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All religions offer salvation. Eastern religions offer salvation from the illusion of being separated from ultimate reality - as in Hinduism, or from the pains of desire, as in Buddhism. Nature religions preach a salvation by calling us to realize we are linked to the natural world. Humanistic religions offer a salvation tied to the call to live in dignity and justice without divine aid. The biblical religions - Judaism, Islam, and Christianity - describe salvation in somewhat different ways. Judaism sees salvation primarily as an earthly and corporate affair. Islam offers salvation in submission to Allah and the Koran. Christianity proclaims salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

In the Christianity of the Protestant or Roman Catholic traditions, the saving emphasis is on deliverance from sin. Sin stands as the great barrier between the person and the experience of God's merciful and empowering grace. In the West, the cross and crucifix are the central symbols of this understanding of the saving grace of God through Jesus.

In Eastern Orthodox Christianity the accent is upon the human experience of despair and meaninglessness of death. Orthodox Christians fix themselves on the resurrection and find the saving grace of Jesus located there. The roots of these differing emphases have long histories going back before the Christian era. Ancient Greek thought had a strong sense of the haunting face of death. Some of the dialogues of Plato wrestle with the possibility of the individual soul surviving death. Furthermore, Plato's dialogues are based on the thought of his mentor Socrates, who bravely accepted death while bravely nurturing this hope.

In the West, the Roman concern for law and social order colored its understanding of Christian salvation. Where an overachieving order is assumed, the great concern is for keeping in the graces of that order, and of finding ways to become reconciled to that order. Thus the West sensed religious salvation in these terms - looking to the divine order for mercy and a forgiving Jesus.

I

Today's lection from Isaiah 9:1--4 pushes us to think this matter through. Earlier we have encountered this passage at Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness -
on them light has shined.
You have multiplied the nation,
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as people exult when dividing plunder.
For the yoke of their burden,
and the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.

The original setting of these words was the ascension of a new king in Israel, when the people were filled with hope for a renewal of justice, righteousness, and peace. Early Christians took this text and used it to describe Jesus as the bringer of salvation. So the issue of salvation is our theme today.

Many of us modern Christians are uneasy about the meaning of salvation. Sometimes sidewalk evangelists tell us that the Judgment Day is imminent and that there is not much time left in which to receive this gift. At other times we are exposed to salvation via the many television evangelists and their well--filled sanctuaries. In such encounters the feeling in many of us is that the experience of salvation is irrelevant to modern times, or that it has more meaning than our street evangelists or media preachers convey. But there is an urgency and a confidence in these persons who offer salvation in these modes to make us wonder if we've missed something along the way.

Some Christians are so focused on salvation that they appear to have an unshakable conviction about it. They witness to it forthrightly, sometimes crossing the bounds of decorum. One pastor in concluding a funeral service for a nominal Christian person asked for tributes or remembrances from the congregation. After several other comments, a "hyper salvation--centered" woman stood and implied that the pastor had not been explicit about the deceased's salvation. In her comments she indicated that a verbal assent to Jesus was the only possible way to have confidence that the dead woman is now in the eternal arms of God. She took issue with the pastor's generous understanding of God's saving activity. She said that we should have no qualms about the salvation of her aunt, because such an acceptance and affirmation of faith in Christ is the only way one can be certain of salvation. The pastor felt that this long speech on behalf of a narrow style of salvation was long on zeal though inappropriate and lacking in the more gentle style of Jesus.

So what are serious Christians to do when we are not able to cast our lot with the zealous peddlers of a salvation in Jesus? Mostly we sense that such a salvation is excessively individualistic and unreasonably exclusive, defying our sense of mercy and justice. In today's world what could salvation mean that avoids an increasingly unbelievable conclusion?

II

To claim Christian salvation in today's world means that it must be understood as earthly, corporate, and dynamic. While scripture hints at each of these qualities, there is no single voice of scripture about salvation, nor any other doctrinal matter. Scripture is not a book of set answers to the important issues of faith. It is a tradition of persons and communities wrestling with these matters - sometimes in agreement and sometimes not. Scripture puts before us significant voices with which we are to fashion our own responses, leaving us to work out our own salvation as Paul said "in fear and trembling." A twenty--first--century understanding of salvation is worldly, corporate, and dynamic.

