The Shave o\Salvation | February 11, 1973, ype = aq eqeneett!
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of coa\ wis book is full
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2 The Old Testament Prophet Ezekiel was a strange and wild ma

of dreams and visions and symbols and odd names.\It was Ezekif#1 who had the Vision of the

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"ary bones" \it was lzekiel who chewed up a scroll and ate ith The entire first chapter
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of Ezekiel elaborately describes the prophet's first experience with the divine.— in
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detailed and striking cynbolism: \aternible stom,\ rasning fire, |semmenemtenes, a throne
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above the ee the end of this dramatic experience Hzekiel did what any man might

do under the cixounshences:| he fell on his face.\. It was an appropriate gesture \it was
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what men were expected to do in the presence of royalty or aivini ty | put the voice of God
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which he heard told him to "stand up" — to act normal — to be himself — so that God could
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get on with the real reason for the experience - namely, the matter of Ezekiel's future.
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Ezekiel assumed the traditonal posture oF reverence and piety, to be sure.\But he didn't
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sta there long.\If he was going to be God's man, it would be on his feet, not groveling
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in the dust.

It's not too unlike the story I read from the New Testament, another instance of
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man encountering the divine. Four men brought their paralyzed friend to Fegush. Unable
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to squeeze through the door of the crowded Capernum house they removed a part of the roof
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and lowered him down through the opening on his patiet. \ Jesus: reaction is worth
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considering iy son, your sins are forgiven" he said. bow, no one had said anything about

—_—— a, ————
sin, and no one had asked for rongiveness.\the sense of it is -{"you're atright:\you
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are OK" to use the currently fashionable idiom "you are not a prisoner of your past -

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you are acceptable to God — you are free".
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We don't always understand the significance of that because we don't share the view,

current in New Testament times, that physical affliction was the result of cin.\ ut his
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contemporaries knww what he was saying, and in case anyone failed to get bthe point, he

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said it another way:|"Rise, take up your pallet and wati"\ + 4! ow

page 2. rmae Auwbe, iechive —

And so we have Lzekiel end the paralytic WiWh on their feet as a result of an encounter

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with the divine — fawsi Ono hd athe Minsston—feasitt.—nho—weitserssead

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wtoometengih Inet usek,§ Jonathan, -ouewiditmeeett, was a most remarkable bird. oleh" ]
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An outcast because he refused to be confined by the boring pursuite of seggults, Jonathan
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taught himself to fly - really fly - at speeds unheard-of for a seagull | He freed himself
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from habit and custom and tradition and discovered that he was capable of things no
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seagull had ever imagined ear the end of thr book, as Jonathan is instructing other
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young outcasts in the art of living and flying, = gull with a broken wing presents himeel?:
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And a converstaion ensues thet is ctrikingly similar to our Lord's words to the paralytic,

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\ "Help me" said Kirk, wobbling across the sand, dragging his left wing . . “help
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me he said in the way tne dying cpeak.
"Come along: then’ enid Jonathsan. bcaint with me eway from the fround and we'll
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berin."
"You dontt understand. \ny wing. 1 can't inove my wing."

——

"You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self here and now."

"Are you saying Io ocen fly?"

"T am saying you sre tree,"

As simply and quickly as that, Mirk Haynard Gull spread his wings and

lifted effortlessly into the night air. .\

‘he common theme in those three anecdotes: Maekiel, the Paralytic and Jonathan
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Livingston Seyull is thet you end I are capable of becoming more than we are \ that

life can be lived and experienced at a depth that most of us are unwilling to coach | vo
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put it in the teemupammmmee vords of theology, ta experience God is to vegaitg; 40 be saved

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is to begin a process of becoming.\Or better yet, in a classic little vignette, REKAIEEK

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\ "Being saved is like being presnant\ Some thing has happened to you, but not everything

that's going to." [John Killinger, Alive iow, Winter, 72]

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cope,

page 3

Esekiel had to stand up:\ the paralytic got up and waded | irk Gull flew, and the
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point 1s that there is somethign inherent in the gospel that ought to be freeing us to
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stand up and walk and aly (te leave our crutches behind and frow into free, joyful
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creatures of excellence Avo borrow from the words of Jesus in the Gospel According to John:
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[2 have come that they might have life, and have it abunden thy." |

