really don't believe it. We still think our salvation is somehow dependent on us, on our getting it right. It isn't. It never was and never will be. Christmas-Easter is about not having to always get it right.  It’s as simple and as profound as that.