First, Christian salvation is "worldly," inextricably bound up with the world and life in it. There is an old saying that if anyone is "saved" one's dog ought to be better for it. Salvation can never be separated from life in this world. We need to go beyond understanding salvation as speaking exclusively about an afterlife. This leaves a great segment of non--Christian humanity to an eternal lostness. Such a view encourages a sense of personal delight that one is guaranteed heavenly bliss, while gleefully thinking that others not so favored are in eternal hellish torment. Our Christian doctrine of salvation can do better than this.

Much of the salvation tradition in the Old Testament is earthly and worldly salvation. There is God's deliverance of Israel from her enemies so that she may witness to this saving God to all the nations. In fact, early Old Testament believers had no teachings about the afterlife, because their immortality was bound to their family, clan, and nation. Early biblical people had no real life apart from earthly and biological connections.

Jesus' sense of mission witnessed to the worldly deliverance that God was about to inaugurate. This world and this life were about to be transformed by the intervention of God's kingdom on earth. Eternal life was the coming earthly reality that persons might enter even before its sudden inauguration by God.

However, as Christianity spread to the wider Greco--Roman world, salvation began to lose its worldly base and took an other--worldly turn. Early Christians led marginal and sometimes miserable lives. Coming from the lower strata of society, they had little expectation of any significant improvements in their present life. So they looked to the rectification of heaven. But in our day, we have mitigated many of the perils of this life - disease, hunger, political chaos, and poverty. We strongly feel that it is unnecessary for millions to suffer earthly misery, leaving them only a hope for some heavenly compensation. We believe that salvation must be worldly. Its meaning has changed from previous centuries.

Secondly, salvation must also be "corporate." We have no right to think of salvation for the few, even if this may have been orthodox doctrine in an earlier time. The strong sense of personal identity in the Hebrew Scriptures is affirmed by contemporary psychology insisting that personality is intertwined with all the rest of life, including other persons. So our sense of who we are is linked to other people - some of whom we know and recognize, and some of whom we do not know. Our personal identity is not something apart from other people.

Who is the real me? The real me is all the persons who surround my life, in person or in memory, and even those unknown to us. The real me is the love of our parents, our mate or partner, the interchange with my siblings, and extending to friends, classmates, neighbors, professors, and pastors. My personal identity is mixed up with all of these and I cannot be saved without them being saved, too, for that would only be part of me. While this upsets all our tidy schemes of doctrine and moral sensibility, it is a hard truth and we would be wise to let God sort it out. My life and my salvation are not complete without the salvation of all these others. This is why David Watson has written his timely book, God Does Not Foreclose. Given what we know about being a person, God must have some plan for saving all, since none is saved without all the rest. Hence God does not foreclose on love and mercy.

Lastly, salvation in our contemporary world is "dynamic." Salvation is often like the stock market - sometimes up and sometimes down. Salvation never perfectly arrives, nor does it completely depart from us. Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 1:18 where he offers a dynamic understanding of salvation. Paul speaks of we "who are being saved." Some terrible insecurities drive some Christians to think that salvation is a completed and an exclusive matter restricted to this life only, awaiting the payoff after death. These Christians tell us they are saved, and in speaking of their salvation they evidence no feeling that anything is further required of them except to witness to others and to live righteous lives.

But our personal sense of being in God's grace often ebbs and flows. In a letter written in code to his brother Charles, John Wesley confessed that he had never known himself to be a child of God. This is from one who for over thirty years had been at the head of the British evangelical revival, and who preached that the "Witness of the Spirit" can affirm that we are saved. The swings of evangelical mood and the salvation experience are never a settled conviction. Just remember Jesus on the cross crying, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Salvation, partly set in our emotional swings, is dynamic and subject to fluctuation. It is never a settled affair in this life.

Salvation is progressive - both ways - and is always subject to setbacks in experience or in faithfulness. Do we think that as we stand at the graveside of a loved one that we feel anything except deep grief and despair? The joys of salvation are often subdued and overcome by other critical life experiences. And our growth into saving godliness is always something of a journey, not an arrival at some destination. If we could care to confess our salvation in this way, we might do much good for the cause of Christ.

It is likely that our smug claims to salvation no longer impress the unbelieving world, not because our logic and doctrines are ghastly, but also because salvation seems to make so little difference in our lives. Neitzsche once said that Christians would have to sing better songs if they were going to catch the attention of the world. But if our songs are of a saving grace becoming operable in our lives, bolstering us, to walk happily toward the eternal love of God with all other humans and all creation, then we just might pique the world's interest, allowing a real evangelistic moment.