Reflection on the readings for the 23rd August, the 12th Sunday after Trinity
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Readings: Isaiah 51:1-6; Matthew 16:13-20
Today’s reflection is by Reader, Cal Bailey. What is Salvation?
A teenager dives into the sea, hits the bottom, the spine breaks, and can’t swim back to shore. A youngster and a family hits crisis. Can this ever be God’s plan for our world?
Our Old Testament reading comes from a prophet who was speaking to people in despair. The Jews had been defeated in battle, seen their capital city and temple destroyed, and taken to Babylon as immigrant labourers. They felt wholly abandoned by God, whom they accused of breaking his promises to them.
We too can feel their despair at times can’t we? Perhaps you also feel that our world is in turmoil? That truth is being subverted by wealth so that you wonder what is true and who you can trust? That our youngsters are going to find life even tougher than you did because of the shortage of work and unwillingness of employers to take them on, and that’s before AI really gets a grip. That most people in our country have abandoned God, and the church is in decline.
Moreover, we know many people with very difficult experiences. I’ve been a member of two Bethlehem groups in this church, and I don’t think there is anyone in either group who isn’t in a struggle at some point of their own life, or of someone very close to them.
The question I want to ask today is What is Salvation? What does it mean to be – as Christians, sometimes so confidently proclaim – saved? What did it mean to the exiles in Babylon; what does it mean today?
And the wrong answer, which I think we must face squarely, is that it means that God – through some work of Christ - frees us from pain and struggle and sin and difficulty. That has not happened to us; it didn’t happen to the exiles; and – while I think some preachers taught this to me as a youngster - actually it’s not promised in scripture.
So what is salvation? What exactly are we promised by God? Why did you follow the Christian faith?
To try to answer this, I’m going to look at several verses of our Old Testament reading; then look at an old and familiar bible text; and finally tell you a true story.
Firstly Isaiah 51:2: “Look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth. When I called him he was but one, and I blessed him and made him many”.
This is a reference to the situation Abraham was in when God called him – alone with Sarah; and to the promise God made – that he would become the father of a great nation – and to the long, long, long wait they had for that promise to be fulfilled.
I wonder if you feel God has let you down? I wonder what promise you are hoping he will fulfil for you? The story of Abraham is a story of promises from God never, ever being empty. It is a story of calling, of a deep relationship over many years, growing into a trust which became covenant. Isaiah says look back to father Abraham. In the unlikely years of their life, Isaac was born and he did become a great nation.
Secondly, let’s look at verse 3: “The Lord will surely comfort Zion, and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. Joy and thanksgiving will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.”
God made a promise to Abraham, and he’s also made a promise to these immigrants in Babylon who are now in despair; who live in exile; who feel God has abandoned them; whose city is in ruins and whose fields are wastelands after the destruction by their enemies. These promises came to pass; they did return from Babylon. With God’s help, they did rebuild.
And these are words also for us in our despair. God makes promises to us. Take that in for a minute. God is a god, not of vindictiveness for your failures, but of promises for your future. He wants our happiness, our success, our joy. This pain, this disaster, is all for a purpose. It’s all for a better future. You can’t see it yet. But one day. One day you will see it. On that day you will know God to be a god, not of pain, but of comfort. You will know, not wastelands, but a garden. Your face will not be sad, but will be full of joy and thanksgiving. You will sing again.
Thirdly, verse 5: “My righteousness draws near speedily, my salvation is on the way, and my arm will bring justice to the nations.” Here is the word ‘salvation’. ‘My salvation is on the way’. This was written in Hebrew, and the word for salvation is Jeshua. I wonder if you know what that translates to?
Jesus. ‘My Jesus is on the way’. God’s promise is that Jesus is coming. We know a little more than they did about what this means. The promise of salvation is the promise of Jesus. What is salvation? It is the promise that Jesus will be with us.
Here’s where I want to take you back to that well-known story in Genesis 3 where Adam and Eve have eaten from the one tree in the whole garden they were supposed to leave alone. They feel ashamed, and sew fig leaves because suddenly they feel naked.
The next thing that happens is that God comes to walk in the garden in the cool of the day. Instead of walking with him, they hide. And God calls to them, “Where are you?”
There are two words in Hebrew for walk. One means ‘walk alone’. That is not the word used here. The other word means walk together, and that’s the word in Genesis 3. God is wanting to walk with his people. But they feel ashamed and have hidden from God. So God looks for them and calls to them.
Even when we have sinned against God, he wants to walk with us. Just as in our Isaiah passage, God wants to be with us in our pain, in our difficulties, even in our sin. That’s what kind of God he is. His salvation is about being with us; about walking with us through the valley – however dark and difficult it is. Salvation is about sending Jesus to be with us, in flesh and blood, in good times and bad.
The final item from our reading before our story is verse 6. And here God lifts our vision from our situation – of exile and wastelands and destruction and despair – to the wider world. “Lift up your eyes to the heavens, look at the earth beneath; the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and its inhabitants die like flies. But my salvation will last forever, and my righteousness will never fail.”
God here wants us to realise that we are part of a bigger story. It’s a bigger story where the earth really is in peril – just as we sometimes feel it is.
But the promise of salvation is firmer than ever.
I want to suggest that there is a bigger picture that God sees, but we don’t. And there is a bigger purpose which God knows but we don’t. Our role is to be players on the stage where that purpose is being played out. This was true for the Jews in exile – they were to become a light to the nations. It is true for the church today. It may be in decline, but it hasn’t always been. It’s being watched. We are being watched.
So here’s my story. It’s about Joni Eareckson, who was an active Christian teenager belonging to a church like this, when aged 17, almost exactly 59 years ago, she dived into Chesapeake Bay on the East coast of the USA.
She misjudged its depth and hit her head on the bottom cracking her spine between the 4th and 5th vertebrae. She was instantly a paraplegic. She spent two years undergoing rehab amidst intense feelings of anger, depression, suicidal thoughts and doubts about the most fundamental things, like whether God loved her.
She learned during this rehab to paint with her teeth, and people started buying her artwork. Gradually she recovered her faith, but not the strength in her limbs. She wrote a book and found people interested in her story. She has become the US’s greatest advocate for disabled people, selling over 40 books, recording multiples albums of her songs and has a daily radio show. She runs [Family] Retreats for families with disabled members, Wounded Warrior getaway holidays and a wheelchair business called Wheels for the World. She has served on two Presidential Commissions.
We all have challenges. We all have doubts. God doesn’t remove our challenges but walks with us in them. Our salvation is God’s presence with us today, and God’s promise of a new, restored world to come. We are all part of a bigger salvation story too and may, like Abraham and the Jewish exiles or Joni Eareckson, be called to live on a bigger stage. Like them, that calling may be very difficult.
But might we believe that it could also serve a greater purpose than we can imagine?
Amen.