Offensive Grace

When I was in college, I had the full scholarship--as in the school was small enough that there was only one. In exchange, I was supposed to tutor ten hours a week and generally be a campus leader. So I did--Habitat for Humanity, honors societies, and a whole host of other on-campus groups. It also meant that I was not about to get in trouble.

My junior year was rough, for a few reasons, and I decided to stay on-campus the following summer. I got a job at a local restaurant, starting work the week of finals. For the restaurant job, I needed to wear a tie, which I didn't own. Of course, I asked one of my guy friends to borrow one. He asked me to follow him back to his dorm to grab one on a rainy spring day.

My college was a conservative Christian college. Liberal in its tradition, but conservative in the grand scheme of things. That included dorms segregated by gender. When the guy from whom I was borrowing a tie told me to step into the back hallway to get out of the rain, I said I'd go to the lobby instead, where women could be until midnight. But he insisted it was silly and I should step inside for the three minutes it would take him to run to his room.

So I did. And when I stepped back out, the person in charge of all of residence life was standing there. Of course, on a small college campus where I had my hand in so many things, she knew who I was. She called me over, asked what I was doing, and didn't like my answer. "I'll contact you later," she said, as she walked off with the person to whom she had been talking.

Panicked doesn't quite cover my reaction, but it's sufficient for what went on in my room for the next few minutes. Eventually, I picked up the phone to call a friend. What else do you do but call a friend? (These were pre-cell phone days.) When I did, I had a message. It was from the person who had just caught me.

"You've never done anything like this before. Don't worry about it this time and don't do it, again."

I told that story to high school kids at camp this summer. I broke up the story with one from the Bible, the story of the woman caught in adultery, to whom Jesus said, "Go and sin no more." When I finally gave them the resolution to my own story, though, they began grumbling. Immediately, there were scoffs and grumblings and I heard at least one, "I'd have gotten in so much trouble for that!"

I laughed as they reacted and let them do so for a few minutes. It tied into the sermon well. Their reaction was a reminder of something that's easy to forget: grace is offensive.

If done well, if applied generously, if extended in the worst of circumstances, grace is offensive.

We forget that, assuming grace is something positive, wonderful, transforming. And it is. But it's also offensive.

Grace means not getting your just deserts.
Grace does not mean justice.
Grace means guilty people get off scot-free.

Of course that's offensive. And of course that's God.