REFLECTION

We have probably all seen the stereotypical 'sandwich board man' carrying a message 'The wages of sin is death; I even think you can get postcards of a photograph of such a person! But if ever a Biblical quotation was taken out of context it is this one! The full quote should be 'For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord'.

As a teenager I went to a camp with a Christian organisation and on it were some people who had been the year before. On that occasion one of the leaders had wrapped up a few books and at the evening session had said 'I have a free gift here for anyone who would like it'. There were no takers at the first offering (very polite young ladies!) but at the second time of asking one of my now fellow campers got up and said, 'If it is really free, and I don't have to do extra chores I will take it'. Apparently that was the first time the 'gimmick' had had such a response.
Polite girls, or not, we seem to be programmed into thinking 'there is no such thing as a free lunch'.
I also worked in my college vacations in a factory making paper bags. One machine churned out small bags with 'Free Gift from 'Woman's Own' or 'Free Gift from 'Women's Realm'. Of course you had to buy the magazine for the 'free gift' - and I alerted my mother and her friends as to what offers were coming up in the autumn. The plastic contents were sometimes useful but mostly it was a marketing ploy by the publishers. 'There is no such thing as a free lunch'.

Perhaps that is why the message of the gospel is so hard for so many people. 'What's the catch? 'What do I have to do - be good?' I would but I can't give up ...' Of course, there is some sympathy for that sort of view - the expectation is that the response to this free gift of God is that the life of discipleship will follow and, if you have been following these weekly reflections, last week we were reminded of the cost of that discipleship. Is God's free gift so free after all?

However, if we read the verse in the wider context of its setting, the letter to the Roman church, we get a different complexion on it again. Paul is talking about the choices we make in life and the consequences of those choices. Whatever choice we make, especially in how we behave and decide to live our lives, has consequences.

We realise, or at least most of us do, that making unwise choices will lead to potentially serious consequences. We don't go around taking things that are other peoples', because that will land us up in trouble with the law. If we break the speed limit we know that there is a chance we might get caught and have a fine and maybe points on our licence, or there could be even more drastic consequences if our speeding leads to an accident. Most of us think through our actions and can work out the consequences. Paul is pointing out that our behaviours and attitudes also have far reaching consequences which gives us the wage of being enslaved by a system which takes everything without giving back anything. A slavery, a bondage to what we call sin. It is the way in which the world we inhabit organises things. The world is about power, greed, self-centredness and to try to fight against it on our own leads to a trampling down and a crushing of the mind, body and spirit.

Contrast that, says Paul, with something that is utterly free - it costs us nothing - because - here is the crunch - it cost Jesus Christ everything. Indeed in our Christian assertion that God was in Christ - even on the cross- it is then God who has been crucified, it is God who has died - not instead of us but because God has taken on all the pain, suffering and injustice of the world. Not as a payment, not because God must, but as an act of love. Love for the whole of creation. The love that calls us out of the self-destructive ways of being into a world of justice, cooperation and caring for neighbour just as we care for ourselves. It is the love that enables us to be free to live with the consequences of kindness and compassion, of hope and joy, of trust and forgiveness. The sort of world where tenderness to one another is natural. In fact the sort of world that we almost glimpsed in lockdown.
Yet how quickly have we been urged to give into our acquisitive desires and the clamour for 'normal lives', never mind the consequences of possibly more infections as we are seeing in other places now. The urge to jet off to other countries despite the consequences to the environment. Once again we feel ourselves sucked into the 'ways of the world' yet also feeling within our deepest selves that there must be a better way - there must be a way out of this cycle.

Yes says God - it is that free gift. The gift of my love for you and my love for the whole of creation. The gift you just receive. The gift that helps you to see things in a different way and in a different perspective. The free gift that offers real courage in the face of adversity, of real hope even in the darkest of situations, of real strength in the face of injustice and real love in the face of hatred. The free gift that says 'take a cup of cold water to revive you on your journey' for the lonely and weary we encounter.

But before we get too carried away we must remember that a cup of cold water was not so easily obtained in the time of Jesus. A trip needed to be made to the local well, the storage jars had to be kept out of the seering heat in the summer and kept free of ice in the winter. A cup of water was one thing - but a cup of 'cold water' something else again.

'There we are', I hear you say, 'no such thing as a free gift!'. May be not if you look at it through the transactional lens of the world. But viewed through the lens of happily offering the cup of cold water because God has instilled the love and compassion for one another into us and us knowing we can request the cup of water from someone else and they will also freely give it to you in need - then we do begin to understand something of what Paul was trying to say.

Back to my teenage camp, apparently, once the startled leader had regained her composure, she said 'no, no extra chores, no catch, no strings. What is inside this parcel is for you'. What happened then is the real story. The girl opened the parcel and saw three different books and turned around to the others and asked if anyone would like two of the books. Two other girls got up and accepted the free books. There was no compulsion to share - but the generosity was understood and passed on. The free gift of God that goes on giving - with no strings - but with a power to change us all.