Salvation: Closer Than You Think
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
March 14, 2004 The Third Sunday of Lent
Luke 19: 1-10
Robert Raines, pastor and former seminary president, shares this story: “In July, 1980, our family was gathered at the family cottage to celebrate my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. Several years earlier, my father had lost his wedding ring there. Thorough searching failed to uncover it, so another ring was purchased. That July, my eleven-year-old stepson, Matt, was playing by the swing near the cottage. He saw something glistening on the ground. He picked it up, a gold ring, and brought it to his mother. Inside its worn surface we read: July 14, 1920. It was my father’s lost wedding ring! Matt was somewhat reluctantly persuaded to keep the secret until the anniversary celebration five days hence. My parents could scarcely believe the serendipity of the lost and found ring in the 60th year of their marriage. All of us wondered about the marvelous synchronicity of a child at play who found such a treasure hidden underfoot in the soil of the years.” Something so valuable, so precious, so important…and all the time, so very close.
“Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house.’” Salvation, like that lost and found ring …something so valuable, so important, so precious…and all the time, so very close – as close as today.
Last week I suggested that churches like ours need to re-claim the old concept of being born again. Today I want to suggest that the idea of “salvation” is another one of those old concepts, those old words, that we don’t use much anymore but that we need to reclaim. And why? “Today salvation has come to this house.” Today, not tomorrow, not in some great by and by; but today. Salvation is all about today, about how we are living our lives as people of faith right now. That is just how close it is.
What do you think of that? I suspect that for many of us, salvation is something we have associated with the afterlife – to be saved is to go to heaven. “Believe in Jesus and be saved.” If you want to go to heaven, it might be a good idea to take Jesus seriously and if you don’t, well, you don’t want to even consider the alternative. But in his book, The Heart of Christianity, Marcus Borg says that the Biblical concept of salvation, and certainly Jesus’ concept of salvation, is much more focused on the here and now – on this world, not the next. In his words, “Salvation in the Bible is primarily a this-worldly phenomenon. It happens here. But what is it? The root of the English word is helpful. It comes from a Latin word that means ‘wholeness’ or ‘healing.’ (the same root from which we get the word ‘salve,’ a healing agent) Thus, in its broadest sense, salvation means becoming whole and being healed…healed of all the wounds of existence.”
Which brings me back to Zacchaeus. Why does salvation come to his house? Because healing has happened, wholeness has been restored – both for him and for his wider community.
This year, as we mark the 100th birthday of the Theodore Geisel – aka Dr. Seuss – (another great source of sermon illustrations!) I recall one of his books which, one might say, is all about this idea of salvation – Happy Birthday to Me: An excerpt:
If we didn’t have birthdays, you wouldn’t be you
If you’d never been born, well then what would you do?
If you’d never been born, well then what would you be?
You might be a fish! Or a toad in a tree!
You might be a doorknob! Or three baked potatoes!
You might be a bag full of hard green tomatoes.
Or worse than all that…why…you might be a WASN’T!
A Wasn’t has no fun at all. No, it just doesn’t!
A Wasn’t just isn’t. It just isn’t present.
But you! You ARE YOU! Now isn’t that pleasant!
Today you are you! That is truer than true!
There is no one alive who is you-er than you!
Shout loud, ‘I am lucky to be what I am!
Thank goodness I’m not just a clam or a ham
Or a dusty old jar of sour gooseberry jam!
I am what I am! That’s a great thing to be!
If I say so myself, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!
In the presence of Jesus, Zacchaeus has just this kind of birthday, and I want to call it salvation. This hated little man, who no doubt hated himself most of all, finds himself, much to his surprise, caught up, lifted up, surrounded, by the acceptance and love of God in Christ. “Zacchaeus, come down out of that tree. I’m having lunch with you today!” “Are you talking to me?” When do you suppose was the last time anyone had been to his house for lunch? But Jesus is coming, and for Zacchaeus, life will not be the same again.
