WILL CALL

“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”

The Dream

I had a dream the other night.

And before you stop reading because somebody is about to tell you about a dream they had —

hang with me. This one has a point. I think.

In the dream, I died.

I am told this is a perfectly normal thing to dream about when you’re in your fifties and you ate too late.

But it felt very real.

And I went to heaven.

Or to be more precise, I went to the front gate of heaven.

Which, in my dream, looked suspiciously like a will-call window.

You know the kind — like at a concert.

Little sliding glass. A counter. A line. A guy with a clipboard.

And the guy with the clipboard was Peter.

Saint Peter himself.

Looking exactly the way every Sunday school flannelgraph promised me he would.

Beard. Robe. Slightly tired around the eyes, like a man who has been working this shift for two thousand years and just wants to clock out.

I walked up. I smiled. I gave him my best pastoral handshake. He did not return it.

He said,

“To get in, you need 100 points. Tell me what you’ve got.”

Now in real life I would have a lot of theological objections to this system.

I would want to file paperwork.

I would want to bring up Romans.

But this was a dream, and dreams have their own logic, and the logic of this dream was: spreadsheets.

So I started listing.

“Okay,” I said. “I went to church every Sunday for years. Decades. Through colds. Through fevers. Through Cowboys games.”

Peter looked at the clipboard.

“One point.”

“One point? Peter, I stayed for the potlucks. Do you know what church potlucks are like? Do you know how many casseroles I have eaten out of love?”

“There’s a Pyrex dish in heaven somewhere with my name on it.”

“One point.”

“Okay. Different angle. I have two boys. I loved them. I was there. I went to the games. I went to the things. I sat through every band concert, every awards night, every middle school production where my kid had four lines and forgot two of them.”

“One point.”

“ONE POINT?”

“Peter. Brother. Hear me. I paid for college. I paid for college TWICE.”

“One of my boys went to UT. Have you priced UT lately?”

“The other one went to Texas A&M. AND THEN — hear me on this — I paid for an extra year at A&M so he could do the pre-med prep work.”

“And then he got into Baylor Med School, which I am now also helping pay for.”

“Do you know how much medical school costs?”

“Do you know what it does to a man’s soul to write tuition checks to both UT AND A&M in the same calendar year?”

“That’s not parenting. That’s spiritual warfare.”

“One point.”

“Okay, surely this one. I loved my wife. Faithfully. For decades. Through every season. Through the good years and the years where we were both crazy and didn’t know it.”

“One point.”

“ONE — Peter, that’s the whole sacrament of marriage right there. That’s a covenant. That’s Ephesians 5. That’s a sermon series.”

“Have you read Ephesians 5? It’s really good. I’ve preached it.”

“One point.”

“Rotary Club. Twenty years. I rang the bell. I said the pledge. I bought the chicken at the fundraiser even when I didn’t want chicken.”

“One point.”

“Hospital visits. I parked in the parking garage and everything.”

“One point.”

“Mission trip. To another country. There were bugs there I had never seen before, Peter. Some of them had opinions about me.”

“One point.”

“I tithed. Off the gross, Peter. The GROSS. Some of my friends in ministry tithe off the net. Not me.”

“One point.”

And then, in the dream, I made the move every preacher eventually makes.

I went for the big one.

“Peter. Listen. I preached. I preached a lot. I preached long. I preached deep. I preached three points and a poem. I preached when I was tired. I preached when I was sick. I preached sermons so long that the back row developed bedsores.”

Peter looked up from the clipboard for the first time.

“Minus one point.”

“What?”

“Minus one point. You preached too long. People had Sunday lunch reservations.”

“You are kidding me.”

“I am not kidding you. I have a list here of seven Sundays in particular.”

I tried to come back.

“Fine. I didn’t drink. Hardly.”

“One point.”

“I didn’t curse. Much.”

“Half a point.”

“I mowed my elderly neighbor’s yard one summer.”

“One point.”

“I taught Vacation Bible School.”

“One point.”

And there in the dream, in front of the will-call window, with my paltry sad little points adding up to something embarrassing in the high single digits,

I just stopped.

I dropped my arms.

I exhaled the way you exhale when you finally admit something you’ve been pretending for thirty years.

And I said,

“Peter. I give up. I can’t do it. I cannot earn 100 points. I never could. I have nothing.”

And Peter’s whole face changed.

He set down the clipboard.

He smiled the kind of smile that has been waiting on you for a long time.

And he said,

“Congratulations. That’s 100 points.”

And I woke up.

And I sat on the side of the bed for a long time.

Because the Holy Spirit had just preached me a sermon, and I had been the only person in the room.

Will Call

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” — Ephesians 2:8–9

Heaven is a will-call window.

You don’t pay there. Somebody else already paid.

Your job is to walk up, give your name, and receive what was already purchased on your behalf.

That’s the gospel. That’s Ephesians 2 with sneakers on.

The problem is, most of us walk up to the window and start fumbling for our wallet.

“Here’s my church attendance. Here’s my marriage. Here’s my generosity. Here’s my sermon.”

And the angel at the window keeps saying, “Sir — your name is on the list. The ticket has been paid. Just step through.”

And we keep fumbling. And we are holding up the line.

Friends, this is not humility. This is pride wearing a religious tie.

And preachers wear it best, because we own the most ties.

Because every time we try to pay something extra, we are saying, “The cross was a great down payment. Let me top it off.”

And every time we say that, the Father is grieved, the devil is delighted, and we don’t notice either one.

What Mark Twain Got Right (Mostly)

Mark Twain, who was not exactly a Sunday school teacher, once said this:

“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”

Now in Twain’s mouth, “favor” probably meant nepotism.

Like Saint Peter giving you a wink because your great-grandfather knew somebody.

And of course that’s not the gospel.

But “favor” in the New Testament has a different and much better meaning.

The Greek word is charis.

Same word we translate as grace.

Which means unearned gift.

Which means somebody else paid for it and you got it for free.

Twain was right and didn’t fully know how right he was.

Heaven does go by favor.

Not the favor of family connections.

But the favor of a King who decided, before you were born, to put your name on a ticket and pay for it Himself.

And the punchline is theological dynamite.

If heaven went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

Because your dog has never lied to you.

Your dog has never gossiped about a co-worker.

Your dog, unlike me, has never preached a sermon and then gone home and rated his own performance.

Your dog is, frankly, more sanctified than you are.

But the Kingdom does not work on a merit scale, and that is the only reason any of us are in.

Not because we are better than the dog.

Because Jesus is better than our worst day.

And because the ticket has already been paid.

So Walk Up to the Window

If you have spent years trying to earn the love of God,

stop.

Just stop.

Put down the clipboard.

Put down the spreadsheet.

Put down the Sunday-by-Sunday tally of how well you are doing as a Christian compared to the people in your small group.

Walk up to the window.

Give your name.

Receive the ticket Jesus already paid for.

The good news of the gospel is not that you can finally start getting good enough.

The good news of the gospel is that you can finally stop pretending you ever were.

Heaven goes by favor.

And the favor has your name on it.

And it’s already been paid.

All you have to do is show up at will call.

And friends — if it turns out the line is long that day,

and you look down and see a golden retriever in front of you with no leash and a very calm look on his face,

you nod respectfully.

Because he has been a better Christian than you,

and the only difference between his ticket and yours

is that Jesus didn’t have to die for the dog.

The best is yet to come.

Your Hope Dealer,

Rookie Roberts