But, it doesn't work that way, does it? lack the man in the street to talk about

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salvation - orjust about Christian Faith - and more often than not it's going to come out
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in negative, legalistic terms \ a life restricted ~ confined — rigid - with all the good

parts left outa\rtts going to sound life-denying rather than life— aitiming: |i t}o

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going to be sefl—debaging; rather than self enhancing {In short, it's going to sound like
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very bad news, which is precisely what a lot of religion is,\which is precisley why a
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lot of thoughtful people conclude that they dontt need it.
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oom . . ;
As a young mba I was taught some very curlous things about salvation ~ and I expect

you share many of shen \r had to unlearn them — painfully \ i
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i—head +o—-hove—a—erec=anti=toern-att 7; cateclrambe; emetrorret tphe aare.d ; which .conld— reser
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qevtecamenes\ 1 Was taught thet to be saved I had to act like other people who were

saved ~ that is, to stop being me and start imitating them, which I tried but gave up
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because it was so patently sss .| Iwas taught, furthermore, that to stay saved I had
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to do a lot of things which were boring and refrain from doing a lot of things which

were fun. figured out the error in that one quite early when I was told that my parents
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couldn't be saved because they cnoked.\ Finally, I was taught that my salvation hung on
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my willingness to confess my own rotteness at the drop of a hats| that I was a sinner —
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which was true ‘\ena that God wanted ta keep me that way — guilty, s spicious, unhappy
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with rather normal feelings and emotions - which was not true.

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I share that with you, not because I enjoy poking fun at what a lot of people embrace,
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but because it is so totally end completely alien to the Good News of Jesus ohrigt:| the
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salvation which is, in fact, "rich and rree" :\ the life that can be full and abundant

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an@ deep end joyful.\and the saddest part of all is that it is marketed under the banner
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page 4

of New Testament Christianity with a fervor and sefl righteousness that makes us sometimes
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feel defensive and ologretic about our raith.
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Well, what dees the Mible coy?) mat is theshape ,of satvation9| a quick survey of the
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Ways in which the word 1s used in the “ld Testament shows thet God is Savior, and that
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salyation is from gone very real perils and dengers.\ God saved Israel] from the armies
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of Pharon at the Hed Sea.) tad saves his people from their enemies and orpreessors.
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he saves them from disease and disaster and famine. 4nd while he's seving them he's making:
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then into u nation, a pevple with +t grand and glorious méssion to perfarm in the history
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of manicind. expat neta salam @s wlalewss — see TWA eee ¢ | gy

dut then, in the last rvew centuries before Christ, a new idea crept into the old,
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rather immediate concept pr salyation.\ The people had tied their idea of salvation too

tightly to the political fortunes of the nation\ And when that went badly; when Israel
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was being defeated and exiled end humiliated by one foreign army after another the emphasis

shiftea.\ nen began to despair of salvation ever happeneing within the confines of history —
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and sa they looked elsewhere -— if not in this world, then in the next \coa would save them
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in an "other~worldy" sense of the vord:\atter they died, or on the judgement. day when they
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would reap their reward and their enemies would be punished.
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In was in this theflogicel climate that Jesus was born and lived and teught.
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He affirmed what was good in thet recent theblogical development | thos ig, that salvation
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is not confined to history alone, nor to an individual's earthly Lite: \tnat rs, does
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have to do with death add beyond. {Lut he also taught that salvation was immediate: [that the

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Kingdom of God was not only future but present \ that God's saving love was to be expersenced
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by his people in the here and now, d through it all, in his words and in the writings of

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the early chudch there is a sense of joyrul scconplishnent\('it has happenea salvation

is here\ Goa has saved us \ non don't have to do anything but accept the love God has

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expressed and the new dimennion of life he has pronised." New Testament is far more
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concerned with announcing the joyful good news of salvation, than it is in making people

feel bedly about themselves, or guilty for their sins Non in bludgeoning people into

doing something in order to win a salvation that has already been accomplished.
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page 5.

