What Does It Mean To Be ‘Saved’? (Part One)

What Does It Mean To Be ‘Saved’? (Part One)

A reflection by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost: July 17, 2011
The fifth in a summer series on topics you’ve asked to hear addressed in reflections.

A number of years ago, I gave a talk at Pacific Lutheran University on the subject of homosexuality and Christianity. At the end of the formal question-and-answer period, a student who looked very sincere came up to me and asked, “Are you saved?”

I wish I could remember what I said. I know I didn’t ask him what I now ask anyone who asks me that: What do you mean by the word ‘saved’?

If you’re like me, when you hear a Christian use the word “saved”, you think it refers to where someone goes after they die. People who are “saved” believe certain things about Jesus. And that means when they die they will go to heaven. Others don’t believe the things about Jesus they need to in order to be “saved”. So when they die, they will go to hell.

That’s one way to talk about what it means to be saved. But most of the times when the Bible uses words like this, it’s not talking about where we go when we die. Instead, most of the time when the Bible uses words like saved, salvation, and Savior, it’s talking about living a changed life in this world, at this time.

Which makes sense when we look at what the word salvation means. Salvation comes from the word salve. A salve is an ointment that heals. So salvation means the way one who is wounded is healed. Salvation means the way one who is broken becomes whole. Most of the time when the Bible talks about salvation, it’s not telling stories of people who are healed and made whole in heaven after they die. Most of the time when the Bible talks about salvation, it’s telling stories of people who are healed and made whole now. So, before they die, they still have time to live this new, healed, whole way of life God has given them.

There’s another way the Bible talks about being saved that’s different than how I’ve often understood it. Often, the question, Are you saved?, is focused on an individual. Is this person going to heaven or hell? But in most of the places in the Bible that talk about this topic, salvation comes to a group of people, not to just one person.

Today and next week I’ll talk about this question of what it means to be ‘saved’. This morning, I’d like to look briefly at three Bible stories. (These three passages are part of an excellent treatment of the topic of Salvation found in Marcus Borg’s new book, Speaking Christian, HarperOne Publishers, 2011, pp. 39-43, 51).

The first is from Exodus, the second book in the Bible. God has just used Moses to free the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt. The Red Sea parted, and they crossed over to the other side of it on dry land. When the army of their former slave-master, Pharaoh, tried to do the same thing, the waters came back together, and they all drowned. So Moses and the Hebrew people are now free. And after you’ve been freed, you have to sing. Which is exactly what they do.

Moses and the Israelites sang this song to God, giving voice together:

“I’m singing my heart out to God – what a victory! God pitched horse and rider into the sea.
God is my strength, God is my song, and, yes! God is my salvation.
This is the kind of God I have and I’m telling the world!”
(Exodus 15.1-2, The Message, emphasis added)

When Moses and the people sing to the God who is my salvation, they’re not talking about where they’re going to go when they die. They’re not saying that God looked at some of the people who were in slavery and said, “You believe the right things about me, so I’ll free you. But you don’t believe the right things about me, so I’m leaving you here.” Moses brought everyone out of slavery to freedom. So Moses and the people aren’t singing this song as individuals. They are one people, singing with one voice. God is their salvation because God has just freed them from slavery. That’s how God has saved them. Salvation is liberation from slavery, persecution, and oppression. Salvation is God working to bring people out of places where the powerful treat them as less-than-human. Salvation is God bringing us out of bondage into a new space that is peaceful and spacious.

In this story, salvation is freedom, liberation, the invitation to step into a new world of hope and joy. It has nothing to do with what individual believe. It certainly has nothing to do with where individual people are going to go when they die.

We see another thing the Bible means by salvation and being saved in the book of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. ay the Old Testament talks about salvation is related to returning home from exile. In 597BC, King Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian army conquer Judah. The King sends most of the wealthy, educated citizens of Judah into exile in Babylon. These exiled Jews feel like God has totally abandoned them. Many of them give up hope that God still loves and remembers them. The prophet Isaiah writes to these Jews-who-had-been-deported-to-a-foreign-and-frightening-land. He sings to them an unbelievable song of hope. He sings, God remembers you! And God is your Savior. So God will bring you home.

