Please Click Here For Online Worship Service
I have been to several funerals at which the minister really upset me. One in particular stands out. It was for the husband of a woman who frequently attended my church in Caledon. He was in a nursing home and had developed a relationship with this “minister” who came and did Bible studies. During the service the minister highlighted that the man had faith in Christ, had lived a faithful life, and would now spend eternity in heaven. He then went on to inquire of the audience as to whether the same would be true of them. Would they spend eternity in Heaven or would they go to Hell. For the grand finale he led them in the “Sinner’s Prayer” – all heads bowed, every eye closed, invite Jesus into your heart. The prayer done, he told them that those who had prayed that prayer were going to Heaven. They just had to believe it.
In the aftermath of that funeral, several people in my church who were related to the deceased and also troubled by that minister asked my thoughts on the matter. Well, I told them that I believed what the minister did constituted spiritual abuse. He was trying to elicit a conversion decision out of people at a time when they were vulnerable. That is coercion, not grace. Oddly, ministers such as these do what they do believing that there is no greater act of love than getting a person saved for eternity. This situation begs the question “What is it to be saved?”
I’ll start answering that question with another story. There was an elderly Mennonite man standing in the subway in New York City waiting for the train. As you can imagine, he was wearing plainclothes, a hat, and sporting the distinctive beard. This was in the late 1960’s. While he waited, a long-haired, hippy-looking man came up to him and explained he was with the Friends of Jesus (a charismatic movement back in the 60’s) and then asked, “Are you saved?” The Mennonite man just stared at him as he pondered the question. Finally, he answered, “Well, I suppose you should ask my neighbours.”
One of my theology professors in university would tell this story whenever the topic of salvation came up. Incidentally, I went to a Mennonite university. I think it pretty well manifests the tension we fall into when talking about salvation. The Friends of Jesus fellow seems to define salvation as an individual thing pertaining to the afterlife. Whereas, the elderly Mennonite fellow seems to have a difficult time separating the concept of salvation from his conduct in the here and now within the community in which he lived his faith.
For me, I’m a little more on the side of the Mennonite gentleman. Salvation is a new reality created in the midst of human existence by God through Jesus Christ in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. It is something we experience a small taste of now that makes us long for it to come in its fullness at a future day when Jesus returns which will be the day of resurrection, the day of new creation. This new way of being in the present is characterized by being reconciled to God and to one another in a fellowship created in the Holy Spirit who is with us now as a guarantee of what is to come. There is a peace that is present with us – peace with God, peace with self, peace with one another – that exposes our lack of peace – with God, self, and others – and makes us hope for its completion so much that we radically change our direction in life so much as to deny self-gratification and the evil it fosters, indeed, to die to self, take up the Jesus way of the cross and begin to live in the resurrected life of Christ Jesus joining him in his ongoing work of creating communities of faith that share in his ministry of healing relationships, which is reconciliation. We begin to live now for God’s peace because he is present with us. It’s like turning a light on where before there was only fumbling about in the darkness. We fail miserably at living out this new reality but it doesn’t change the fact God is in our midst compelling us on.
Let’s talk about what it is to be human for a moment. We are made in such a way as to need to be able to trust in order to live together functionally. We need to be able to trust our existence, (that the sky isn’t going to fall in on us) which requires a trust in God. We need to be able to trust ourselves to do what’s best for ourselves and others. We need to be able to trust one another. Yet, because of our innate bent to self-gratify, which is what we call sin, we cannot trust anything in any kind of way that is functional. We trust idols instead of God. When we think we are doing what’s best for ourselves and others, we are almost always certainly only doing what feels like it will give us the most pleasure. It’s hard to trust one another when in the end we are all just a bunch of self-gratifiers. The result is that our existence is marked by fear, anxiety, and trying to build and protect our own assets as we go about trying to do things our own way.
Jesus’ death on the cross exposes this twisted nature of ours. It exposes the extent of how threatened we are by God’s presence in our lives, exposes how afraid we are to simply trust God. We killed him. But God took the horrible death of Jesus and made it the means by which he created a new humanity built on the trust of the sure knowledge that God is with us, loves us, loves us enough to let himself be killed by us and experience death as we do because that was the only way to show us who he really is and how he really is and who and how we really are. Trusting God, his presence with us, and his love for us as his beloved children is how we come to learn that the way to do what is best for ourselves and others is to do what God wants. Trusting God, his presence with us, and his love for us is how we come to realize that it is safe to stop pursuing our own wishes and humble ourselves to serve one another in love…and that’s what it is to be saved or rather what it is to be being saved.
Salvation is a supernatural gift because God himself comes from beyond our existence to act upon us to reveal himself to us in such a way that it creates something utterly new in us. As Paul says “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.” It is a supernatural gift that comes upon us in a very natural way in that we experience the presence and love of God in the life of a community of faith. Salvation looks like people striving to have peace in their midst. This is Christ Jesus’ ministry of healing relationships, which is reconciliation.
It is sad that this powerful, peaceful, hopeful real message of newly created communion with God and one another has been reduced to methods of coercion such as “Turn or burn” or “save yourself with this prayer so you can go to heaven and be with your loved ones after you die”. Indeed, salvation is powerfully present with us now, only as a taste but it is here now, and if our neighbours when considering how we treat them cannot answer in the affirmative for us as to whether or not we who profess Christ have in fact been saved, then I think we’ve missed the boat all together.
I’ll finish these thoughts with another story. There was an elderly abbot; an abbot is the head monk in a monastery. He had seen his monastery through much over the years, but these days he was troubled because the number of monks was dwindling. Fewer and fewer people were feeling the call to their way of life. The abbot was out walking one day when he met an elderly Rabbi doing the same. They struck up a conversation and the Rabbi invited him in for lunch. These lunches went on for several weeks and one day the topic turned to the abbot’s concern for his monastery. The Rabbi shared the same concerns for his synagogue. The Abbot asked the Rabbi, “What should we do?” The Rabbi, responded, “I’ve no idea what to do, but this I will tell you; the Messiah is one of you.” (Messiah means saviour.) The Abbot was flattered by the Rabbi’s remark, and asked “are you serious.” The Rabbi again said, “The Messiah is one of you.”
The Abbot went back to the monastery and told the monk’s what the Rabbi had said. The monks took it to heart and began to believe that one of them was the Messiah. They all began to question in their hearts which one it might be. They each ruled out themselves, but said just in case I am I will treat myself with the utmost respect. Not being able to single out one of the brothers they all began to treat one another as if he were the Christ. The bond of love began to grow deep in the monastery. The brothers became legendary all over the countryside for their great love for each other and all people and slowly over the years the monastery began to grow as more and more people came seeking what the brothers had. Amen.
