“Salvation – By God or From God?” – Sermon 3/18/12
March 18, 2012
Scripture:
Numbers 21: 4-9 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.
John 3: 14-21 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.
Sermon: Salvation – By God or From God?
by Rev. Doreen Oughton
I was about 8-years-old, at a family reunion on a lake on a sunny summer day. There were loads of people in the water, and I was having a great time splashing around. I dove under, maybe to do a handstand, or maybe I swam out further than I realized, but somehow I couldn’t find my way to the surface. I was disoriented, couldn’t tell which way was up. At first I was very scared and moved my hands and legs as frantically as I could. But then I began to feel more peaceful. It almost seemed like I could breathe under there. I was calm and relaxed. Then I felt a huge hand grip me, and I was pulled up out of the water and laid across my uncle’s shoulder while I choked and vomited and finally took in that precious air. Years later someone told me that the sense of calm, the experience of breathing underwater probably meant that I was near death. My uncle saved me, literally saved my life.
Has anyone else had an experience of being saved? Or an experience of saving another? It’s funny, but it never seemed like such a big deal to me, what my uncle did. I was grateful, sure, but I didn’t look at him differently after that. We didn’t develop a special bond or anything. I had a similar reaction early on as I tried to figure out who Jesus was. He was proclaimed as my Savior, but I didn’t know what that meant. I could understand how his message about God’s love and mercy, his teachings on loving my neighbor, could lead me on a better path. But was that salvation? Christian doctrine claims that it wasn’t just his life and ministry that saves, but also his death. And this did more than confuse me. This upset me, this put me in a defensive posture. I never asked Jesus to die for me. Just how was his death supposed to save me – by making me feel too guilty to misbehave? That just felt too manipulative and cruel. And however it was supposed to work, I had to question whether it did work. People obviously kept misbehaving, guilt or no.
And so through today’s scripture readings, we are invited to reflect on the notion of salvation. We have the very well-known gospel passage, John 3:16, that says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” It continues on, saying that God sent the Son not to condemn the world, but so the world might be saved through him. The passage opens with Jesus comparing himself to the bronze serpent in the story of Moses – something that must be lifted up. And so I had to included that story also, so we can factor into our reflection how it was that the lifted-up serpent saved.
It’s an interesting story, isn’t it. The people have been wandering in the desert with Moses for a long, long time. Their diet has been fairly limited – manna and quail and water. The wonder and glory of having been rescued from slavery in Egypt, all those many years ago, has faded. Instead of feeling rescued, they probably are feeling that they went from the frying pan into the fire. They’ve been out there for ages, dealing with God’s wrath and fickleness. God has already killed off lots of them, whether for creating idols or gathering sticks on the Sabbath. Sure God gave them manna and quail and water, but only after they complained. It must have been quite nerve-wracking for them. Sometimes, if they complained, they got what they needed, but other times, like in today’s story, they got punished. Usually they got punished in addition to getting what they needed. By now, they probably figured that out. So when the poisonous snakes appeared, biting and killing people, they knew who had sent them. They quickly repented of their sin of complaining, and asked Moses to intervene with God on their behalf. God’s response was not to remove the snakes, but to give them an antidote to the snake bite, so that they could live. Hmm. While there are some interesting ideas here – facing the thing that threatens you in order to be saved from it, or how the solution is often present in the problem, or how the same thing that can heal you can kill you – this is not my favorite story about God. I imagine the Israelites are supposed to feel grateful to God for saving them, but what are they to do with their anger and fear over the fact that God first afflicted them? I know how annoying constant complaining is, but does it deserve the death penalty? How about sending down some hard rain, or withhold the bread for a little while and see how quickly they appreciate its return? But lethal snakes? Seems a bit much.
But back to the Gospel reading. Now though it doesn’t mention the cross, or Jesus’ death at all, it seems to me that that is what is being inferred. When Jesus says the Son of Man must be lifted up, I’m picturing the cross. As the people in the desert needed to look up at the bronze snake to be saved, we need to look up at the cross where Jesus died to be saved. The people in the desert needed to be saved from the snakes, but what do we need to be saved from? One commentator said that if the snake on the pole mirrors the problem, then likewise the Son of Man on the cross mirrors the problem. Do we need to be saved from humankind, saved from ourselves? I think there is something there, yes? And we will talk more about that, but first I want to talk about the other thing the desert wanderer’s needed to be saved from, and see whether this carries over into the Gospel. That is God’s wrath and judgment.
