There is a new ministry starting up in our congregation - a food pantry for folks in the school district. We live about 10 miles from a larger town that has a food pantry. It serves the entire county, but as always, there are those that fall through the cracks. So a group of folks in our congregation got together and are starting a food pantry, aptly named "Grace's Table." I say aptly because our congregation's name is Grace Lutheran.
As we were first getting started, plenty of people stepped up to offer advice and ideas. One piece of advice was offered repeatedly by almost everyone. "You will have to do something to make sure that you screen people so that they don't cheat the system or try to get food if they do not really need it. We can't have people abusing the system. WE have to make sure that the people coming to the pantry really deserve the food."
The organizers and I all agreed. No screening, no one turned away. That doesn't sit well some people. They are convinced that we (the congregation) will be taken advantage of. I have given some thought to that understanding of helping our neighbor. I keep coming back to that apt name - GRACE'S Table.
When I think of God's grace, I never think of it as being in short supply. Grace is the relationship that God enters into with us through the waters of baptism. The relationship is initiated by God because of Jesus' death and resurrection. Now we can abuse and take advantage of that relationship. We can ignore, reject, and take it for granted. We can repeatedly walk into the same pattern of sin over and over again and sometimes we will do it intentionally because we know we are forgiven. Martyr and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer refers to that as "cheap grace."
But from God's end of the relationship, the grace is always there waiting for our response. We may ignore the relationship and take advantage of the grace God extends to us, but God is a relentless God. God continues in the relationship. Nowhere in scripture do we hear that God sent his only Son into the world to save ONLY those who were not going to abuse the relationship of grace or try to cheat the system. Nowhere does scripture tell us that God offers the relationship of grace to ONLY the deserving. No God offers us the relationship of grace through Jesus to ALL, never takes it back, never suggests that we need to earn it or deserve it. In fact, St. Paul is very clear that it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us. In other words, God comes to us in grace when we are most undeserving, playing no favorites, keeping no score of the number of times we take advantage of the relationship or fall short on our end. God's grace is abundant and unchanging. The relationship is begun in Christ not because we deserve it, but exactly because we could never deserve it or earn it apart from Christ.
So I think that if God's grace keeps no count of sins, but instead is abundant and unchanging, based not on our deserving, but on God's mercy and love, then Grace's Table ought to operate under similar principles.
Will someone take advantage? Possibly. But I'll let them answer for that when their day to face God comes. In the meantime, the folks at Grace's Table know what it means to receive what we do not deserve with no fear of it ever being taken away no matter how many times we fall short. So they have chosen to to do the best they can to let Grace's Table mirror God's grace - abundantly giving without making judgments about who is deserving or not.
I think they just may be on to something here! Grace's Table: Food Pantry and More - a place where the hungry are fed; plain and simple.
It what ways does your life reflect the abundance of God's grace?
Come to the table of mercy ... Grace: abundant and unchanging
Blessings -
PK
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