salvation

“Jesus saves - he couldn’t do it on my salary!”  That is the best theological bumper sticker I’ve ever seen.  Alright, that’s only because I have a very sick sense of humour (but then I’m convinced God has, too: after all, God invented nakedness …) but it pokes fun beautifully at the glib, sloganising rubbish that passes for the astonishing reality of the salvation that God has for the world in Jesus Christ.

If I’ve become convinced of one thing over the years as I’ve read and re-read the gospel stories, it’s this: Jesus came to make a difference to this world.  Whatever salvation is, Jesus was quite clear: it was about transforming this world into what he called the Kingdom of God.  It’s what he teaches his disciples to pray:

Your kingdom come; your will be done on earth …

And then he goes on: “Give us today our daily bread“.  Jesus is talking about eating - having enough food to make it through the next 24 hours.  There’s all the stress on the transformation of life and priorities, too, isn’t there?  He spends enormous amounts of energy trying to change the way people live together!  He keeps telling them, “You do not owe ultimate allegiance to Caesar, but to God; and actually, God is far more radically loving, forgiving and accepting than the religious leaders would have you believe!  They’re interested in power, wealth and influence; God is compassionate and cares most about the ‘little people’!”

This wasn’t a message guaranteed to win him friends and influence.  And it didn’t.  Jesus dies for his message.  And if we take Mark as the oldest gospel account (and most uncomfortable at this point), we discover Jesus dying utterly alone, abandoned by his friends and followers and tortured by the experience of being abandoned too by the God whom he called Father.

We’ve got to ask why Jesus got killed.  What was it about his message that so got up people’s noses that he had to be exterminated?  After all, if his message was “Don’t worry about the present: the important thing is believing in me so that when you die you’ll go to heaven”, it’s diffiuclt to see why it would provoke the enormous opposition it did.    Remember: Jesus dies as a blasphemer and political agitator.  The problem was not that Jesus wanted people to “go to heaven when they died”; the scandal was that he seemed to think that God had given him the job of brininging heaven down to earth!  In other words, salvation had to do with the “here and now”, not only the “hereafter”!  Note that I say, ’ …not only the “hereafter”‘: I believe absolutely in life after death, but I believe that the most significant thing about the salvation Jesus brings (as opposed to what the Church has mostly preached) is that it is for this life first.

That is why Jesus lays so much emphasis on the very least in society.  He insists that they must be first - that their lives must alter.  But if that is to happen - if the poor are to have enough, and the people who are written off drawn into the very centre of society and faith, then the whole system has to change.  Those in power (religious and political) will not be able to hang on to their power because it is the present system that creates the “in and out” boundaries.  If Lazarus is to live and thrive rather than lie dying at his gate; if Lazarus is to be treated as someone of importance to the richest and most powerful, then Dives will not be able to remain locked away in his castle!  Jesus is not talking about reform; he is talking about revolution - or rather, re-creation.  He comes as a one-person declaration of war upon the kingdoms of this world, and faces them with the Kingdom of God.

Salvation for this world.  That is Jesus’ mission -a dn the mission he leaves us with.  We who pray “Your Kingdom come; your will be done on earth as in heaven” cannot then sit by and do nothing.  To pray the Lord’s Prayer is to pray, “Change the world, Lord - and use me to do it!”