"Salvation", one scholarly article on the subject apserves, ic the ultimate concern of
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all man's religions." | The disTerence is that while the religions of man provide various

schemes for achieving salvation, Christianity proclaims that it has ngppened.\me history

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of religion is the story of men desparately trying to find the "way" to win a prize
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which Christianity announces has already been avorded| $0 the next time someone hands
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you a pamphiet listing "the seven steps to heaven", hand it back.\ Tell him that’s been
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taken care of and the reel business at hand is the matter of Living and growing and getting

into that "abundant life" Jesus prommised.
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Again, that is not to deal frivilously with the assurance that God's love for us
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is not confined to the perimeters of human ise. \ a1 of us, by reason of our humanity,
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are caught up in the universal fear of death - our own death, and the death of loved ones.

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Wwe can hide from 1t for a while, but one day every man senses that he's going to die,
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and that cense remains in 2 special corner of a man's consciousness as lone as he lives.
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It comes to have a power ol ite ow until we feel trapped and enslaved by it.\ 4nd so to
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be free, to know that death has no pouer:\that the love of God that called us into being,
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will surround and protect us through death and beyonf is the very best news of all, and
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the bet freedom of ai1.\met is basic to the shape of salvation.
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but there is more.\%ie ware created for more than obsession with our own acath \ 16
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have within each one of us an unquenchable thirst for lite. \and by that I don;t mean simply
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quantity of life ~— but qualities: fullness, depth, satisfaction, the "abundant Life'.Jesus

This ip -whet avery troemrert retihe foe) inthe

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promised. | sobes Tor Scone ie, pire fo thrts we T
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depth_of hie—sonrt ‘\ 2D TE be SE eC erery ear Amid ech. pc a a a ee has je
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impale Dostoevsky, in whe brothers Karamazov, has Ivan say, PI have asked myself
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many times if there ig anything ia life that could ever destroy this trememdous, perhaps
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indecent thirst for life within me. . . ] have come to the conclusion thet there is not.

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[Ibid. P 43]

You feel that and so de me sensed 1t recently when I say a picture of an old man
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————.

with hic pants rolled up pect the knee, wading in the surf with a little cniza\ Ve mense
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it in moments of boredom, when he every duy sameness of life berins io be Qupresnive.
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We wont to live and to live ebundsntly - we want to walk + and to fly.
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Jesus gave 1t to men as a pilt.|he called them to new Life -— to be more than they
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were, not by reminding them oi their sin, but by loving them, by beleiving in them-\ ile
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pave men salvation, not by providing a new set of rules, but by demonstrating to them that

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that they mattered,, that they were important \ And they bphesconed |t«
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love called a new dimension of living out of them so completely that they could say that
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he had made them over; mhey became new men, by learning to be

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simply what they hed the potential to be. 4 One writer has put it veauti fully: [vactually,
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desus ‘unsaves'! us from clavisnly imitating anyone, including imgef\ Jesus CGalls men
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to be his disciples, not his robots.\Being a Christian doesn't mean dressing like Jesus,
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or being single and a aarpenier.| Te involves being oursleves and caring and sacrificing
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in our own situation as Jesus did in hig."

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Jesus saved men from wnatever was holding them back, whatever was restricting and
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inhibiting - by loving them.\:lis love turned fishermen into fearless advocates of his
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cause,\a crippled tent maker named Paul into an elogquat philosopher,\ prostitute named
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Lary into a saint, and many, many common, everday people into joyful, courageous,
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alive human beings | the shape of salvation for them was asm different es they were from
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each other\ But it happened to them when they sensed his love for them ~ just as they were.
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A paralytic wes lowered into the presence of Jesus ~ a man who couldn't move.
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And Jesus loved that man enough -— not to pity him.| Instead he said,} "Get up - you're
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free — free to take responsibility for your own life - free to be the man you want to be."
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So it can be for you — for me — if we will be open to that kind of love.
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Hobert Raines, in an article about the healing of the paralytic, imagines Jesus
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whispering to us. <I found his words to be honest and on the mark: and I would conclude

—

page {

with them:

"Help yourself.\Get up and go none. [You are free to stop hurting those you Love and

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to start loving those you hurt.) You are free to leap instead of lie there.| You are free
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to dance instead of Linp-\rou ave free to ery for joy, to laugh through your tears.
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You are free from the ssround vp So get up off the ground and run free, and forgiven.

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And I'll run with you\tiere, take my hands.) [A.R., Winter,72,p45]

Amen

Father, we would be free. #e¢ would become all that you have created us to become.

Open us to the love that can make it happen: in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen