Salvation

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
July 25, 2009; 8 Pentecost; Proper 12, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Ephesians 3:13-21) – I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

(John 6:1-21) – Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?" Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost." So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world."

When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.ow after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea-- for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.
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From today's Epistle: "I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fulness of God." (Ephesians 3:18-19)

I want to talk about salvation today. This will be mostly a teaching sermon. No good stories, so you'll have to listen with a little more intention than usual.

Salvation is a rich word, with "breadth and length and height and depth." Those of us brought up in the Bible Belt may have inherited an incomplete vision of salvation, based on the cultural dominance of our Southern Baptist neighbors and similar groups.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori stirred some feathers the other day with a comment in her opening address to the General Convention. As she reflected on the global environmental and economic crisis, she said this: "The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being." (1)

I've heard it said that heresy is having part of the truth and beating the rest of the truth to death with it. In that sense, what the Presiding Bishop complains of is heresy. Many of us grew up being told that our fundamental identity as human beings is as "sinners," condemned by a Holy God to a well-deserved punishment of eternal damnation and torment. The only way out is to believe that Jesus died for your sins, paying your debt to God, and to confess Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Do that, and you are saved, which means you go to heaven when you die.

I remember expressing some Episcopalian skepticism about that formula to one of my childhood classmates who was concerned about saving my soul. He offered what to him was a win-win option. If there's really nothing after death and you've been saved, what have you lost? But if there really is a hell, you'll be very glad you bought in. Religion reduced to a transaction. A very self-serving, individualistic transaction at that. I got my ticket. Too bad for you if you don't get yours.

Russian theologian Nicholas Berdyaev stayed up all night worrying about the concept of heaven. He wondered how could he die and then go to heaven, where all of his desires would be fulfilled, and yet still be conscious of someone in hell? "How could he still be in heaven knowing someone else was weeping and gnashing their teeth forever?" (2)

Salvation is a rich word. It means so much more than going to heaven when you die. There are at least three problems that come with constricting salvation to the afterlife. First, it usually turns Christianity into a religion of requirements. If Christianity is mostly about getting to heaven because you are threatened with not getting there, then who gets in and who's left out? What are the rules, the requirements? That gets very "me-focused." It's up to me to jump the right hoops to qualify. As the Presiding Bishop said, "it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being."

Secondly, salvation as a ticket to heaven separates humanity, often cruelly, into an in-group and an out-group. I know a dear family who sabotaged their daughter's engagement to a fine, church-going young man because he was not Church of Christ, and they believed only members of their church could be saved.

And the third problem is that focusing on the afterlife steals our focus from the real meaning of salvation, the transformation of this world and ourselves. (3)

Today's story of the feeding of the multitudes is one of several Biblical metaphors for salvation. When people are hungry, they need food. Salvation is food for the hungry. Jesus is the true Bread of Life who satisfies our spiritual hunger and calls us to share in his work of feeding all who are hungry. We connect service with worship each Sunday when we receive communion and are nurtured by his body. We become one body, united in the breaking of the one bread.

There is nothing individualistic about this. For everyone is fed; all are satisfied. "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost," Jesus says.

The story of the feeding of the multitudes is the only one of Jesus' miracles that appears in all four Gospels. It is an important story. And Mark makes it clear that Jesus performs the same feeding for the unbelieving Gentiles as he does for his own people in Israel. All are fed. None are excluded. Salvation is food for our hunger.

That is but one image of salvation in our scriptures. Bishop Maze liked to say that the Gospel is Good News. So, he asked, "What is the bad news that the Gospel answers with the Good News? What is salvation? "Salvation is:
Light in our darkness
Sight to the blind
Enlightenment
Liberation for captives
Return from exile
The healing of our infirmities
Food and drink
Resurrection from the land of the dead
Being born again
Knowing God
Becoming "in Christ"
Being made right with God ("justified")

"In the Bible, salvation is all of the above." (4)

Let me offer two broad statements from Marcus Borg's fine chapter about Salvation from his book The Heart of Christianity. "Salvation is about life with God, life in the presence of God, now and forever." "The Bible is not about the saving of individuals for heaven, but about a new social and personal reality in the midst of this life." (5)

Borg expands. He starts in the Old Testament. "Ancient Israel's story is a story of the creation of a new people, a nation, a community. Salvation is about life together. Salvation is about peace and justice within community and beyond community. It is about shalom, a word connoting not simply peace as the absence of war, but peace as the wholeness of a community living together in peace and justice. Salvation is never only an individual affair in the Hebrew Bible."