And that is salvation – a rather religious sounding phrase for something deeply human. In the words of one of my mentors in ministry, Bill Nelson, “Salvation is to know that God says ‘Yes!’ to me. God does so, knowing the full reach of my delinquencies. God does so understanding the wide arch of my humanness. And just as God accepts me, so must I accept myself. That does not mean I cannot thereafter grow, nor change nor enlarge my life. But it does mean that God saves the You that is You. And when you shall have accepted that, you shall know salvation.” “I am what I am! That’s a great thing to be! If I say so myself, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!”
Some of you may be familiar with the graveside scene in Arthur Miller’s, Death of a Salesman. One of Willie Loman’s sons, standing by the casket of his father, says with rare discernment, “He never knew who he was.” I suspect we have all had moments, perhaps more than we care to remember, when we have known precisely that he is talking about – moments when we lose sight of who we are and whose we are, moments – to use biblical terms – of wandering and exile. In Borg’s words, “Psychologically and spiritually, exile is a condition of alienation, a sense of being cut off from a center of meaning and energy. The solution is a journey of return, a journey that God both invites and energizes…The story of salvation is a story of reconnection with the one in whom we live and move and have our being, the one who has always been there even though we have been estranged.”
“He never knew who he was.” He never heard God’s “Yes!” in the midst of the world’s “No!” For Willie Loman, a life of exile, of never being home even when he was home. Zacchaeus, on the other hand, through the invitation of Jesus, through his acceptance of Jesus’ acceptance, does find his way home. “I once was lost, but now am found,” again not in the great by and by, but in this life, in this world, today. Jesus is the way, the way home. Wholeness is restored. Salvation.
But finally, not just for Zacchaeus. Wholeness also comes to his community. “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” This isn’t just healing for Zacchaeus. Salvation also includes a community dimension. It isn’t just about me and my life. Salvation is about life together. As Borg says, “Salvation is about peace and justice within community and beyond community. It is about shalom, a word connoting not simply peace as the absence of war, but peace as the wholeness of a community living together in peace and justice. Salvation is never only an individual affair.”
I find it interesting that Jesus does not pronounce salvation until Zacchaeus reaches out a helping hand to his community. You get the feeling that individual salvation, as important as it is, is only the first step. As St. Augustine said so many years ago, and this is one of Bishop Desmond Tutu’s favorite quotes: “God without us will not, as we without God cannot.” God needs us as players in this great drama of salvation. We are all in this together, folks. As one colleague has said, “Salvation is a relationship. It is discovering you are not alone. It is knowing Someone cares. It is taking the chance and opening yourself to others and to God. It is having the courage to be vulnerable – and to find that life is not most lovely when it is least dangerous, nor most beautiful when it is only safe...The truth of the matter is this: there is no salvation apart from other persons, other persons who bring us both joy and sorrow, both laughter and tears.” Remember…finally it is those who give their lives away in the spirit of Christ who find true life, who know salvation, a salvation which is always risky and adventuresome because it is so very human and loving. Always we need to ask, am I really interested in salvation or only safety? Do I really want to reach out to others trustingly if later it may cost me tears? Do I want to be touched by the presence of God if later God might ask me to do something worthwhile or even costly with my life? Zacchaeus made his answer. We must make ours. Salvation is not always safe.
And finally, as he so often does, I think Frederick Buechner pretty well sums up our text and what I have been trying to say today when he writes: “Who knows how the awareness of God’s love first hits people. Every person has his or her own tale to tell, including the person who wouldn’t believe in God if you paid him. Some moment happens in your life that you say YES to right up to the roots of your hair, a moment that makes it worth having been born just to have happen. Laughing with somebody till the tears run down your cheeks. Waking up to the first snow. Being in bed with somebody you love. Whether you thank God for such a moment or thank your lucky stars, it is a moment that is trying to open up your whole life. If you turn your back on such a moment and hurry to Business as Usual, you may lose the whole ball game. But if you throw your arms around such a moment and hug it like crazy, it just might save your soul.” That’s wholeness, that’s healing, that’s transformation, that’s home, and that’s salvation.