1. Finding the Words
A friend of mine had some new neighbors move in next door. They were Christians, active in church, and hosted Bible studies in their home.
One day, my friend invited me to join him at one of those Bible studies.
This was a long time ago - I think I was barely out of high school - and I don’t remember much about the Bible study. But afterward, the neighbor who hosted the Bible study talked to me and my friend.
“I hear you’re a Christian,” the neighbor said.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Good,” the neighbor said. “So, why haven’t you tried harder to get your friend to go to church? Why haven’t you tried to get him saved? Don’t you care about him? Don’t you care about whether he ends up in heaven or in hell? What kind of a friend are you?”
I felt like I had been blindsided. At first, I questioned whether this neighbor was, in fact, right. Had I been a bad friend, because I hadn’t talked more about Jesus with my friend?
I wanted to respond, but the neighbor didn’t give me a chance.
The neighbor kept talking. He talked about how one becomes a Christian: first you acknowledge God as creator, and recognize that God demands perfection. Then you admit that you yourself are a sinner and have fallen short of the perfection God requires, and that, because of this, you are doomed to eternal separation from God. But fortunately, the penalty and punishment you deserve, Jesus took upon himself instead. So all you need to do now is confess your sins to Jesus, and ask him to forgive you, and you will have eternal life.
So now, sitting in my friend’s neighbor’s living room, I felt doubly bad. I had failed my friend, and I had failed God.
Or had I?
I started thinking about everything I had learned about God and everything I had learned about Jesus to that point in my life, and how it compared to what this neighbor had said. I thought about these things for days. Weeks. Months.
I’m still thinking about them.
And I came to realize that Jesus would never, ever, talk to me the way that neighbor talked to me, or make me feel the way that neighbor made me feel.
And when I realized that Jesus would never make me feel the way that neighbor made me feel, that in turn helped me realize that the neighbor was wrong. He was wrong about how one becomes a Christian. And he was wrong about whether I had been a good friend.
However, I couldn’t quite explain how or why I knew. I didn’t have the words. I didn’t have the understanding.
I knew I’d have to do better if I wanted to be able to respond to that neighbor, and to the countless others like him, who preach a gospel of sin and judgment and fear and shame.
Maybe that’s one reason why I went to seminary, to find some of those answers, to find the words I needed to explain all this.
Well, seminary got me started, but I’m still working on my understanding, and I’m still searching for the right words. Which is OK. Because becoming a Christian isn’t something that happens during a 30-second prayer in which you confess your sins. Becoming a Christian is a life-long journey of learning how to follow Jesus.
And salvation isn’t something that you magically receive when you say that 30-second prayer. Salvation really means healing and wholeness, and the journey to healing is long, and the movement for wholeness is neverending.
2 Gospel of Fear and Shame
I bet some of you have had experiences similar to mine. Someone says you’re not a good Christian, or not a “real” Christian, because what you believe doesn’t match with their more evangelical, fundamentalist version of how it all works. And maybe, like me, you didn’t have the words to respond the way you wanted to respond.
Maybe you’re still searching for those words.
One reason people leave the church is that they can’t abide by this narrow, rigid way of understanding the gospel, understanding salvation. It’s so individualistic, it’s so formulaic, it’s so judgmental, it’s so shame-inducing and fear-inducing … and it’s so un-loving.
And, it really doesn’t seem like it aligns with the way of Jesus, whose very nature was compassion.
But those who, like my friend’s neighbor, believe in such a gospel - they are quick to recite Bible verses backing up their understanding of salvation. And most of those Bible verses come from Paul’s letters.
And for those of us who have been traumatized and perhaps even spiritually abused by having that idea of salvation beaten over our heads, it becomes perhaps the most important factor leading us to hate the apostle Paul.
3 Paul (One More Time)
This is the last sermon in my “Why We Hate Paul” sermon series. If you’ve been following along, then you already know some things that will be helpful here.
Things like, remembering that Paul’s letters are letters. They do not present an all-encompassing, once-and-for-all plan of salvation. Paul was writing letters to specific people, specific communities, not systematic theological treatises with a universal roadmap to salvation for all people everywhere in every time.
These letters were part of ongoing dialogues, and they presume that the recipients already knew a lot of the background to what Paul was talking about, because most of what he wrote in those letters was in response to specific questions those communities had asked him, or specific events Paul had heard about taking place in that community.
