Salvation Remixed

Further thoughts on salvation (you may also want to read KC's postings on the subject) based on ruminations on two (2) Scripture passages:

1. Mark 2:1-12

Here we've got a story about a paralyzed man, someone who couldn't move at all . . . Jesus is teaching/preaching out of a house, and it's so packed that there's hardly room to breathe, let alone move. Some friends of the paralyzed man have brought him to Jesus, fully believing that they can be healed. But they can't get it. No matter what they try to do, they are denied entrance. The people in and around the house tell them that there is no more room, that they should've gotten there earlier, that they can come back when Jesus is done, etc., etc., and etc.

The paralyzed man and his friends could've left . . . but they didn't. The normal way to enter the house was through the front door . . . they thought of a different way.

I can almost imagine the indignation and criticism they would have received, both from the owners of the house and from the gathered crowd, as they joyfully commenced to tear open a hole in the roof of the house. But they didn't care - they kept going, until the hole was large enough for them to lower their paralyzed friend through the roof.

And Jesus? He didn't yell at them, he didn't chastise them, he didn't order them to act like everyone else was acting . . . he healed the paralyzed man. I can imagine he lost quite a few followers that day, and for good reason - he had acted in a way contrary to how everyone else thought a good, religious, pious Jewish messiah should act.

I think, like I mentioned before, that Jesus will get some of that same response at the end of time - some people will look at other people and start to tell them why they shouldn't be there, why they should be at the back of the line, or why they should be in another line altogether (one moving toward a place with no air conditioning, if you know what I mean! [yes, I stole that phrase from Whose Line Is It Anyway? - I love the show!]). Jesus will watch as the lines shift, those who are sure of their entrance into heaven moving to the front, those not so sure anymore moving to the back . . . and then Jesus will smile, call to those in the back, and have them come forward, entering heaven not in the usual way, but through an entrance large enough to accommodate the love of our Lord and Savior who redeemed all people.

Those that lived lives not-quite-measuring-up-to what a respectable Christian life will enter heaven first . . . . . . . I think Jesus said a few things about the first being last somewhere in the gospels. :-)


2) Luke 15

Three of my favorite parables, all having to do with something lost turning into something found: a shepherd finding a lost sheep, a woman finding a lost coin, and a father finding a lost son. All three of them speak to me of salvation, of the way that God endlessly pursues us and tries to seduce us into a living & loving relationship with the Divine.

In the first two stories, the sheep and the coin have only one action: to get lost. Simple. Direct. To the Point. No way they can mess that up! The people, on the other hand, have the much harder part: finding the lost thing (they're always in the last place you look!).

The last story, however, has more action . . . more drama. We've got two sons and a father . . . the younger sons wants his share of the inheritance . . . tantamount to going up to his dad and saying: "why aren't you dead yet? I want the money, the stuff I'm supposed to get when you die . . . hurry up already!"

The father hands it over, the son liquidates it all, takes the money, and head for Las Vegas, intent on having fun forever. Forever turns out to be shorter then he expected, and he has to take odd jobs, jobs that no respectable Jewish boy would ever take . . . til one day he decides that working for his dad might be a bit better then his current living conditions. He goes back, and this is where the story gets interesting.

His dad, we're told, has been on the lookout for him every single day. When he spots his son, he runs (something no self-respecting Jewish father of the time would ever do in public) to his son, stops him in mid-confession, and commences to throw the wildest party since God created the universe.

I'm sure he got criticized: what are you trying to do . . . spoil him? You mean you didn't even lecture him? Didn't gloat? You didn't reprimand him? You aren't going to make him pay back the money he wasted? You approve of what he did and how he lived? And on and on and on.

Even his own other son didn't want to be part of the celebration . . . to quote the NAB, he said: "Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf."

Again, I sometimes think that Christians will give God the same response: we followed the commandments, we lived out the beatitudes, we attended Church, we confessed Jesus as Lord, we read Hugo's blog daily, we did all the works of mercy, we prayed daily, we read the Bible and they didn't!

And I think God will answer the same way one Jewish dad answered his son in a story: "My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found." In other words, we were already blessed our whole lives long to live and move and have our being in God's presence - to fully acknowledge the wonderful and terrible presence of God's own Spirit in our lives, transforming us - moment by moment - into the image of his Son. We've already been given a foretaste of heaven . . . who are we to deny it to others just because they were not fortunate enough to experience that foretaste here on earth?

Would that we always remember that each and every one of us has been and is currently the lost son . . . and that God is continually looking out for us, whether we make our confession at 1, 10, 100 years of age . . . or .00000001 seconds before we die.

Blessings & Peace,
Hugo