Sunday, May 29,
2016
I needed help with this sermon,
so I turned … well, I turned to everyone.
If you were around the church office this week, I hit you with a
question. If I haven’t asked you the question
yet, I’ll give it now and you can think about what your answer would be. If I have asked and you remember answering,
you can now think whether you would change what your answer would be.
We say Jesus is our savior. The Bible says that. Salvation is a major and repeated theme in
scripture and in the history of Christian theology. If Jesus is savior, here is the
question. From what are we saved? Ponder that.
If Jesus is our Savior, from what
are we saved?
Because this concept comes up so often
in the Bible, one thing is absolutely clear to me. Human beings and the world, the entire
creation, need salvation and only God can meet this need. However, salvation is discussed in so many
different places, there is not one definitive word on this topic. Salvation is a complex Christian idea and it
is important that we understand it.
Throughout this summer, that’s what
we’ll try to do. We will look at the
history of ideas about salvation in way that shows the connection of the idea
with the daily living of our lives. Surprising? Did you think of salvation as something that
happens to your soul after you die? Certainly eternal life is part of what we
mean when we say ‘salvation.’ The saved
spend eternity in God’s loving embrace, feasting at God’s banquet table. Those not saved, the damned, spend eternity
separated from God. We call this
condition Hell and the New Testament offer several metaphors to depict it.
However, the Bible does not restrict the
understanding of salvation to the afterlife.
What does it mean today to say, ‘I am saved?’
Luke chapter 3 stands at the turning
point of history. Luke mentions the
Roman emperor of the time, the Roman governor in Judea, Pontius Pilate, and
Herod, the Jewish ruler in Galilee. Luke
sets his tale in history because he believes he’s writing not only history –
but a seismic shift in the historical landscape. To accomplish his task of showing that with
the arrival of Jesus on the scene everything has changed, he sets the time
period and then quotes the prophet Isaiah.
“The voice of one crying out in the
wilderness,” Isaiah says, and 500 years later Luke write. Luke 3:4-5 is remarkably similar to Isaiah
40:3-4. That portion of Isaiah was for
the exile community; God’s word of promise to a defeated people. God would again do a new thing and would
again deliver His people. Luke takes
those words the prophet spoke in Babylon and announces that the day has
come. In doing so, he significantly
alters the final part of the quote.
Isaiah told the exiles, “The glory of
the Lord shall be revealed and all people shall see it together, for the mouth
of the Lord has spoken.” Luke saw that
glory – God in the flesh, Jesus. By the
time Luke wrote this gospel, Jesus had died and resurrected. Luke changed the final verse of the quote so
that in his rendition it said, “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” The glory of God means salvation for
humankind and for the world God created and sin corrupted. The coming of Jesus is the sign that the
turn-around has begun.
By changing the final verse of the
well-known Isaiah passage, Luke introduced a new idea. “All” flesh shall see salvation. This idea is not only for priests, not only
for Pharisees, not only for Jews. Luke’s
two works – the gospel and the book of Acts – insist that this salvation that
comes from the Jews spreads over the face of the earth. His message is to be taken literally.
John the Baptist, Isaiah’s voice in the
wilderness, is said by some Bible commentators to be the last of the Old
Testament prophets in the tradition of Isaiah and Amos and Jeremiah. I see that.
I also see him and a pre-apostle.
Apostles were those who met Jesus in person and then carried the message
of his salvation and coming kingdom throughout the world. John met Jesus in person. He baptized him. And when he wasn’t baptizing he was preaching,
proclaiming the gospel of repentance. He
was the forerunner to the age of the apostles.
Most importantly, he showed that the message of salvation is one to be
shared.
He also demanded repentance and this
gets us closer to that question which should stay on our minds throughout all
of this. From what does Jesus save
us? Repentance is acknowledging and
confessing our sins, turning away from them, and in our guilt turning to God. Oxford theologian Paul Fiddes calls sin a
“failure of relationship between human beings and their creator due to
rebellion from the human side.” Sin is
unbelief. It is humans refusing to
accept God’s purpose for His creation and substituting our own purposes
instead.[i]
Sin wipes out the possibility of
universal salvation. Wouldn’t that be
nice? Everyone is saved. We could even such an interpretation out of
Luke’s altered Isaiah quote. Doesn’t it
see, all shall see salvation? Yes.
But do all receive salvation?
Jesus is the embodiment of God and of what God wants to do. Did all who met Jesus turn to God in
faith? No. Some heightened their own rebellion by
pounding thorns into Jesus’ head before nailing him to a cross, displaying him
in shame, and piercing him with a spear.
Some people reject God and take that rejection to their graves. On judgment day, God honors the choices we
have made.
