Not long ago I heard one of my licensed local colleagues deliver a sermon on the difference between “free grace,” and “cheap grace,” an exhausted old trope of conservative Christianity. It is a sad, though well-intentioned misreading of scripture, and a desperate cry to keep the wrong people out of the faith. The fact that the bishop of our conference invited the person to preach is even sadder. The fundamental flaw of the message (and I cannot blame this pastor entirely: his message was derivative of a popular youth-talk that has been around for ages) is that it redefines the gift of God as a measuring stick by which human beings can judge others and decide if we should love them or not.

Why do we spend (waste) so much time deciding who God loves and who God doesn’t? Why is it so important to a segment of our church to condemn the sinner instead of welcoming, forgiving, loving, and respecting the sinner? Have we ever gained anything by deciding that “your sin is worse than my sin”? Now, in some faith traditions, it can be partially excused, but in Methodism? Absolutely not!   

There is no more grace-based flavor of Christianity than Wesleyan United Methodism. Prevenient, justifying, sanctifying grace – all freely given and Romans-grounded good. God’s grace goes before us, God’s grace redeems us, and God’s grace saves us. John and Charles Wesley couldn’t have spoken more powerfully or clearly: we are the undeserving, unprepared, uncomprehending recipients of God’s grace. When we confess Jesus as Lord, and truly seek to live faithfully by the teachings of the Christ, we are take our place in the incarnate body of Christ. We don’t cease to be sinners. That’s the point. We cannot do this on our own. We need a Savior. And we do not, should not, cannot waste our time figuring out arguments to judge, condemn, and invalidate that grace for people WE don’t like.

In a nutshell, the understanding of access to God’s grace is what broke The United Methodist Church. One end of the denomination wanted to offer God’s grace to all God’s children while the other end wanted to deny it. The denying side agreed with the LLP preacher mentioned above. To allow people we do not like access to God’s grace makes it cheap, not free. Gay people cheapen God’s grace. Women who choose to have an abortion cheapen God’s grace. For some, women who step into the pulpit cheapen God’s grace. To respect people of other faiths is to cheapen God’s grace. God’s grace is freely given to those who think like we do, but it is cheap grace if we believe God grants it to “those” sinners.

Now, there is a disingenuous thread that picked up some momentum over the past few years. The denying wing of the church wasn’t judging people of alternative lifestyles. Certainly, God loves all people, gay or straight, male or female, of various hues, tints, and colors, but we must not let the wrong people marry or be ordained. We love them just like God, but we certainly don’t want to allow them to experience full rights in this lifetime. That would make God’s grace cheap. It is free for a while, but the first one is always free. At some point, people we disagree with and judge must earn their free grace. It is as the one delegate to the 2016 General Conference told me when I referred to God’s unconditional love, “Sure it’s unconditional, but only for the people who deserve it!”

What some Christian leaders in our denomination tried to do God’s grace will require God’s grace to forgive. Were it simply a matter of ignorance it could be excused, but this was a conscious decision of many in the system to allow this misrepresentation to occur and spread. We licensed and ordained men and women we knew were theologically poorly prepared and did not have a depth of biblical knowledge. We placed poorly trained pastors into pulpits, unintentionally spreading superficial messages of bad interpretations of poor translations of scripture. One of my colleagues that led his small congregation out of the denomination told me, “I don’t read theology and I don’t have any commentaries. I just let the Holy Spirit preach through me.” Another pastor, this one seminary trained and having more than thirty years in ministry, who jumped ship said, “I read the scripture I am going to preach on over and over and I pray about it. I never do any research. I don’t want to preach someone else’s interpretation of scripture. I want to preach my own.” Ironically, this pastor uses The Message as his scripture.

But getting back to grace. The presumption that we can mediate, mitigate, and regulate God’s grace is the height of hubris. Yet, many denominations and independent churches have built their empire on just such a premise. The first two chapters of Romans provide a brilliant cautionary tale from the pen of St. Paul. He begins in chapter one by fueling the fire of right-leaning Bible interpreters by focusing on the moral dilemma of relationships that do not produce offspring – male to male, sex with prostitutes – and remarking how righteous people feel moral indignation at such behaviors. In chapter two Paul drops the hammer. He notes that there is one thing much worse than engaging in such acts, and that one thing is judging those acts, because the judges are as guilty and sinful as those they judge. The remainder of the book contains some of the most compelling and enlightening explanations of God’s grace in the entire Bible.

If we have any hope, any assurance, any confidence, any relief, it is due to God’s grace. We have a very simple, very clear decision to make. Will we be selfish and hoard God’s grace for ourselves and those who agree with us, or will we extend and share God’s grace with others, especially those who need it most? This simple choice tore The United Methodist Church apart, and both sides now have to live with their decision.