What is Salvation?
Ask Me Anything
Week 21: What is Salvation?
What is the Methodist view of salvation? Is more than a personal relationship with God needed for salvation (i.e. good deeds)?
I’ve heard that we are all sinners and broken but can only be made whole through Jesus’ love and God’s love. But if God is love, then how are we sinners if we are made in His image?
Can Christianity and free will coexist? If I CHOOSE to sin, then God isn’t responsible, but if I do something great then it’s by the glory of God. God obviously allowed the situation to occur, but God cannot get all the credit for everything given sin, right? God taking credit for all the good things but none of the bad seems like a cop out.
Is Jesus really the only way? What about other religions?
What is the purpose of faith? Why does God want everyone to believe? (Why did we propagate evangelism so much that it became harmful?)
I want to highlight one piece of the first submitted question. The question asks, "What is the Methodist view of salvation? Is more than a personal relationship with God needed for salvation (i.e. good deeds)?" This main view of salvation highlights individual salvation. It is a personal, internal thing for you. Not you and your friend, but you specifically. There isn't room in this interpretation for collective salvation, or for ongoing salvation. This is a moment of salvation, and accepting Jesus into your heart. I can't tell you the number of times I went to Winter Jam or some other youth conference and wept because I was told I was sinful and broken and I believed them, so I raised my hand, said a prayer, and accepted an alter call. We are told over and over that we are despicable and broken, which has irreversible effects on our self-worth and mental health. Jesus spoke of resurrection, healing and new life. Healing is an ongoing process. John Wesley spoke of salvation as an ongoing process, he talked about it as the "working out of our own salvation." In Sunday's sermon, Pastor Jewell even touched on the fact that John Wesley did believe we can obtain salvation in this life time, but that it is the ongoing process of seeking to stray from sin and achieve salvation. I have heard a lot of different takes on Wesley's notion of achieving salvation during our lifetime, and I think it's an interesting thing to think about. In general, I do believe salvation is ongoing work and not a specific moment in time. If we believe it is a specific moment, where we accept Jesus and get a ticket to heaven, in some ways that feels like a cop out, like none of the things you do after that have consequences. Or the opposite of always questioning and fearing that you aren't in good standing with God but need to continuously re-accept Jesus.
When we talk about Jesus, we focus a great deal on the crucifixion, we dabble with the resurrection, and tack on a short honorable mention of the rest of his ministry. Why is it that we are so preoccupied with the death, and not the message the stories of Jesus are conveying? Sermons are centered on Pauline theology of sin and salvation, and rarely do we meditate on the wonderful, perplexing stories of Jesus. In the Deconstructionists Playbook, author Carla Sofía Vargas writes, "When one reads the stories of Jesus in the Gospels, it is easy to fall in love with the life and struggle of the man who spent every second of his ministry loving the unprotected, fighting against injustice, and going against every system of oppression-moral, religious, social, and political--in his speeches, teachings, and (above all) his actions. If every person is a beautiful canvas of identities (for example, I celebrate that I am a woman, a Latina-mestiza, Nicaraguan, lesbian, and Christian), why don't we think the same of Jesus?"
Very little is known about the actual history of Jesus, simply because history usually isn’t set up to write and discuss the lives of relatively average humans. Jesus lived as most have throughout human history—poor and in less than desirable conditions. All of our information about Jesus was second-hand, and well after the crucifixion. Therefore, the best way to uncover who Jesus was, is through how his followers talked about Jesus. In his ministry, Jesus proclaimed the good news primarily in the smaller towns and villages throughout Galilee. He seemed to avoid big towns, until the end of his ministry, likely because people wouldn't have liked or related to his message. Jesus spoke mostly in agricultural parables that would’ve heavily related to the mistreated and abused of society and not the rich. An integral part of Jesus’s ministry was performing miracles; however, in this time period, there was actually nothing spectacular about being a miracle worker. At the time, the most prominent figures were miracle workers, including Vespasian, a former Roman Emperor. The thing that was special was that it was a lower-class Jew. His stories were endearing to the poorer agrarian class. Throughout his ministry, Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God. This is both fully religious and political in nature. It is also a dangerous critique of the Roman empire, insinuating that the Roman kingdom is not the system intended by God. Everything Jesus is doing is politically dangerous. Followers likely would have expected Jesus to eventually be killed by the state.
