Can you remember a time when you were not saved?  There are those who can.  I have known people who remember the date when they became a Christian.  In college, for a time, I attended a student-led Bible study group.  I’ve forgotten the names, but I distinctly remember some who said they knew the exact date when they became Christians.

A portion of our time together in that group was spent celebrating these second births.  We stood in a circle, held hands, and sang a song to the tune of Happy Birthday.  The song was sung as a round and in turn students called out the date when they were born again which was followed by shouts of Amen and Praise the Lord. 

As a 19 year old who had been confirmed in the Presbyterian Church, I didn’t know what to make of this exercise.  I wasn’t sure what being born again meant, or exactly how one got born again, but the thought of being born again appealed to me.  Having a powerful, definitive experience of grace resolved some of the questions 19 year olds face, questions of belonging, identity, morality. 

The year was 1972.  The Vietnam War was in full swing. I was classified IA and had determined that if drafted I would enlist in the Navy.  I liked boats and the water and thought my chances of survival greater at sea than in the jungles of Vietnam.

When I enrolled that freshman year, they asked what I wanted to study.  I considered PE and thought about coaching but for some reason I declared Business as my major.   After introductory courses in economics and accounting, which excited me as much as watching paint dry, I was reasonably certain that I would not follow in my father’s footsteps.  Like most 19 year olds, I didn’t know what I wanted to do but figured it would come to me and I’d know.

I attended church a few times those first months away from home. I tried the Presbyterian Church. Though smaller than the church I grew up in, it was familiar.  I also went to a Methodist church a time or two, but mostly I slept in or left town on weekends.

Then along came the Bible study.  A friend invited me.  My friend and I had spent many hours talking about religion.  In high school, I had been in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I was active in my church youth group. I ushered some Sundays and once served on a Search Committee.  I was churched and considered myself a Christian but over the course of time, through conversations with my friend; I realized that there was a gap between what I believed and how I lived. My Bible study friends seemed to have something I didn’t have.  I’m not sure exactly how to put it, but their faith seemed very real, not like a jacket worn on Sundays their truth had gravity that defined them all of the time.  I wanted that truth. 

I didn’t know much about the Bible. I didn’t know much about church history or doctrine.  I remember once stumbling upon a section in the library that was filled with books about the Bible—commentaries and works like that.  I rushed back to tell my roommate—“You won’t believe this, there’s a whole section in the library all about the Bible!” 

What did I know about the Bible?  But I began to read.  I started with Matthew.  I thought it odd that Mark and Luke repeated everything Matthew said—somehow I had missed that in Sunday school.  But I kept reading. A new world was opening to me. And I kept going to the Bible study.  I enjoyed the music. It was guitar based and I liked that but the thing that kept me coming back was an aliveness I had not experienced in the church of my youth. 

I remember telling my father about that once while home on vacation.  My father had been a Sunday school teacher, choir member, deacon, and a graduate of Davidson College in the days when chapel was mandatory.  I told my father, “The institutional church is dead.”  My father was patient.  He probably wanted to smack me in the mouth, but he didn’t.  He had the good sense to realize that something important was happening in my life and he didn’t want to squelch that enthusiasm.  But he did point out good things the institutional church had done—things at the time I was only remotely aware of—the creation of hospitals, schools, colleges.  “Weren’t they evidence that the church had some things right?”  In time I would listen to that wisdom, but at the time I was convinced that the church was dead and that there was a clear distinction between the saved and not saved and that many in the institutional church were among the “not saved.”

That was thirty-five years ago.  How have my views changed?  What does it mean to say we are “saved?”  Is salvation something that happens to us all at once or is it gradual--a process?  Can it be both? What are we saved from? What are we saved for?

 

First, let me say that I don’t think the church is dead. I think it’s very much alive.  God works through the church.  If I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t be here.  Yes, God works outside the church.  God is not limited to the church.  And thank goodness for that.  God is greater than the church, but the church is where Christians gather. 

You often hear that folks today are spiritual but not religious.  Some even go so far as to say, “I don’t need the church to be a Christian.”  I can understand that but if you’re a Christian you want to be a part of the church and I don’t mean having your name on a church roll.  Having your name on a church roll doesn’t mean much if you’re not involved. 

Christians want to be with other Christians.  Jesus created the church.  Yes, it is true that being churched sometimes gets in the way of being a Christian.  Churches can forget what they’re about. We can lose our way and get lost in the fog of religion. 