At the same time, God glorifies the
accomplishment of Jesus on the cross. He
died for the sins of the world. He died
to defeat death. He overcame the
temptations of Satan. He forgave those
who taunted, tried, and killed him. He
welcomed back the disciples who abandoned him and restored the one who denied
him. He redeemed humanity and renewed
creation. All in his death and
resurrection. His victory is the final
word on Judgment Day. How this squares
with the eternal fate of those who rejected God invitations in life is God’s
business. I don’t know how it all fits
together and I will assert that the most brilliant of theologians doesn’t know
either, not completely.
What we can say, because the Bible shows
this, is that salvation is much more the verdict for individuals on Judgment
Day. It is also about God reclaiming his
creation. Listen to the comments of N.T.
Wright, also of Oxford. He says that the
belief that the whole of Christian truth is about me and my salvation is the
“theological equivalent of supposing that the sun goes round the earth.” He continues, “We are not the center of the
universe. God is not circling around
us. We are circling around him. … God
made humans … so that through them, as his image-bearers, he could bring his
wise, glad, fruitful order to the world.”[ii] When we are saved, it is to be agents of
God’s order. That’s our vocation as
disciples. More on that in a moment.
N.T. Wright’s expanded sense of
salvation brings me to the question I threw in peoples’ faces all week. If
Jesus is the Savior, from what are we saved?
People don’t like it when a pastor steps
to them with a question like this. It
feels like a pop quiz one is destined to fail.
Thank you, all of you, who humored me by answering.
In the salvation we have from God, from
what are we saved? Eleven people said we
are saved from “Sin.” Some had a
variation on this like, saved from the penalty of sin, or saved from sin and
death, or saved from consequences of sin.
That’s a correct answer. Nine
people said we are saved from death. One
of the nine actually the word ‘destruction.’
Also a correct answer. Seven
people said some form of separation; we are saved from separation from
God. The cross bridges the chasm. Six
people said we are saved from ourselves and one said we are saved from each
other. Many passages in the Old Testament
show why such a salvation is needed.
Four people included “Hell” as part of their answer; we are saved from
Hell. Tw said we are saved from the
world and one said we are saved from falling short of God’s standard. One creative person said, we are saved from
an ordinary life. These are all correct
answers.
A year ago, I put this question to my
son I__. This is what happens when your
dad is a pastor. He said we are saved
from evil. He’s the only one who said it
that way. This past week, I asked him
the same question and forgetting what he previously said, this time said we are
saved from sin. I bet if I asked you the
question in five years, your answer might be a little different than what you’d
answer today. These are all right
answers. They all tell part of the
story.
I was having so much fun with this game,
I took it to a group a pastors I meet with on Thursdays. We spend a couple of hours each week debating
theology and helping each other figure how to be better church leaders. I asked these wise guys the question, and
they had to turn it around on me.
They said, “No Rob, the question is not what are we saved from. The question is what are we saved for. Or, what are we saved to.” I had to browbeat these guys into answering
my question. Then, I had to thank them
for challenging me with a better question.
Remember N.T. Wright’s observation.
When we are saved by God through faith in Jesus Christ, we become agents
of God’s order.
We are sent by him to lost, hurting
people, beaten people, mean, scarred people.
We are sent to tell them that their lives, which appear to be total
messes, actually have purpose. We are
sent to show them that they are loved.
They feel horrible about themselves, which is why they are so awful to
others. We show them they are loved by
God and have a future of walking hand-in-hand with God. What are we saved to?
All summer we will dig into what
‘salvation’ means and how it colors, shapes, and animates our everyday
lives. For now, ponder this.
An old evangelistic technique is to try
to shock people. Put the urgency into
the conversation. Say to someone you
think is not walking with Jesus, “If you were to die tonight and have to face
God, what reason would you give Him for letting you into His Heaven?” “If you were to die tonight … .” That’ll
get em! That will convince people to
turn to the Lord in repentance and faith.
Scare them into Heaven. The
truth is some people have become disciples through confrontational approaches
like this one.
It’s not a tact Jesus normally
used. More often than anything else, he
told people they were forgiven and thus able to re-enter the worshiping
community. Or, he might say, “You are
forgiven. Go in peace.” The words he spoke to how people would live
faithful, God-honoring, God-filled lives the next day.
What if we undercut that “What are you
saved from” question? What if we
inverted that “If you die tonight” approach to talking about salvation?
Not, “If you die tonight.” No, instead this: “If you wake up tomorrow,
how will you live the new day in relation to God?”
That’s this week’s assignment. Each day, when you wake up, be aware. You’re awake!
You don’t need to remember the entire sermon. Just remember to look in a mirror and say
this. “OK, I am saved by the shed blood
and resurrection of Jesus Christ. What
am I saved for today? What I am saved to
do in Jesus’ name today?” This week,
don’t fail. Don’t miss a day between now
and next Sunday. Start each day in this
way. I
am saved. For what I am saved? What will my relationship with God look like
today? And spend that day answering.
AMEN
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