30^th April 2014

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley Sunday 6 April 2014

Lessons - Genesis 18:22-32; 2 Corinthians 5:14-21; John 15:9-17

'For us and for our salvation ... he became truly human.' (Nicene Creed)

Our hymns and liturgies are full of references to Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world. But we are reluctant to admit that we need to be 'saved' because it presupposes that we are not in control of our destiny.
Naturally, this makes us uneasy - especially when we think of aggressive fire-and-brimstone preachers condemning us to hell.

A common response to the intrusive question 'Brother / Sister, are you saved?' is to deny that we need divine 'rescue'. Believing that humans are basically 'good' - and not irreconcilably estranged from God and each another - we look for 'salvation' in education, good works and social justice. We are evangelical about 'saving' whales, the environment and the planet and 'saving' men, women and children from 'perishing' because of oppression, slavery, abuse, or poverty. However, we are not so passionate about 'saving' the unborn from abortion or society from destructive hedonism!

We are not against 'salvation', but often act as if we think that we can 'save' the world from disaster. What makes us mad is the belief that we need another person to 'save us from our sins'. It is humiliating and unnecessary. Fostering harmony among people of goodwill, not confession, is our solution to problems.

This kind of thinking is common in churches. Reacting against a narrow, individualistic idea of Jesus as 'Saviour of my soul', resources for 'Saving Jesus' have been produced and widely used to stop worshipping Christ and start following Jesus. Instead of deepening our understanding of the saving work of Christ in line with Scripture they believe that we must 'save Jesus'. The hubris!

Whilst rightly critical of those who badger us about 'sin' and scare people into 'being saved', they are blind to the extent of the human predicament and naive about what is required for things to be put right.
They are oblivious to the fact that none of us is 'truly human' as the incarnate Son of God is truly human. Ignoring the fact that none of us freely glorifies God and loves God's enemies as he does, they totally reject the notion that we need a Saviour to reconcile us to God and each other.

The experience of salvation has been 'suffocated over the long centuries of Christianity' (A Schmemann, I Believe p69). We have learned not to notice what is wrong in the world at large and in our own lives:
meaninglessness, death, evil, struggle for survival, lust for power, fear, brutality, superstition, self-indulgence and so on. The Church has become comfortable in a fallen world and lost sight of the magnificence of Christ's 'saving grace'.

The emphasis here must be on 'saving grace'. Salvation defines sin, not the other way around. 'What we are saved for is clearer and more powerful than what we are saved from.' (D Willis, Clues to the Nicene Creed, p87.)

When we see the blinding light of God's love for the world in the truly human Son of God, our eyes are opened to the One who heals our delusions of grandeur. That is why the Creeds do not say that we believe in sin, but in the 'forgiveness of sins'.

We might think that forgiveness is necessary, but baulk at believing that the One who is of one Being with the Father - the incarnate, crucified and risen Jesus - acted 'on our behalf' and 'for our sake' to free us from the power of sin and free us to be a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:14-21). It is puzzling to some and demeaning to others to believe that the one truly
human man acts for us to reconcile us to God and to one another.

Certainly, this unparalleled act of divine grace is impossible to explain adequately by comparison with any other experience. Paul puts it this way:
'And he died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised.' (2 Corinthians 5:15)

This sense of representing those who have done wrong by God and others is present in Genesis 18:22ff where the debauched cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are 'saved' from God's justifiable distress by the presence of just ten righteous men who seek mercy for their ungodly fellow citizens.
But there is no parallel with an act in which the one truly human person dies for the whole of humanity who are not fully human. The critical point is that it is only when, in Christ's life, death and resurrection, we see the fullness of divine love and the fullness of true humanity that we see our 'ungodliness' in the light of 'saving grace'. Compared with Christ's love for his Father and his mercy to godly and ungodly sinners alike, our
behaviour falls far short of God's high purpose 'for us'.

Elsewhere Paul says, 'While we were still sinners Christ died for us.'
(Romans 5:8) Remember! When Paul speaks of the 'ungodly' he includes not only the self-indulgent (as in Genesis 18:22ff) but those like him who justify themselves before God by their piety and good works. All of us
hate having our self-centredness exposed on the Cross of Jesus!

'For us and for our salvation he became truly human' means that Christ came to humanise us, not make us religious! 'Salvation' in Christ does not mean 'saving my soul from damnation' but the restoration of humanity to health, well-being and full-ness of life. God so loved the 'world' that he gave his only begotten Son ... (John 3:16). The love of Christ is supremely displayed in his death for all (2 Corinthians 5:14,15). This act of sacrificial love by which we are reconciled to God is unparalleled in human experience (John 15:13).

To 'be saved', then, is as Paul says, to be freed from the power of sin, reconciled to God and empowered to exercise the ministry of reconciliation.
The Church is a 'new creation' entrusted with the message to a world scarred and divided by evil that God 'does not count their sins against them' (2 Corinthians 17-20). Christ's death for all has transformed the world because, in him, God has reconciled his enemies
(those who hate his claim on them) to himself.

As we shall see in the events surrounding his trial and crucifixion, Jesus was regarded as the enemy of God (by the religious leaders), the enemy of the State (by Pilate) and the enemy of the people (by the mob). Already he had broken the Sabbath law, healed the sick and forgiven wrongdoers as if with Divine authority. In their eyes he was an immoral, blasphemous sinner!

Yet, in this truly human man - the likes of whom they had never encountered
- the Church saw the embodiment of God's love for the blasphemous and immoral as well as the religious and the moral. His sinless humanity is proven by his bearing the sin of the world (as we say in the communion liturgy).

From the earliest days the Church has strived to express this unparalleled act of grace. No analogy can compare with the fact that - as Paul phrases it
- God so identified himself with us in our broken and disordered humanity that he 'made Christ to be sin who knew no sin' (2 Corinthians 5:21).

It is hard to put this into thoughts and words. We cannot explain what is inexplicable. There are examples of heroic actions where people 'save'
others' lives, freedoms and dignity by 'acting on their behalf' in situations where the individuals, nations or oppressed could not 'save themselves'.

One suggestion is helpful: 'People are trapped in a blazing building. A passer by does not simply point to the fire-escape but jumps into the building and lifts them to safety, though dying in the process. They are "saved" from death for life by the death of one who shared their terror.'
(G MacGregor, Nicene Creed p55.)

Such comparisons take us only so far. They tell us that God is not remote from suffering and that it is not God's purpose that any should perish.
Christ dies in order to save us so that we can live fully in the world.

But they do not touch on two unique aspects of his death:

* This truly human man died out of love for those who hated and rejected him. Thus he died a death that we might have expected to be the fate of the enemies of God.

* What he accomplished by his death on the Cross saved not one or many people in danger of perishing but all humanity in our universal refusal to embrace life in its God-given fullness. In a way that defies comparison, and is barely thinkable, he reconciled 'the world' to himself and called the Church to be a sign of the 'new creation'.

If we think things are not so bad to need such drastic action, it is time to take note of the destructive forces that scar the human family and therefore marvel at the magnificence of salvation accomplished for all in Christ's saving death. For it is God's desire that we enjoy fullness of life.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

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Rev Dr Max Champion is the minister of St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is a member of the Council of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the UCA.