"The emphasis upon social salvation continues in the New Testament. In the teaching of Jesus, social salvation is expressed in the theo-political metaphor at the heart of his activity, the Kingdom of God. For Paul also, salvation is social (as well as personal). He was creating new communities "in Christ" whose life together embodied an alternative vision to that of empire. And these – the movement around Jesus, the communities of Paul, and all of the early Christian communities of which we know – were communities of bread as well as Spirit. Food and Sprit, bread and breath: the sharing of the necessities of life in a new community... The Bible is not about the saving of individuals for heaven, but about a new social and personal reality in the midst of this life." (6)

Salvation is a rich and wonderful word, to be embraced in all of its multi-faceted beauty. Adapting the quote from Ephesians that I began with: "I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth [of our salvation], and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you [and all the world] may be filled with all the fulness of God."
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1. For the text of her address click here

2. Quoted by Michael Battle, Ubuntu: I in You and You in Me, p. 25-6

3. See Marcus Borg's fine chapter 9, Sin and Salvation: Transforming the Heart, in his book The Heart of Christianity, p. 164-186

4. Borg, p. 175

5. Borg, p. 184 and p. 178

6. Borg, p. 178-9
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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

"For Power is Made Perfect in Weakness"

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
July 5, 2009; 5 Pentecost, Proper 9, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(2 Corinthians 12:2-10) – I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven -- whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person -- whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows -- was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.
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It's a miserable time for Paul. Some new apostles have come into the little congregation he started in western Greece in the city of Corinth. They've challenged Paul's authority. They say of Paul, "His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible." They are taking for themselves money that Paul intended to use in his campaign on behalf of the Jerusalem church. They are bragging about their spiritual powers and consuming the congregation's resources. These are proud, powerful, persuasive preachers, and Paul is afraid that they will destroy the church he has so carefully nurtured.

But Paul is an ocean away in Ephesus, and he can't get back to Corinth any time soon. So he writes a "severe letter," defending his apostleship and attacking those others whom he sarcastically calls "super-apostles."

I am poor and I am weak, Paul writes to them. I was so weak that I didn't even ask you for money to support my living among you, though I could have. Instead I provided for myself with my own labor. But I am a fool. Yes, I am nothing, but Christ is everything.

I came to you first – bringing the good news of Christ – and you responded so lovingly. But it wasn't me, it was Christ.

Now you have these super-apostles with you, and they take advantage of you, and put on airs, and make you slaves. I was too much of a fool to do that. They seem so impressive and powerful. But have they endured the labors I have? Imprisonments, floggings, near death, beaten with rods, stoned, shipwrecked three times, in danger, hungry and thirsty, sleepless nights, cold and naked. And now, I am under constant anxiety for my churches, and especially for you Corinthians. I am the weakest and poorest of apostles. I cannot boast.

But if I were to boast...
"I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven..."

And Paul goes on, in the reading we heard just a few moment ago, to tell of being "caught up into Paradise," of hearing "things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat."

He could boast, he says, on behalf of that vision. That was real. That was God in Christ. But then he says no more about it. He offers no details. Unlike other contemporaries who wrote extensively about their complicated visions and mystical experiences, Paul is remarkably quiet. It is as if language fails him. He can say that he was caught up to into Paradise, but he falls silent before the mystery of the experience. If he were to boast, he could boast about that revelation, but it is more than he can speak of.

