Expecting to Find Light

(Genesis 1.26-28; John 15.4-11; Luke 16.19-26)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time: August 24, 2008

The eighth in a summer sermon series on topics members of the church asked to hear addressed. This sermon is in response to the questions,
"Am I saved?" and "What are the meanings of 'grace'?"

"Am I saved?"

Though this isn't a question I ask much, I think it gets to the heart of religious faith. The word religion comes from the same root as the word ligament. Ligaments connect bones to each other. And re-ligion reconnects us to some thing or some one that we have become separated from. Something or someone from which or from whom we have lost our way. Something or someone who offers us fullness of joy. Re-ligion. Re-connection.

For me, the question Am I saved assumes that in some way I am lost. Or stranded. Or frightened. Or dying. It means I need to be saved from something. And I think if I need to be saved from something, then I'm being saved for something else. Now that I am saved, what is now possible? What new freedom do I have? What new hope has been born? What depth of love can I now risk giving and receiving?

Since the 300s, traditional Christian teaching has been that we need to be saved from "original sin". Adam and Eve were created as perfect beings. Here's what the book of Genesis says about human nature before they ate the forbidden fruit: God spoke, "Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature. . . . God created human beings, created them godlike, reflecting God's nature (Genesis 1.26-28, The Message, by Eugene Peterson).

Then came what's called "the fall". They ate the fruit. Since then, their sin has been passed on to all of us. And what was truest about human nature has been forever lost. No longer do we bear God's image and likeness; no longer are we godlike. After the fall, the deepest truth about us is that, at our core, we are against God. At our core, we are sinners.

And we cannot save ourselves. It's not like we can read a self-help book or pray harder or do the equivalent of a spiritual marathon.

Since the 300s, the Christian church has taught that everything about us humans opposes God. No longer is there any good within us. There's no way we can "save" ourselves. We have lost the Godlike nature we had at the beginning, and can do nothing to get it back.

In spite of our sinful human nature, the Christian Church has taught that God still loves us. That love is called "grace". That love that keeps loving us no matter what we do. If grace is real, then why doesn't God just forget about the Fall and make our nature Godlike again? Because God is not only a God of perfect love, God is a God of perfect justice. And God's justice demands that someone pay the price for human sin. If you break a law, you pay a fine. Or go to jail. Or do something else to try to make up for what you did wrong. Justice means someone pays a price. The wrong-doer suffers so justice is done. If God just forgot about our sins and forgave us, where would the justice be? The scales of justice would be tipped way over on the side of sin. Someone's got to be punished to make up for sin and restore the balance.

There's only one problem. No regular human can do that. Because all of us regular human sin. So we'd keep adding to the "sin" scale, making the demand for more punishment so the scales would balance. That, the Christian church has taught for 1700 years, is why God had to send Jesus. Only a sinless human could pay the price for human sin. So God had to send Jesus to die so that all the sins on the scales of justice could be wiped out. And justice could then be restored again. So Jesus suffered what we deserved. And died the death we deserved. And now justice is served. And the God who is perfect love raised Jesus from the dead, and promises eternal life to all of us who are still sinners if we believe Christ died and rose for our forgiveness.

That's why humans need to be saved. God's grace saves us from our sinful human nature. God's grace gives us the faith to believe that Christ's sacrifice on the cross offers us eternal life.

What's really unfortunate is that the Christian Church could have told a different story. The Church didn't need to tell a story where humans lost our Godlike nature and where God needed Jesus to be killed so God could forgive us. From the first century until today, there have Christian writers who tell a different story. These Christians came to be called Celtic Christians, because many of them have roots in the Celtic lands of Ireland, Scotland, and England. These Celtic Christians looked at the same Bible, loved the same God, and walked beside the same Risen Christ as those who taught original sin and God's demand for Jesus' death. But these Christians hear a completely different story about what it means to be saved. Listen to some of what they saw, and heard, and felt.

