Salvation
Stories
Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit
Series VI, Cycle A
Object:
... continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
-- Philippians 1:12-13
Wait a minute, Paul. In Sunday school we learned we are saved by grace through our faith in Jesus. Salvation is a free gift. We learned that Jesus saves, we don't save ourselves! "Are you saved?" is still the question of the television preachers and tent-meeting evangelists. Salvation.
Truth be told, most folks associate the word salvation with going to heaven -- "Pie in the sky when you die." As we have noted earlier, the word comes from a Latin root, salus, that has nothing specifically to do with life after death. It means "health" or "wholeness," very similar in meaning to the Hebrew word shalom that people over-simplify in translation as "peace," because it, too, carries the idea of wholeness.
The ultimate concern of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is salvation. Look back to the story of creation. In the beginning everything was good. But Adam and Eve sinned -- they ate the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They decided to think for themselves -- no God was needed to separate right from wrong, order from chaos, provide wholeness ... salvation. But they were mistaken. This was the way Israelite mothers and fathers explained to their children why so much was wrong with the world. Human arrogance upset God's good order, and the Genghis Kahns and Hitlers and Sadaam Husseins of this world have offered stark and tragic testimony to that ever since.
But the ancient Hebrews believed more. They knew that God would not leave the world in disarray, nor would God leave the covenant people to fend for themselves. When the psalmist declares, "The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation" (Psalm 118:14), it is an affirmation that God delivers the people from all sorts of disasters -- slavery in Egypt, wars with the Canaanites, bondage in Babylon. Indeed, one of the great heroes of ancient Israel, the one who led the people into the promised land, was named Yeshua, Joshua, the Hebrew word for salvation. There is little or no concern with life after death in the Old Testament. Salvation is here-and-now, protection from enemies, a restoration of order.
By the time we get to the New Testament, we find another powerful personality named "Salvation" ... Yeshua, which Greek turns into Iesus ... Jesus. In the announcement of his coming, the angel told Joseph, "You shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Indeed, there were all sorts of little boys being born around the time of Christ whose Jewish moms and dads named them Jesus in the hope that their son would be the promised Messiah, the Deliverer, the salvation of Israel from the bondage of Rome, the one who would restore God's good order. Life after death was still no issue.
As Jesus began his ministry, something new became apparent. The salvation he was offering was much more than political deliverance for the chosen people. He said that he had come "to preach good news to the poor ... proclaim release to the captives ... [restore] sight to the blind ..." (Luke 4:18), "to seek and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10). To the woman he healed of a hemorrhage, the blind man who could now see, the leper who had been cleansed, he said, "Your faith has saved you." Salvation was not a promise of pie in the sky, by and by, but a restoration of order in the here and now.
By the time we come to the end of the Bible, the book of Revelation, we find more clearly than anywhere else that salvation, restoring order, goes beyond this life. In its complicated but beautifully poetic way, Revelation affirms to the early church, people who were in danger for their very lives because of their commitment to Christ, that God will deliver, will save God's people and will make creation good again: no more hunger, no more thirst, no more tears, no more death. Salvation.
The Christian message is that God's plan is salvation. As the gospel writer has it, "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved" (John 3:17). Salvation is something much more than a promise of "pie in the sky, by and by." It is nothing less than making a sick creation healthy and whole again. Even here and now. And as Paul would insist, we even have a hand in it.
-- Philippians 1:12-13
Wait a minute, Paul. In Sunday school we learned we are saved by grace through our faith in Jesus. Salvation is a free gift. We learned that Jesus saves, we don't save ourselves! "Are you saved?" is still the question of the television preachers and tent-meeting evangelists. Salvation.
Truth be told, most folks associate the word salvation with going to heaven -- "Pie in the sky when you die." As we have noted earlier, the word comes from a Latin root, salus, that has nothing specifically to do with life after death. It means "health" or "wholeness," very similar in meaning to the Hebrew word shalom that people over-simplify in translation as "peace," because it, too, carries the idea of wholeness.
The ultimate concern of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is salvation. Look back to the story of creation. In the beginning everything was good. But Adam and Eve sinned -- they ate the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They decided to think for themselves -- no God was needed to separate right from wrong, order from chaos, provide wholeness ... salvation. But they were mistaken. This was the way Israelite mothers and fathers explained to their children why so much was wrong with the world. Human arrogance upset God's good order, and the Genghis Kahns and Hitlers and Sadaam Husseins of this world have offered stark and tragic testimony to that ever since.
But the ancient Hebrews believed more. They knew that God would not leave the world in disarray, nor would God leave the covenant people to fend for themselves. When the psalmist declares, "The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation" (Psalm 118:14), it is an affirmation that God delivers the people from all sorts of disasters -- slavery in Egypt, wars with the Canaanites, bondage in Babylon. Indeed, one of the great heroes of ancient Israel, the one who led the people into the promised land, was named Yeshua, Joshua, the Hebrew word for salvation. There is little or no concern with life after death in the Old Testament. Salvation is here-and-now, protection from enemies, a restoration of order.
By the time we get to the New Testament, we find another powerful personality named "Salvation" ... Yeshua, which Greek turns into Iesus ... Jesus. In the announcement of his coming, the angel told Joseph, "You shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Indeed, there were all sorts of little boys being born around the time of Christ whose Jewish moms and dads named them Jesus in the hope that their son would be the promised Messiah, the Deliverer, the salvation of Israel from the bondage of Rome, the one who would restore God's good order. Life after death was still no issue.
As Jesus began his ministry, something new became apparent. The salvation he was offering was much more than political deliverance for the chosen people. He said that he had come "to preach good news to the poor ... proclaim release to the captives ... [restore] sight to the blind ..." (Luke 4:18), "to seek and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10). To the woman he healed of a hemorrhage, the blind man who could now see, the leper who had been cleansed, he said, "Your faith has saved you." Salvation was not a promise of pie in the sky, by and by, but a restoration of order in the here and now.
By the time we come to the end of the Bible, the book of Revelation, we find more clearly than anywhere else that salvation, restoring order, goes beyond this life. In its complicated but beautifully poetic way, Revelation affirms to the early church, people who were in danger for their very lives because of their commitment to Christ, that God will deliver, will save God's people and will make creation good again: no more hunger, no more thirst, no more tears, no more death. Salvation.
The Christian message is that God's plan is salvation. As the gospel writer has it, "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved" (John 3:17). Salvation is something much more than a promise of "pie in the sky, by and by." It is nothing less than making a sick creation healthy and whole again. Even here and now. And as Paul would insist, we even have a hand in it.
