Before leaving LaGrange and moving to Mobile, I sold my car.  It was not just any car, not my everyday car, but my pride and joy—a fully restored 1984 Trans Am with a hot rod engine. I loved that car. I spent many hours with my car—bathing it, waxing it so it glimmered in the sunshine and moonlight. Oh, it was something.  But I had to sell it, couldn’t keep it down here in Mobile. There was no place for it, no garage to keep it warm in the winter and sheltered from summer sun and falling leaves. And there are a lot of leaves where I live. I’ve got so many now I don’t know what to do with them. So I sold my car.  

It was a good deal at least from a financial point of view. I got out of it what I put into to it and maybe a little more.  I had a lot in that car—more than can be measured in dollars and cents.  My car had sentimental value and there’s no price on sentiment.  But still I had to sell.  I sold my car the old fashion way—I took the buyer for a test drive.  Actually, I did the driving. I offered the buyer a turn at the wheel, but he declined.  So after a demonstration of speed and smoking tires, which undoubtedly broke multiple Georgia traffic laws, the buyer licked his lips and said, “I’ll take it.  How much?”

I named my price. He countered.  I accepted.  And just like that the deal was done. 

Ah, the art of the deal—everybody gets what they want—sometimes more sometimes less. In the best deals, everybody is happy. A balance is struck. Of course not all deals work out that way.  Some folks are upside down with their home mortgages.  Curious term upside-down.  If you’re upside down on your mortgage, your house is worth less than your mortgage and that’s a bad deal for home buyers and it’s proving bad for mortgage lenders. 

Deals can go bad.  They don’t always work out.  They can go south. Sometimes we end up on the short end of the stick, which is a bad place to be when making deals.  You don’t want to be on the short end. If you make a deal, you want to be on the long end of the stick where you have options, where you have leverage.  The short end is the bad end.

Long and short ends imply, as do upside down mortgages, that deals are inherently imbalanced.  Imbalanced may not be the exact word I’m looking for but it’s close.  Imbalance suggests that deal makers are not equals.  In some deals, partners are unequal.

Let’s say a developer has $10 million and wants to build a shopping mall.  I don’t know what it takes to build a shopping mall—probably more than $10 million, but for argument’s sake, let’s assume $10 million.  And let’s assume that right in the middle of the proposed mall, there’s a retirement aged couple who own an old gas station/country store on a one acre lot. 

The couple bought their property forty-five years ago.  They’ve made a living, not extravagant, but they’re getting by. Suburbs have sprouted around them.  Their near neighbors were once farmers: cotton, sweet potatoes, peanuts, cattle.  But times have changed. People want houses in the suburbs. Much of the farmland around them has been sold, all except for the twenty acres surrounding their little store.

The owners of those other twenty acres are ready to sell.  But the retired couple holds out. They’re not interested.  Without their property, the deal can’t go through. 

The developer sends the neighbors with the twenty acres over.  The developer goes to the old couple’s children.  “You know, you really need to convince Ma and Pa to sell. It’s in their best interests, and yours.” 

So the kids get involved. They try to persuade Ma and Pa. The developer goes to the county commissioner, an old family friend and a promoter of progress.  “You really should sell.  It’s best for everybody. You don’t want to stand in the way of progress, do you?”

Deals are not always between equals.  Sometimes they are, but many times they are not. 

Now, I happen to like deals.  Deals are not a bad thing.  They’re part of life, even everyday, ordinary life.  Suppose you are driving down Airport Blvd—westbound and it’s 5 p.m.  The driver in front of you turns her signal on and wants in your lane.  You let her in.  You hope for a wave, some nod of recognition and maybe down the road the same courtesy returned to you. That’s a deal, a modest social transaction.

Or suppose you’re going on vacation. Your house plants need watering. For a few days, you need somebody to pick up the newspaper, keep an eye on things. You ask your neighbor, “Would you mind? I’ll return the favor.” 

Of course, on a macro level, deals become immensely more complex.  Consider the bank bailout.  Is that a raw deal?  Should my tax dollars and yours fund the moral hazard others created and in some cases benefited from and have now passed on to us?  Deals should be fair.  The fact that they are sometimes unfair suggests that somebody got something for nothing or alternately, somebody ended up on the wrong end of the stick.

Deals are not morally neutral.  Deals imply a quotient of justice, of fairness.  Fairness involves risk and reward.  The world teaches us that. We don’t or we usually don’t get something for nothing. To get something, to get something fairly, you’ve got to have skin in the game.  Remove the risk; remove moral hazard and rewards become imbalanced. They are skewed. And a mess results, chaos.  Deals keep the world spinning happily around or not.

 

All of this thought about deals makes me wonder if God makes deals.  There’s an unequal partnership—God and humankind.  God holds all the chips.  Does God make deals?  What does the Bible teach?