Second, we know that much of the way we tend to interpret Paul’s letters has been influenced by our own ways of thinking as well as the history of interpretation that has gone on before us. When we read Paul’s letters, we are influenced by our society’s norms, and we are influenced by what others have told us Paul means.
In his book, Eric C. Smith talks a lot about how Martin Luther’s views on Paul were influenced by his own situation, and yet Luther’s views went on to influence how Christians for centuries to come understood Paul.
So even if you never studied the ideas of Martin Luther, when you read Paul, you are reading Paul with a bias toward understanding Paul the way Martin Luther understood Paul, because those who taught you were influenced by the way Martin Luther understood Paul, and those who taught them, and those who taught them… and so on.
4 Faith and Salvation
And let’s not forget that our 21st century American society is the most individualized society on earth. So when we read the Bible, we’re reading it with minds that think of the world in very individualized ways.
Yet in the Bible, it’s not really about the individual; it’s not really about an individual’s salvation; it’s about the salvation of the world. When Jesus separates people left and right as one would separate sheep from goats, the scripture says that it’s entire nations that are being placed either to the left or to the right. Not individuals.
So any idea of salvation that only considers one individual’s relationship with God or one’s personal relationship with Jesus is incomplete and misguided.
The apostle Paul wasn’t too concerned with individual salvation. He was concerned with bringing the good news of God’s love, which previously had been reserved for the Jews, to the non-Jewish gentile communities scattered from Jerusalem to Rome and as far away as Spain.
And because the way we read the Bible is colored by our own perspective, we define certain key words in ways that are very different from how Paul or anyone else in the first century would have defined them.
The word “salvation” is often misunderstood. The Greek word is sozo. It means being made whole. It means finding healing, or being made well.
When Jesus healed someone, he often said, “Go, your faith has made you well.” That’s sozo. Sometimes it’s translated, “Go, your faith has saved you.” But it’s still sozo. It’s still salvation in the sense of healing and wholeness.
Here’s another Greek word while we’re at it. In today’s scripture, it talks about how we are justified and made righteous through faith in Jesus Christ. But in Greek, it’s ambiguous. “Faith in Jesus Christ” could, in fact, mean, “faith of Jesus Christ.”
In his book, Eric Smith suggests that this second way of interpreting the passage is probably more correct than the way we’re used to hearing it. He writes:
“The faith (or, faithfulness) belongs to Jesus, not to us. Humans’ belief or unbelief in the saving power of Jesus isn’t what saves them. Instead, what saves us is Jesus’ obedience to his mission.”
The faithfulness of Jesus is what saves us, is what brings us healing and wholeness… that’s what this means? It kinda rocks your world, doesn’t it?
And faith itself is not simply a verbal affirmation. One doesn’t become a Christian simply by saying, “I believe that Jesus saves me from my sins.” One becomes a Christian by believing in Jesus, believing in his mission, and the kingdom that he established on earth, which means aligning oneself with that kingdom by working for peace, for love, for unity, for hope, for healing, for wholeness, for affirmation and welcome to all people…!
Just as Paul did! Paul worked to bring the gentiles into the kingdom, to welcome them, so that they could receive God’s blessings - blessings of life in abundance.
And the reason for all this, as I’ve said before, is love. “For God so loved the world…” - not just me as an individual, but the whole world - “that he gave his only son.”
I’m sure God rejoices over every individual who receives life, who receives healing and wholeness… but that’s not enough for God. Because God loves the whole world, the work of Jesus won’t be complete until the whole world finds the healing, wholeness, and salvation that God offers.
And, as I’ve said before, even Paul admits that love is the absolute greatest thing there is. “Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Greater than faith! Love!
5
I’m still searching for all the right words. Writing this sermon has been helpful to me. I don’t know if it’s been helpful to you - I think I still need to work on figuring out how to say these things clearly and concisely.
But if you remember nothing else, remember this: God is love. Jesus is faithful - faithful to that love. And that brings healing. That brings wholeness. That brings salvation.
Even Paul testifies to this.
And if someone tries to present the gospel to you in a way that inflicts fear, or shame, or condemnation on you - that’s not the gospel of Jesus.
The gospel of Jesus is good news. The gospel of Jesus is a liberating gospel. A gospel that lifts up those who have been pushed down low.
It is a gospel of healing and wholeness.
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