In the 500s, a man named Pelagius challenged the doctrine of original sin. He said what is deepest within humans is God's sacredness. "Deep within us is the wisdom of God, the creativity of God, the longings of God." [Pelagius] knew that although our nature is sacred, it is deeply wounded. He knew we sin and that we need "the healing energies of grace". And that is why Jesus Christ came. Not to pay God to forgive us. But to show us God's love for us is so deep that God came took human form. In Jesus, God can touch us. In Jesus, God can hold us. In Jesus, God can remind us that at our depth we are good and Godlike. (J. Philip Newell, Christ of the Celts, John Wiley & Sons, 2008, p. 21). Even when I was in seminary in the 1980s, my history of Christianity class portrayed Pelagius only as a heretic for opposing the doctrine of original sin.

Celtic Christians seek to convince us that, at our core, we live in God. The Gospel of John is a favorite gospel for these writers, because John speaks so often of the intimacy Jesus invites us to share with him. Jesus says to his disciples,"I've loved you the way my Abba has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you'll remain intimately at home in my love. That's what I've done – kept my Abba's commands and made myself at home in that love. "I've told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature" (John 15.9-11, The Message, Eugene Peterson).
I am your home, Jesus tells his disciples. You dwell in me, and I dwell in you. When you try to be someone you are not, when you turn away from the person God made you to be, you turn away from me and my love. When you try to be someone you're not, you turn away from the joy I came to give you. But when you turn away from all that is false, and find your deepest truth, and live out of that place, you and I are one. And when my love finds you and enfolds you, you will become joy. You will be fully alive.

So for these Christians, being saved comes from receiving the grace of God that comes to us through Jesus. But that grace isn't about God needing Jesus to die. That grace is about God coming in Jesus and saying to you and to me, "Can you feel my love for you now? Will you let Jesus love you into life and wholeness and joy? Will you make yourselves at home in his love – which means no matter where you are, no matter what you're going through, no matter whom you're with, you know Jesus is with you, and his love surrounds and fills you . . . so you are never alone? Will you receive that love? And isn't my love alive in Jesus and my love alive in the creation that surrounds you enough to free you for fearless, joyful living?"

The Celtic Christians say God's love speaks to us through all of creation. And God's love speaks to us through the Bible. They stress that we need to listen to both creation and the Bible. We can't just go to the mountains or keep our heads buried in the scriptures. As one Celtic writer says, "To listen to scripture without creation is to lose the cosmic vastness of the God's love song to creation. To listen to creation without scripture is to lose the personal intimacy of the voice" (Newell, p.50). An especially freeing thing these Christians remind us of is that both creation and the Bible pose problems. In creation we are confronted by seemingly meaningless suffering. Yesterday, a colleague at my other job was going to the memorial service for the 15-year-old daughter of a woman whose brother died two weeks ago and whose mother died four weeks ago. At times we struggle to find God's love and God's care alive in the creation in which we live. But if creation is filled with God, we commit ourselves to love and heal it while being honest about the reality of that suffering. As we are honest about stories of vengeance and hatred we find in the Bible (Newell, p. 53). Faithful Christians have to wrestle with these realities. We cannot wish them away or pretend they do not exist. If God is most deeply the One who is passionately in love with all of creation, we must challenge any ways God or Jesus seem to support violence or cruelty. For God is a God whose deepest yearning is to bless creation with compassion, forgiveness, joy, and life.

Last month I preached on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Here again is a portion of that parable.

Jesus said, "There once was a rich man, expensively dressed in the latest fashions, wasting his days in conspicuous consumption. A poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, had been dumped on his doorstep. All he lived for was to get a meal from scraps off the rich man's table. His best friends were the dogs who came and licked his sores.
"Then he died, this poor man, and was taken up by the angels to the lap of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell and in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham in the distance and Lazarus in his lap. He called out, 'Father Abraham, mercy! Have mercy! Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water to cool my tongue. I'm in agony in this fire.'
"But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that in your lifetime you got the good things and Lazarus the bad things. It's not like that here. Here he's consoled and you're tormented'" (Luke 16.19-26, The Message, by Eugene Peterson).

Some might interpret this passage as saying the rich man got what he deserved. It's like he's paying the price for his sin. Suffering in hell for eternity is what he deserves.

But is this what a forgiving God would do? In the Nikos Kazantzakis novel The Last Temptation of Christ, the disciple John, who heard the heartbeat of God, hears Jesus tell this parable. And he is deeply troubled.