Consider these texts, first from the Old Testament. The context is Moses and the people in the wilderness:  “If you will diligently observe this entire commandment that I am commanding you,” Moses says, “loving the Lord your God, walking in all his ways, and hold fast to him, then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you. . .”  That sounds like a deal.  “Obey God and God will fight your battles.” In fact, Moses tells the recently liberated Israelites, “You will dispossess nations larger and mightier than yourselves.”  That sounds like a pretty good deal, at least for Israelites.  Not so good for the dispossessed, but good for Abraham’s tribe.

Of course that deal came with a caveat. “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey . . . and the curse, if you do not obey.”

The theme of blessing and curse continues with Joshua, Moses’ successor. Before his death and after Israel has entered the Promised Land, Joshua goes to great lengths to remind Abraham’s sons and daughters of all that the Lord has done for them. He exhorts them to serve God “in sincerity and in faithfulness” and if they’ll do that then they’ll get to keep the land.  But again there is a caveat: “If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm, and consume you.”  Deals with the Almighty, so it seems, are conditional: “Do good and you will be blessed. Live unfaithfully and you will be cursed.”

What about the New Testament?  Does God make deals in the New Testament?  Consider Paul, that great champion of salvation by grace: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”  That sounds like a deal. Believe in God and you will be saved.

Ok, so that’s Paul. What about Jesus?  Everybody remembers John 3:16:  “God so loved the world . . .” What about John 3:18?  “Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already.” It sounds like there are risks and rewards with faith.

Or what about Mark 8: 34?  “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  Talk about skin in the game.  That sounds like a whole lot of skin. It sounds like eternal life is costly.  Remember the lawyer in the story of the Good Samaritan?  The lawyer wants to know what he must do to inherit eternal life.

Ordinarily, folks don’t have to do anything to inherit stuff.  So it’s a funny question.  But still Jesus plays along, “What does the law say?”

“It says,” the lawyer answered, “to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself.” 

Jesus answered the lawyer, “You have given the right answer; do this and you will live.”  That sounds like a deal.  God has eternal life. In order to have it, you must love God and love your neighbor.  That’s about as straight forward as it gets—quid pro quo.  Love God and God gives eternal life. That sounds like a deal to me.  But is it? Does God work that way? How can eternal life be a gift if I must do something to receive it?  And how will I know when I’ve done enough? How will I know when I’ve loved my neighbor as I’ve loved myself or loved God with all my heart?  Is the deal off when I don’t love rightly or if I pass by neighbors in need?  How many times can I get away with passing by? Or alternately is there a quota I must fill—you know, a number of neighbors, say twenty-five or thirty, I must help before I qualify?  Is God counting? 

This is all very confusing and seems to contradict what the Bible says about God saving us despite ourselves.  If eternal life is a deal, even a very good deal, is it really a gift?  How can it be a gift, if I must earn it by meeting my end of the deal?

 

This is a question the Bible itself tackles head on.  Remember the story of Job: “Does Job fear God for nothing?”  That was the question, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Or does Job fear God for something? Is he getting something out of the deal?  What’s in it for Job?” 

The story of Job tests an assumption:  people have faith so long as they get what they want. Take away the benefit and faith dies. The story of Job tests that assumption first by seeing what happens when Job loses his livelihood. Job’s hit in the pocketbook—he loses his livestock, his servants, and his house. If that wasn’t enough Job loses his family, his sons and daughters. They’re all killed.  Job grieves these losses but then he says, “The LORD gave, the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” 

Finally, Job loses his health. He is inflicted head to foot. His wife advises him to “curse God and die.” And Job answers, “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” Job’s not in it for what he’s getting out.  For Job, faith is not a deal.

The same assumption is tested in the New Testament.  We know right where to find it, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want but what you want.”  Jesus does not love God because it’s expedient or popular or safe.  Jesus loves God because God is worthy of love no matter what.

God does not make deals.  God’s house is not a marketplace but a house of prayer.  God can’t be bought.  We do not love God in order to get something out of God.  And God does not love us in order to get something from us. 

Salvation is not a transaction.  No love worth having is a transaction. God does not make deals. God’s house is not a house of trade. It’s a house of prayer. When you pray you don’t always get what you want.  When you pray you sometimes get the short end of the stick, you can even wind up upside down.  God does not make deals. God redeems, God invites us to pray. And when we pray, we’re not looking for leverage.  When we pray the only thing that matters is love.  And love can’t be bought.  Love is the one gift without conditions.

In this life, from time to time, love may seem like a deal, but in that world to come where we see God face to face—all deals are off. And we will love God for who God is and not for what he does for us. Prayer invites us here and not to that perfect love.  Prayer gives us the opportunity to love God for who God is and not for what God may or will do for us.  God does not make deals. God redeems through love.  Amen.