Eleven Pies

Dessie said the wrong thing at Verna's mother's funeral supper.

I am not going to tell you what it was, because it was not wicked and it would sound smaller written down than it felt in that kitchen. It was a sentence about the house and who would get it, said too early, in front of two of the cousins, by a woman who was tired and had been carrying dishes since six in the morning.

Verna heard it. Went still for about a second and a half. Then carried on cutting the ham.

Dessie went up the road two days later and said it plain. No excuses, no telling of the story from her own side, just the thing itself and I am sorry, Verna.

And Verna said, "Well, that is done then. Come in, the kettle is on."

That should be the end of it. That is the end of it, in fact, and has been since 2019.

But here is what Dessie has done since.

She took a pie up on the Thursday. She took beans in September, in jars, a whole flat of them. She drove Verna to Bristol for the eye appointment and would not take gas money. She has come up and swept that porch when Verna was away, and she painted the rail without asking, and last spring she showed up at seven in the morning with two of her grandsons and a truck to take the dead tree out of the back, and Verna had not mentioned the tree to anybody.

Eleven times, is what Verna counted, though she says she stopped counting properly around the seventh.

And this past July, Dessie came up the steps with a cobbler still warm in a towel, and Verna was already standing in the door.

She said, "Dessie. Put that down and sit in that chair."

Dessie said something about it being nothing, it was just extra peaches.

And Verna said, "It ain't extra peaches. It has not been extra peaches since 2019."

Then she said the thing.

"You have paid me eleven times for something I gave you free. And every single pie that comes through that door tells me you think I am still holding it. I am not. I put it down in my own kitchen with a ham knife in my hand, and you are the only one in this county that has been carrying it since."

Now, honey. Let me ask you about the day after.

You made it right with God about something. You did. And within about a day and a half you went and did a thing. Something good. Something helpful. Something nobody asked of you.

And it was a good thing, and I am not about to say a word against it. But you know, and I know, that you did not do it out of the overflow. You did it to have something of yours down underneath.

He put down what you keep picking back up

Paul says a thing to Titus that is worded so plainly there is no room to argue with it, and plain is what a woman carrying cobbler up a road needs.

He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy.Titus 3:5

Sit in that sentence a minute, because it takes something off you that you did not know you had picked up.

Not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness. Notice it does not say deeds done in wickedness. It says deeds done in righteousness. The good ones. The pies. The dead tree hauled out at seven in the morning by a woman and two boys with a truck. Those are not the basis either, and Paul knew that a certain kind of person needed hearing that specifically.

But according to His mercy. Which is a word about the giver and has nothing at all in it about the receiver.

So hear this said over you, plain as a porch board. You are saved according to His mercy and not on the basis of one good thing you have ever done, and the favor you did on Tuesday was not underneath anything. It never was. That is what is written, and it is the Holy Spirit that takes a written mercy and settles it into a person until they can finally sit down in a chair.

Now let me say the part that Verna said, because it is the sharpest thing in this whole message and it is not aimed at your effort.

Every pie tells Him you think He is still holding it.

That is what the repaying actually communicates. Not gratitude. Gratitude says thank you and goes on with its day. Repayment says: I do not believe the account is closed, and here is an installment on it, and I will be back next month with another.

And the one who forgave you has to stand in the door and receive it, again, knowing exactly what it means.

You are not insulting Him on purpose. There is nothing but good will in you. But a woman who has forgiven you and put it down in her own kitchen does not want a jar of beans. She wants you in the chair.

Here is where I want to guard this, because you are a working woman and I am not about to hand you an excuse.

Good works are not the problem, and Paul goes right on to say in that same passage that those who have believed God should be careful to engage in good deeds. He is not sending anybody home. The hollow is full of people who need a pie and a ride to Bristol and a dead tree taken out.

The difference is whether you are carrying it up that road as a payment or carrying it up because you are free and you love her.

Same pie. Same road. And only one of them wears you out.

There was a man five hundred years ago who was the hardest working man in his house, and every bit of it was payment, and he was ill with it. What set him free was not being told to stop working. He worked harder afterward than before. It was finding out that the mercy was not on the basis of any of it, and a man who is not paying can enjoy a day's labor for the first time in his life.