Seventy years ago, a young German pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, coined the phrase “religionless Christianity.”  While Bonhoeffer didn’t live to fully explain his idea, his letters from a Nazi prison offer hints. He was after a distinction between the form faith assumes and its interior.   In one of his letters, he refers to religion as “a garment,” which, he observed, has “looked very different at different times” in the history of Christianity.  

Said differently, clothes do not make the man.  The church is at its best when it’s not hung up on clothes.  There is, for example, a great debate in the church today over music for worship, but ultimately whether we sing to guitars or pipe organs is a matter of style and not substance. Likewise, I don’t think God cares whether preachers wear long black robes or golf shirts.  When you’re hungry it doesn’t matter whether you eat off paper plates or fine china; only that you’re fed.

That said, we never escape the fog of religion, at least not in this life.  Faith always assumes some form. And while it’s wise to pay attention to form we ought never to confuse form with the thing itself.

So, yes, Christians need the church, but it’s not a building or a worship style we need—we need the living Christ, which brings us to the question of salvation.  What does it mean to say we are saved?  Are we saved all at once or over time? What are we saved from?  What are we saved for?

 

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians expresses the classical Protestant definition of salvation:  “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the results of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

If you ask Paul what we’re saved from, his short answer is sin.  Sin, for Paul, is not so much what we do wrong as it is the power that holds us captive.  And that power leads to death both spiritually and literally.  As the Bible tells it, we’re saved from sin and death.  Sin and death are inescapable. We cannot on our own extricate ourselves from sin or death.  We must have help. And the help we need is God’s grace. 

Calvin believed we come to God empty.  “Faith,” he wrote, “brings a man empty to God, that he may be filled with the blessing of Christ.”  The thing we need to save us, namely grace by faith, is not something we create.  It is a gift received.

When I was a little boy, seven maybe eight years old, I believed in Santa Claus.  My parents told me that when Santa came to our house he would only leave gifts if I were sleeping.  Naturally, I stayed awake all night. 

Have you ever tried to make yourself sleep?  To this day, I find that very difficult.  Try as I might, I can’t make myself sleep.  I toss one way and then another. I throw off the blanket, pull it back on again.  Get up, drink water. Sometimes I read. I even pray, “Lord, please let me sleep. I’m so tired and I’ve got a lot to do tomorrow. Please let me sleep.”

During the day, I have no trouble falling asleep.  I find that to sleep I don’t have to do anything at all—I just sleep. 

I have found that faith works something like that—the more I try to have faith, the less of it I have.  And I’ve tried a lot of things—I went to a revival once. In fact, I’ve been to more than one.  My friend and I stopped in one night at a little Baptist Church that was having a revival down the mountain from where we went to school.  I listened to that preacher tell all about the torments of hell and the promise of heaven.  I used to listen to Billy Graham.  Billy only preached one sermon. It was a good sermon—repent and believe, give your life to Jesus. 

I heard Nicky Cruz preach that same sermon. And Nicky talked about how he’d lived a life of sin. He was a member of a gang in Hell’s Kitchen—think West Side Story only without the song and dance.  Jesus saved Nicky from that, pulled him from the fire. 

I’ve heard folks from AA say something like that—they were powerless over drink and had to concede to a higher power. I’ve heard racists use that same kind of language—folks once filled with hate for the black man, the Jew, and Jesus saved them—took all of that meanness away.  I’ve heard young adults who’ve lost their way—maybe an affair, an abortion, some terrible thing in their life that made them want to give up on living—they found Jesus and he saved them.  And I believe it’s true. 

Jesus can take the worst in us and make the best of us.  It’s something like falling asleep, a letting go that makes you safe, that binds up your wounds, that makes you alive again, that takes away the shame and the guilt you have no place else to put and does away with it.

Salvation can happen all at once but it also happens everyday.  We come empty to God and God fills our cup.  We don’t all come the same way. We don’t use the same words, but we come to God and God fills our hearts.  The Word spoken before the creation of the world sinks into our soul and we discover that we are not alone. We are beloved. 

For followers of Jesus, Christ is the “riches of God’s grace in kindness.”  That’s what being saved means to me.  God is kind and God’s kindness wins.  Kindness does not lack courage.  Kindness does not lack strength.  Kindness is not without justice.  Kindness should not be confused with sentimentality or nostalgia.  God’s kindness redeems. It takes us from where we are to where we need to be.  God’s kindness does not leave us unchanged or lost in our sin.  God’s kindness makes us alive.  God’s kindness gives us joy. It gives us rest, Sabbath, shalom.  God’s kindness makes us what we are supposed to be—Good Works prepared before the foundation of the world—Good Works as our way of life.  That’s what being saved does for us. It makes us into the people God called us to be from the foundation of the world.  Amen.