Are you saved?
October 24, 2004
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Luke 18: 9-14
This Bible is something I’ve saved from my past. It holds an elusive history for me. It was my paternal Grandmother’s Bible. Her name was Lillian. She died of cancer before I was born. Everyone on my Dad’s side says I take after Lillian. She wasn’t a Bible reader, you can tell this book was rarely if ever opened. My Grandpa Huck gave it to me before he died. He went through a lot of her things and gave them to the grandkids he thought would value them the most. This sat on the bedside table where she left it for at least 20 years. You can tell by how the binding is bent and how stiff the cover is, it sat for that long, unopened. But, it was opened to record a few family dates. And, as someone who is estranged from a biological family, this book provides the dates of the grandparents' births and deaths, the ages of my father and his brother. This book tells me a story of how religious my family of origin was and holds history I otherwise would not have known. I saved this Bible in order to remind me of my roots, my history, and something older than myself.
I was working on my sermon yesterday after the end of the sale. I had made quite a bit of progress when I accidentally closed too many windows and exited my word program. Of course, there is nothing like that feeling when you’re sitting there staring at the screen where words once ran the length of the page. Luckily the machine is smarter than I am and had automatically saved what had been done. And, with the click of a few keys I could return to where I left off. The machine had saved my document.
By the time I got to college, I was ready to be independent and out on my own. I loved learning, being immersed in a new community of people, and finding out more about my faith and what I was being called to do. My first week at college I joined a group known as Intervarsity. They gathered every Thursday night and sang praise songs, gave testimonies about their faith journeys, read Bible passages, and we prayed a lot. They also provided a lot of social activities for people not interested in drinking or drugging. Another night of the week you could gather with your small group and do Bible study. I LOVED it. I rarely missed. I’ve been geeked up about God for a long time and at last it was an opportunity to make it part of every day without consequences. Until it happened. Every Freshman was assigned a mentor who was a junior or a senior. My mentor’s name was Leslie. She was a compassionate, kind, soft-spoken senior. She amazed me. I couldn’t believe she would be willing to hang out with me. She’d have me over for dinner at her house where she lived with two other roommates. We’d do Bible study in her room. She’d pray for me and check in about classes and important tests. And again, I have to say, I LOVED it. But, after we finished the book of Galations, after we’d spent about 15 weeks bonding she wanted to spend some time praying with me. She asked me, Briget, are you saved? And I thought. Saved. Saved like my Grandmother’s Bible? A memento that reminds me of historic significance? Saved. Did she mean like the paper I had saved earlier that day for Greek Drama class on the computer? A paper? A possession? A technical feat accomplished? Saved…
Leslie prodded, Briget are you saved? Have you saved your life forever by turning it over to Jesus? I blinked. Let me show you, she said. So there we sat on the floor in her bedroom. Our backs resting against her yellow comforter with the lace white dust ruffle. And she showed me my first tract. A small booklet containing the steps to becoming “saved”. It was short. Probably only 12 pages in all. Each page having only maybe 10 words on it and an illustration. Basically, it went something like this. God created man. (There was a stick person with the word You written across it. Of course, I was so unaware of what was going on I thought this was going to be about dating men at this point. I had no idea the man was supposed to be me.) Man is separated from God. (Dramatic illustration of stick man standing on cliff. Then on the next page was another cliff with the word God standing on top of it.) Man, himself, cannot connect himself to God. Then the next few pages were about the crucifixion and death of Christ which paid the price for the useless stick figure man, culminating in the last two pages which were the original illustration of Man on cliff, God on cliff and full color white Jesus stretched out like a bridge between the two allowing the man to reach God. As if this wouldn’t be enough to process… Leslie turns to me and says, Briget, you don’t want to be clinging to that cliff on your own without hope do you? You don’t want to be separated from God do you? I said, no of course not. Leslie smiles and turns the page. If you sign your name here and now we can pray that God will accept you into his realm and that Jesus will help direct your life toward God. Just sign right here on the line. I said, really? You really think that God is watching and that my relationship to God has been false because I haven’t had this booklet and I haven’t signed a piece of paper? Now she was blinking and looking confused. Briget, I don’t understand, Leslie said, Don’t you want to be saved?
And this is where our tradition parts from that of the Christian Right. We believe as the story in 2 Timothy reminds, that the Lord never leaves us. We believe that righteousness comes from internalization, from going deeper within. We believe that when God’s love becomes a possession it becomes idolatrous self love. When this shift takes place prayer becomes boasting just as in our passage from Luke today. The pious man can’t receive a gift from God because he’s too busy counting his possessions. His prayer is peripheral vision. He assumes God’s role. He assumes his righteousness allows him to judge. He even takes it one step further and reminds God of the deficiency of the tax collector, as if God doesn’t know! We believe that righteousness comes from simplicity and truth. Righteousness comes from the example of the Tax agent. Yes, he’s a sinner he says, but he wants God’s gift because he has none of his own. He needs and recognizes his need for God’s gift. He receives the gift.
Prayer is faith in action. Prayer isn’t piety to demonstrate one’s relationship with God. Prayer IS relationship with God. Faith is daily interaction with God. When I hear someone saying, I am saved are you? I pray, God how are we? For, I’m not interested in a static, historic, event. I want to be rapt up in the God who is still speaking, the God who lives within me and never leaves me, the God who knows when I falter as well as when I bear witness with my life. I hope I’m never saved but pray I’m constantly growing a new life, a new learning, a deeper relationship with God. And none of it is dependent on paper or ownership. Instead it is only dependent on my willingness to be open to the simple presence of God’s everyday presence in my life and remembering to bear witness to that presence. I am not saved. I don’t own God. I am still working to hear how God is speaking to me and that requires an active, ongoing, daily relationship. Am I saved? God knows…Amen