Photo by Collyn Ware

I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead 

These are the heartwrenching words of Reverend Robert Boughton to his son, Jack. Jack’s petty thefts and adolescent discretions have given him a certain notoriety in his small town. He’s the proverbial preacher’s kid gone wrong, the son hell-bent on sowing his wild oats right in the face of his community and his father’s church. But these crimes are small change. The big-dollar sin occurs when he impregnates a young, poor girl and leaves her with neither husband nor financial means. An unemployed college student, Jack leaves school and skips town. Horrified, his family attempts to offer both financial and emotional support to the young mother. At one desperate point, they offer to raise the child in their home, for the squalor she and her mother were living in was more than the Boughtons could stand. And later when the four-year-old child dies from an ordinary infection gone unattended, they are beside themselves with grief and remorse. Meanwhile, Jack is living hand to mouth in St. Louis. He doesn’t return for either his daughter’s or his mother’s funeral.

And yet, his father passionately and persistently reaches out with grace. He sends money and writes letters. He sends his older brother to look for him. And he prays, how he prays! There is literally nothing Jack can do–or not do–that will make his father love him more or love him less. In one particularly moving passage, he reveals that in spite of what his son may think of himself, he has been God’s grace, a miracle, something more than a miracle for him, the good child of an old man.

Good? What of Jack’s sins and seemingly unrepentent nature? Undoubtedly, he feels shame and guilt. And repeatedly, he vows to be a better man, to stop drinking and carousing, to clean up and secure a real job, to be able to walk down the street and return to his family home with some dignity. In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, German pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Bonhoeffer claims that grace is cheap without repentance and, above all, without the cross. Over the years, Jack struggles with what he can and can’t believe. Ultimately, he can’t believe in the God to whom his father has devoted his life. He knows about God. He intellectually understands the cross as God’s great gift, but he can’t find his way beyond head knowledge. Again and again, he turns inward, convincing himself that he must press on alone. In the end, he passes on the true grace that God offers and can only accept the heartfelt love that his earthly father gives. If one considers his father’s unconditional, unmerited love as a form of grace, Bonhoeffer would contend that it is cheap grace at best.

For Jack remains lost, wandering alone in the desert of his own effort and skepticism. American philosopher and writer, Dallas Willard, would have some words for those who are bent on working their way out of the wilderness. Willard writes that [g]race is not opposed to effort; it’s opposed to earning. I can imagine that he’d like to sit down with Jack over a cup of coffee and help him understand the difference between effort and earning. He’d have much to say about the fact that none of us–no, not one–can ever earn God’s grace. Still, our good works in response to the gift of grace are pleasing to our fellow humans and to God.

Along with Willard, Christian author, Philip Yancey, has written much about grace. He writes:

Grace is shockingly personal. As Henri Nouwen points out, ‘God rejoices. Not because the problems of the world have been solved, not because all human pain and suffering have come to an end, nor because thousands of people have been converted and are now praising him for his goodness. No, God rejoices because one of his children who was lost has been found. [What’s So Amazing About Grace?]

Perhaps it is just this shockingly personal nature of grace that frightens and confuses Jack. The Creator of the universe, the Savior of the world sets out on a rescue mission to bring one raggedy, wretched man into the fold? Really? The intensity of such relentless pursuit and personal attention is, indeed, shocking and ultimately beyond what Jack and many of God’s children can accept.

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. So writes author and theologian Frederick Buechner. Jack’s father desperately wants his son to know that the party hasn’t been, and won’t be, complete without him. He longs for Jack to show up in the only way it really matters–before God. Only here can he lay his burdens down. In the end, perhaps grace comes down to just this: showing up before God who meets you in prayer, who stands with you in all of life’s trials and joys, and who says:

You have been a miracle, something more than a miracle. . . If I only had the words to tell you.