One of my personal favorite stories is the resurrection of Lazarus found in John 11:17-44 (NIV). Lazarus was a good friend of Jesus'. Mary and Martha were his sisters. Leading up to this passage, Jesus hears that Lazarus was sick, Jesus waited where he was for two more days, instead of traveling to Bethany to be with him. When Jesus finally made it to Bethany, Lazarus had been dead for four days. This is significant, the Judean belief was that the breath (or life force) remained hovering above a body for three days. During this time there was hope that the person could come back to life. With Lazarus being dead four days, hope was lost. When Jesus greets Martha, he claims that Lazarus will rise again, and that he is the resurrection and the life. Then Mary comes and she falls weeping at his feet. Jesus is moved and asks to see the body and begins to weep.
38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 “Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
Not only did Jesus heal someone who seemed too far gone, he invited the community into that healing. And he didn't do it in a detached way, he deeply felt the emotions, grief, and care. Jesus was deeply involved in Lazarus' healing. There is a theologian who talks about this story in terms of queer people coming out, which is beautiful imagery. This story has so much potential for thinking of Jesus as a healer, inviting us into our most healed selves, and inviting that to happen within community. In their devotional entitled Collective Liberation, Rozella Haydée White says, "Here's the thing about liberation: it can only be experienced individually if it is shared collectively. In Jesus, we see that God was not simply concerned about the individual, but with the collective." Salvation is not merely an individual experience. Injustice is felt on a communal scale and so is salvation. We limit salvation when we think of it solely as something that happens to individuals.
In the Deconstructionists Playbook, Rev. Miriam Samuelson-Roberts writes about Jesus as a healer. Many stories in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke), such as the healing of Lazarus, tell the stories of Jesus healing people and bringing them back into community. Rev. Samuelson-Roberts writes, "There is a therapist in my community who asks people, 'What does your healed self look like?' … Not a new self, not a better self, but a healed self. Take some time to live into that idea." When we get the notion that Jesus replaces us with some perfect cookie-cutter version of ourselves at a specific moment dubbed as salvation, we miss out on an opportunity for healing. What if instead, salvation was viewed as collective healing? What if we urged and encouraged each other into the healed versions of ourselves? Salvation is communal, not individual. It has always been meant for collective union with God. John Wesley described it as the working out of our salvation, implying that it is active, ongoing work. Methodists tend to believe salvation is ongoing, not a finite moment in time. To me, this is the purpose of faith, the working out and wrestling with our beliefs in order to better connect with the divine and partner in the liberatory work to be done within this universe.
I don't believe the gospel, the good news of liberation from sin, is exclusive. What I mean by that is I have a hard time believing God is going to only want Christians liberated. I think that God wants everyone to thrive, be healed and free from oppression, and I'm not sure the religious label matters as much to the God as it does to us. Jesus was concerned about motivation, intention, justice, peace, and loving our neighbor. He wanted the good news to be shared, but I'm not sure that bible-thumping, turn or burn evangelism is what he had in mind. Do I believe that Christ is the way to salvation? I do. Do I believe Christ is the only way? I could be totally off base in saying this, but I feel like that would limit God. I feel like it is the way I resonate and connect with God, and the way I have found healing and hope in my life, but who am I to say everyone else is wrong and going to hell? We need to stop viewing sin and salvation as only determining our afterlife. There is salvation possible within this lifetime. Jesus appeared within our history, to liberate us now, and regardless of what we believe to be true of the afterlife, there is healing to happen now.
White says, "To be a follower of Christ is to be a seeker and creator of liberation. Liberation brings healing, and God wants us to be made well and be whole. The signs that we are in bondage and sin are all around us. And when I use the term sin in this context, I am specifically talking about a fundamental condition of being inwardly focused and disconnected from God, from others, and from ourselves. This is sin. This is brokenness. This is the condition from which we are seeking liberation."
Discussion Questions:
What has salvation meant to you?
How do you feel about the idea of salvation as an ongoing process of healing?
Thinking about the story of Lazarus, how can we invite community into our salvation process?