So he returns to his weakness. As if to balance the elation of such a vision, Paul tells of his suffering from something chronic – he calls it his thorn in the flesh – that he prayed God to deliver him from. He gets an answer from God: "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." Now Paul has words for this revelation. He can say exactly what God has told him. "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."

So Paul boasts. He boasts of his weaknesses. Because what he has experienced is that whenever he has been weak, Christ has been present as his strength. "For whenever I am weak, then I am strong," he says. It is in his weakness, not in his strength, that Paul has most intimately known the presence of Christ empowering him.

An Episcopal priest named Ken Kaisch tells of a time of great weakness for him. He was in college, and a close friend and classmate had been killed in an automobile accident. Ken was devastated. He wondered how a good God could allow something like this to happen. He could feel the bile rising in him and the depression weighing him down.

Ken was walking heavily down a road one evening, thinking about his friend, how alive and vital he seemed; how dead he was. When the stars in the sky seemed to advance and come closer. Then it was like the heavens began to roll back from the center, almost like a theater curtain, to reveal an infinite openness. And Ken heard a voice that he identified as his friend who had died saying, "Ken. Don't be sad. It's all right. I'm just fine." And Ken felt an overwhelming sense of peace come over him. Then he looked again, and everything in the night sky was simply normal again.

Trusting his friend's message, Ken was able to release him, and live anew, without the bile and depression. In his weakness, Ken had been given new strength. (1) "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."

I hear stories pretty regularly about people who have found themselves at the end of their rope, and when they let go they found a bottom to the floor right below their feet. Stories about times, when having reached the limits of their resources and control, they have surrendered and prevailed nonetheless. I have watched people whose bodies are wasting away and disappearing but whose being and soul and spirit is powerful and transcendent nonetheless.

Over and over in my own life, on ordinary days, when I back off a bit, when I quit trying so hard and worrying so much, something happens – whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows – and things work out or they rearrange in an acceptable new way.

But I am so resistant to the surrender. I spend so much energy trying to make things happen the way I think they ought to be. I worry and struggle so. I fret and fume, like Paul agonizing over the Corinthians. I can tell when I'm getting extreme, my back starts to spasm and I wake up in the night thinking about all that stuff.

I can imagine Paul waking up at night, helpless in Ephesus, worried and frustrated. Composing and recomposing in his head the letter he would write. But then in the midst of the anxiety, his mantra comes back to him. "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."

Last Wednesday, preaching for our memorial service for our former curate Bill Stroop, Bishop Maze quoted from the mystic Meister Eckhart: "In the end, there is only God." Bishop Maze said that phrase often sustained him during his thirteen years as bishop. When he was up to his collar in problems, he would say to himself, "In the end, there is only God." That puts a bit of perspective on your troubles, doesn't it?

Our twelve-step friends will say, "Take it Easy. Let Go and Let God." The little child in us sings, "Jesus loves me, this I know." Written in the margins of my mother's high school algebra textbook are the words: "This too shall pass." The mystic Dame Julian saw in a divine revelation that "All shall be well; ...and all manner of things shall we well."

Yes, life is difficult. We cannot control it. Often we are tragically powerless when what we love is threatened. Even in the ordinary times, the drip-drip-drip of demands and needs can shrink our perspective and exhaust us.

Each of us needs a mantra that rings true for us to give us strength in weakness – a Word that brings perspective, surrender and hope to the challenge of the moment: "Ken, don't be sad. It's all right. I'm just fine." "Jesus loves me, this I know." "Take it easy. Let go and let God." "This too shall pass." "All shall be well." "In the end, there is only God." Whatever works for you. And today we hear Paul's contribution to that wisdom tradition. As we anguish with Paul in his struggles with his beloved congregation in Corinth, we hear his remarkable revelation from God: "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."

"Let it be unto me, according to your word."
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1. Ken Kaisch, Finding God. (I'm trying to write this account from memory because I can't find the book. I've lost or lent it. So I have no idea how accurate, if at all, my version is to what Ken actually experienced and wrote about. I've reordered the book, so maybe I can correct this; but not today.)
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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org