[John] leaned over to Jesus' chest. "Rabbi," he said softly, "your words have not unburdened my heart. How many times have you instructed us to forgive our enemies! You must love your enemy, you told us, and if he wrongs you seven and seventy-seven times, you must do good to him seven and seventy-seven times. This, you said, is the only way hatred can be discharged from the world. But now . . . Is God unable to forgive?"
Jesus put out his hand and stroked his beloved companion's hair. "John," he said, "Yes, God is just, but this is not good enough. He is also perfect goodness. The parable cannot stand as it is; it must have a different ending. . . . When Lazarus heard Abraham's words he sighed and addressed God in his mind: 'God, how can anyone be happy in Paradise when he knows that there is a man – a soul – roasting for all eternity? Refresh him, Lord, that I may be refreshed. Deliver him, Lord, that I may be delivered. Otherwise I too shall begin to feel the flames.'
"God heard his thought and was glad. 'Lazarus, beloved,' God said, 'go down; take the thirster by the hand. My fountains are inexhaustible. Bring him here so that he may drink and refresh himself, and you refresh yourself with
him' . . . 'For all eternity?' asked Lazarus? 'Yes, for all eternity,'" God replied.

Nikos Kazantzakis ends this scene in this way: "Jesus got up without a further word. Night had overwhelmed the earth. The people dispersed; men and women returned to their wretched huts, whispering to one another. Their hearts had been filled. Can the word give nourishment? they asked themselves. Yes it can – when it is the good word! (Simon and Schuster, 1960, pp. 201-02).

This is what it means to be saved. To know the story can't end like that. And, like John, to demand from Christ a different ending to this parable. To demand from the church a teaching that says I cannot be saved if anyone else is damned. I cannot make myself forever at home in Jesus' love if I know there are people who are forever shut out from his love.

Which means, finally, that the question "Am I saved?" is the wrong question. "I" cannot be saved unless all of creation also is saved. As a 20th-century scientist/theologian/priest firmly rooted in the Celtic Christian tradition writes, "The experience of finding the Presence deep within ourselves is the experience of encountering the Presence that is the Heart of all life. The deeper we move within our souls, the closer we come to the soul of one another. And the closer we move to the heart of all life, the nearer we come to the heart of our own being. This as a costly path, for it [means letting] go of the notion that we can find well-being in isolation, whether as nations or religious communities, whether as individuals or species. And so the cross of Christ . . . reveals the greatest truth, that we will keep our heart only by giving our heart away, that we will find ourselves only by losing ourselves in love, that we will gain salvation only by spreading our arms wide for one another and for the earth, and that we will be saved together, not in separation (Newell, pp. 103-4).

A story about what might have been different if Celtic Christianity had become the story Christians were taught.
A number of years ago, a Celtic Christian writer delivered a talk in Ottawa, Canada, on some of these themes. He stressed the beginning of the gospel of John, where John speaks of Christ as "the true light that enlightens everyone coming into the world" (John 1.9). He said Christians must watch for that Light within ourselves, in the whole of our being. And he said Christians must expect to glimpse that Light in each other and deep within the wisdom of other faith traditions. At the end of the talk, a Mohawk elder stood up with tears in his eyes. He said, "As I have listened to these themes, I have been wondering where I would be today. I have been wondering where my people would be today. And I have been wondering where we would be as a Western world today if the mission that came to us from Europe centuries ago had come expecting to find Light in us" (Newell, pp. 14-5).

All of creation has God's light burning with. This promise saves us. It frees us from the prison of judging ourselves as better or worse than anyone else. All life is sacred. Ours and those anyone seeks to define as our enemy. This saves us for loving and being loved by a larger love.

Jesus invites us to make our home in his love. This invitation saves us. It frees us from the fear that we live and die alone, the fear that we do not really know how to give or receive love. This saves us for loving and being loved by a larger love.

And the Holy Spirit who blows through the pages this book calls us to keep these stories alive by not simply accepting what they say, but loving them enough to argue with them. This living Word saves us. It frees us from feeling like we either have to accept these stories as they are or reject them entirely, so we can find in these stories the intimate voice of God naming us beloved children, and calling us to love and be loved by a larger love.

We are saved. Thanks be to God.

Amen.