Thus says the Lord… “Don’t be afraid, I’ve redeemed you. I’ve called you by name.
You’re mine. When you’re in over your head, I’ll be there with you.
When you’re in rough waters, you will not go down.
When you’re between a rock and a hard place, it won’t be a dead end –
Because I am God, your personal God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”
(Isaiah 43.1-3, The Message, emphasis added)

Think of a time where you were lost. When you felt absolutely alone. When you were staring at a wall and you didn’t think there was anywhere out. What would it have felt like for you to hear God say these words to you? That is what these Jews in exile would have felt like. They were saved by their Savior God because God was leading them home. They were saved because they feared God had forgotten them, but instead God was saying, I remember you. I know your name. They were saved because they weren’t being left to face their fears alone, but God was saying, I am with you! They were saved because God said I will walk beside you to create a path ahead where there is no path now. This isn’t about what’s going to happen at some point in the future when you die. This is about God being with them. Right here. Right now.

The third story is from the New Testament – from the Gospel of Luke. Elizabeth believes she cannot have children. Then an angel tells her and her husband Zechariah that they will have a son. And God has a special job for this miracle child. This child, who will become John the Baptizer, will tell everyone that Jesus is coming. Listen for what salvation means in this part of Zechariah’s song:

“You, my child, ‘Prophet of the Highest,’ will go ahead of the Master to prepare his ways.
You will present the offer of salvation to the people, the forgiveness of their sins.
Through the heartfelt mercies of our God, God’s Sunrise will break in upon us,
shining on those in the darkness, those sitting in the shadow of death,
then showing us the way, one foot at a time, down the path of peace.”
(Luke 1.76-79, The Message, emphasis added)

Zechariah says the salvation Christ brings is light. Light for people trapped in not forgiving and not asking for forgiveness. Light for those trapped in death and deadness and fear. And this salvation will be light to show everyone the path to peace. The salvation the coming of Jesus promises is the path all of us in the world must walk if we want there to be peace.

There are passages in the New Testament which talk about salvation in terms of what happens to us when we die. I’ll look some at those next week as we continue to explore the question, What does it mean to be ‘saved’? My hope today was to look at three core texts which tell us something that might surprise a lot of Christians and non-Christians about what it means to be saved. God saves us by liberating us from oppression and torture. According to the Bible, God saves us by freeing us from everything that enslaves us, everything that takes life and hope and joy from us. The Bible tells us God saves us by walking beside us in our fear, by telling people who are lost and far from home that God is going to call people to help bring them home. God saves by helping us imagine a way where there is no way. The Bible tells us God saves by bringing light into dark places … and by sending Jesus, who leads us in the way of peace. Not after we die. But right here. Right now.

That is why the sacrament of baptism saves us. In a few moments, Luke will receive the sacrament of baptism. Baptism isn’t a private ceremony. Baptism happens in community. There will be times when Luke or some member of his family needs to remember that his true name is God’s Beloved. Because people call us by so many other names that can make us forget our true name. We make our promises to Luke and his family because we want Luke to know he is saved. So he can be freed from anything that oppresses or enslaves him. So he can know this church always will be home for him when he gets lost. So he knows when he feels forgotten, we will remember him. And when he is in dark places, we will bear Christ’s light to him. That is what we promise him and his family when we celebrate this sacrament of baptism. We will be the Body of Christ, who reminds him he is saved. We are that Body of Christ for all who come through these doors. We are the community who show this world that our God is a God who saves. In this time. In this place. Amen.

This song was sung by Music Minister Linda Srb. Her friend and music partner Susan Moore wrote it.

“Something Bigger”

Jesus saves – you’ve seen it on a bumper sticker.
Jesus saves – you’ve seen it on a banner waving on the freeway.
Jesus saves – saves what you might ask, Jesus saves – saves whom you might ask.
Jesus saves us from a lonely life devoid of a higher purpose.
Some find this message in his kind words, some find it elsewhere.
No matter how you get the message, God’s saving you for a reason:
to be a light to those in need, to be a part of something bigger.

God saves – the people from their narrow-mindedness
God saves – a child from a world of fear
God saves – a mother waiting for a sign to know what to say to her daughter who says
God saves only those who think that Jesus speaks for them, and only them,
and miss the point that God transcends the selfish views of mortal men.
No matter how you get the message, God’s saving you for a reason
To be a light to those in need, to be a part of something bigger.
God saves a mother for her nurturing; God saves a father that he might care;
God saves a child for its innocent love; God saves the elders for what they can share.
God saves us from a lonely life devoid of a higher purpose.
We know this now, we feel it when we bare our neighbors burdens.
So many teachers, so many paths that point in one direction,
no matter how you get the message, God’s saving you for a reason:
to be a light to those in need, to be a part of something bigger.