Saved!

Romans 10: 12-15
Matthew 14: 22-33

At the church of my childhood, the same sermon was preached every Sunday. Well, different Bible verses were quoted and different sermon illustrations given. But the sermon remained the same: "You need to be saved."  (For people already “saved” the point was always: "You need to get others saved.") Because we were taught that those who weren’t “saved” would go to hell, we appreciated that it was a sermon that couldn’t be repeated enough. Fortunately, the way to get saved was simple: confess that you were a sinner deserving death, and believe that Jesus, the Son of God, died to take on your punishment.  It would be years before I knew there was anything more to Christian theology than that. It would be many more years before I knew there were and had always been various understandings about the saving work of God in the world and that this subcategory of theology is called soteriology.

Soteriology.  That’s right, folks.  We are the church that is not afraid to use six-syllable words.

Here's an idea for our youth who might want to start a fun conversation with your friends at lunch tomorrow. Announce, “Hey, yesterday’s sermon at my church was about soteriology.”  “Soteriology?” one of your friends is sure to respond, excitedly. “OMG, I love talking about soteriology!” and soon other kids will flock to your lunch table to join in the discussion. Wait, maybe I’m remembering seminary instead of seventh grade.  But it MIGHT happen at the middle school level. So let me share a little more about Christian soteriology so you can preside at the coolest lunch table at your school.   

When people try to express their sense that Christ “saves” us, that God is the source of all that helps us, they’re discussing soteriology. I don’t preach “get saved” sermons, but I do preach about soteriology.  I recognize there are problems and perils in this world.  People of faith trust that God is the ultimate source of all that saves us from these problems and perils.  Unlike some who preach the way of salvation, however, preachers like me recognize that God saves us from various human problems in various ways.  It’s an important topic I treat in explicit contrast to the preaching of my childhood—because far too many people don’t know that church history and Christian scriptures cover many meanings of salvation. Since both our Epistle and Gospel lections for today speak of the Lord saving us, this is a fine time for us to reconsider what that might mean.  

Two questions will organize my response:  What does God save us from?  And how?  Just remember that in any sermon there is room for you to come up with your own answers.

Let’s first consider how some people answer these 2 questions. 

Imagine a man drives up with a bumper sticker on his car that says “Jesus Saves” and has a picture of the devil carrying a pitchfork.  How would this man likely answer the question “What does God save us from?” 

RESPONSES

How would this same person answer the question, “HOW does God save us from hell fire?”

RESPONSES

Do you think this man believes there are other possible answers to the soteriological questions “WHAT does God save us from?” and “HOW?”

RESPONSES

Certainly the Bible itself speaks of God’s salvation in varied ways.  The psalmist sometimes speaks of God saving him from military enemies.  For instance, in Psalm 35 the voice of a king demands that a warrior God grant him victory in a literal battle:   

“Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me;  fight against those who fight against me! Take hold of shield and buckler, and rise up to help me!  Draw the spear and javelin against my pursuers; say to my soul, “I am your salvation.” 

 Salvation in this context owes nothing to the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Salvation here is what saves someone with a political/military problem.

The human dilemma is experienced differently by different people.  Is isolation the underlying human problem?  Is envy or greed or hatred?  Is our own mortality the fundamental human challenge—or at least our awareness of our mortality? Let the philosophers speak!

This pastor, however, has seen God in Christ Jesus save people from a range of problems and perils.  When the problem is illness, God heals.  When the problem is grief, God comforts.  When the problem is brokenness, God mends and offers wholeness.

Three biblical “macro-stories” Marcus Borg names in The Heart of Christianity are enslavement, exile, and sin.  These archetypal stories are attempts to describe the human dilemma.

Borg then answers the question of how, according to the Bible, God addresses these three key problems.  The main salvation stories threading through the Bible show that God intervenes by means of liberation, reunion, and forgiveness.

1)   If the human problem is bondage, then God saves us through liberation.  The exodus story of Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery exemplifies this theme.  The Apostle Paul also speaks of freedom through Christ.

2)   If the problem is exile and estrangement, then God saves us by welcoming us home again.  The story of the Jews deportation to Babylon exemplifies this theme.  In the New Testament the story of the Prodigal son also tells us that Jesus saw God working among us as a welcoming, loving father. 

3)   If our problem is sin, then God saves us by forgiving us.  The story of Adam and Eve launches this biblical theme, which the New Testament continues in stories of Jesus who forgives others’ sins.  Many Christians assume that sin is THE thing from which we need to be saved.  Others see sin as but ONE way to understand the human condition.

Christian theology, of course, emphasizes the unique role Jesus plays in salvation history.  For the last 1000 years most Christian theologians, in accounting for HOW Jesus saves, have boiled it down to sacrificial/penal/ substitutionary atonement theology. Innocent blood had to be sacrificed so that God could forgive you and me.  But we at Open Table have periodically called into question a soteriology that presumes death is the penalty for human sin.  Much more can be said about substitutionary atonement theology.  But for today I'm making this simple point:  no consensus has yet been reached on what humans need saving from. 

We could even add that, for the first time in human history, our planet needs to be saved . . . from us.  For the first time ever a new soteriology needs to be developed that describes human-caused ecological disaster as the problem facing our planet.

Since there is no one human problem, there is no one solution.  But Christians see God’s saving activity in the world illustrated best and accomplished decisively, if not exclusively, through the amazing life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. 

In today’s reading from Romans, Paul said that whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Whatever their religion or culture—Jew or Greek—everyone who calls for help can be saved.  Good news, said Paul. 

John Shelby Spong (in Reclaiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World. HarperOne, 2011 on e-book) explains that Paul’s letter to the Roman church expressed Paul’s “conviction that somehow and in some way everything that he meant by the word 'God' had been met and was present in the life of the one he called Christ Jesus. . . . In Christ we would transcend the deep-seated human (523) sense of being separated, alone, broken and in need of restoration or healing.  In Paul’s mind, only God could do this act of healing or bring about this sense of a new wholeness. Because Paul believed that he found this healing in Jesus, he was driven to the obvious conclusion that through some process God must be uniquely present in this Christ (524).  Paul was convinced that in this Jesus the world, which had long been separated from God, was now reconciled; humanity and divinity, the eternal and the temporal, had somehow (526) in the life of Jesus touched each other (527).”  

And as we see in today’s reading from Romans, Jesus broke through the tribal barriers, bridging the divide between the Jews and Greeks. Spong continues,“As Jesus had been presented to him, Paul experienced the healing presence of the love of God.  That was the meaning of salvation for Paul, and since only God could bring that salvation, Paul concluded Jesus must be of God" (532).

Let’s leave Paul’s theologizing and move to Matthew’s story with a different take on salvation.  In today’s reading from Matthew, Peter is attracted to Jesus’s faith in God and so attempts to walk on the water toward his lord. Peter, like all of us, a mixture of doubt and faith, begins to sink and calls out to Jesus, “Lord, save me.” Jesus literally saves Peter from drowning.  But Jesus had already begun saving Peter by modeling his own faith so powerfully that Peter is compelled to imitate Jesus, the wave walking archetype of faith.  

What you need to be saved from may differ from what I need saving from.  What we need saving from on Sunday may be different from what we need saving from on Monday.  Which means HOW God saves us will differ.  The Bible is rich in examples of God’s saving actions.  But so is your life.

Pause now to recall what you have been saved from, by God’s grace.  Can you sing “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see”?  In silent prayer express thanks for God's saving work in your life.

Or is there something for which you would now like to, figuratively, call out for help?  “Lord, save me from ___” would be a way of expressing your honest prayer.

Have you experienced something of God’s saving ways within this faith community?  Is there some good news about Open Table that could be shared with others?   

The more I think about it, it seems we’ve not come together to learn six-syllable theological terms after all.  We’re a church because we believe the love of God can save us and others.  We sometimes doubt that.  But the God we see in Jesus reaches out to us in many ways: to enfold us, uphold us, restrain us, or release us when we’re ready to try again the walking-on-water trick of faith. 

PRAYER:  Christ, release us into the storms of life that we may test the waters of faith.  Christ, enfold us; Christ, restrain us; Christ, uphold us.  Amen