There are significant differences in how things play out in the Numbers story verses the story of the Gospels. In the Hebrew scripture, the people cried out to God to save them from slavery, and God responded. They wanted out, but they thought they knew better than God how things should go from there. They didn’t trust God’s response. They complained about how things were done all along the way. In the counseling business we have a term for that – help-rejecting complainer. But the Gospels pose a different situation. The people aren’t crying out to God. They are just going about their business. God is the one saying, “Oh, no. This can’t go on. The way they are living is all wrong, and they don’t even seem to know it.” So God puzzles out what needs to be done, and sends Jesus to us, or you might say that God becomes one of us through Jesus. God comes as a person and tells us how to live, how to turn to God, how to love one another. So those are two acts of salvation – the incarnation, and the teaching and ministry. Another important saving act is the death of Jesus, both the fact of it, and the method of death.
The meaning of this saving act has been puzzled over and debated since it happened. Paul writes that Christ crucified is a stumbling block to the Jews, foolishness to the Greeks, and nonsense to Gentiles. And I confess that it has been all three to me – a stumbling block, foolishness and nonsense. But I feel differently now, very, very differently. And I really want to share with you about the process I went through. But it is a long story, long enough to take at least two sermons. I’ll go on a little bit more today, but will end at a place where I’m still stumbling with this foolish nonsense. So please do come back next week to where I come to understand the cross as, again in Paul’s words, the power of God and the wisdom of God. And if you can’t come, please ask me to send you a copy of the sermon, because I really, really don’t want you to be left with only part of the story.
I don’t know how many of you have actually spent time puzzling over the meaning of the cross and how it saves. Maybe you are just moved by it and prefer not to get into intellectual tangles over it. That’s probably a really good way to go. (parable of the donuts?) But that’s not me. I can get pretty caught up in analyzing things. There are a few major theories about how the cross saves, but I’m only going to focus on one of them. If you are interested in hearing more about the other theories, please contact me and we can have a wonderful conversation. The theory I’m going to focus on is atonement theory. The idea is that we, as created beings, owe God a huge debt. We owe God for our very lives, and we owe God for all the harm we have done to God’s creation – whether ourselves, each other, the earth and everything on it. God wants us to be in right relationship with him, but our sin gets in the way. Our sins have to be atoned for before we can be reconciled with God. One way that people through the millenia attempted to deal with that problem was to offer sacrifices to God – the first fruit of their crops, their best newborn livestock for instance. But these were never really adequate to atone for the terrible wrongs we have done. It would be like me borrowing your car, totaling it, then giving you back a pair of roller skates you lent me so that you could get around. Too little, and yours to begin with.
The thinking is that God knew that because we were so corrupted by our sin that no offering we make could possibly be good enough to atone for all the sin. So God came himself, in the form of Christ, to be the perfect sacrificial offering – without blemish, innocent, even divine. That would be enough to wipe the slate clean, and allow us to start over, reconciled with God, and ready to begin new relationships with each other and with all of creation. This gift is meant to inspire awe and gratitude. I can’t help but think of the 3rd verse in our closing hymn – “and when I think, that God his Son not sparing, sent him to die, I scarce can take it in.” But it doesn’t do that for me. In fact, I love that song but have hated that verse. I’ve always wanted to skip that verse. Because here’s what I keep thinking – It is God who is demanding the sacrifice. If God wants to be reconciled with us, God can just forgive us, can’t he? If reconciliation and mercy and eternal life are gifts from God, why does God demand payment for them? Imagine if I handed you a beautifully wrapped present and said, “For you my dear. That will be $40.” Confusing, right?
And I also hate how this glorifies innocent suffering. Part of the perfection of Jesus as the sacrificial offering is his innocence. And this idea has been used to justify or even collude with all kinds of abuses. Women have been told by their spiritual leaders to tolerate domestic violence because it their cross to bear, that it is alright that they suffer even if innocent, because look how Christ suffered. It has led to masochistic behaviors by religious devotees who wish to suffer as Christ suffered in identification with him. And that all just seems so terribly warped to me. It is hard to understand what is redemptive about persecution, torture, and execution. It is hard to understand how doing those things to someone who is innocent makes it even more glorious. It’s hard to trust a God who would need that in order to be reconciled with us.
And so for a long time I simply rejected those ideas. I attached to the saving acts of incarnation and ministry, I mined the scripture for passages on a loving and merciful God who created us in love, and scratched my head over those who gloried in the cross. But thank God for seminary, thank God for a call to ministry that would not let me settle into such an incomplete understanding of salvation. I can’t stand here before you with any integrity and tell you to just ignore those passages in the bible that are distressing. I can’t stand here as a spiritual leader and tell you that Jesus’ suffering has no redemptive value, that his death and resurrection aren’t really that important to us as Christians. You deserve better than that. God so loves you, God so wants you to have a life in him, a life that is beautiful and true and eternal. God sent this light to you, who am I, who is anyone, to leave you in the dark or leave you in the shadows. So will you come back next week and journey with me even closer to the cross?
