Who Will Be Saved?

Chapter One -- "The God Who Refuses to Be Alone"

First and foremost, salvation is about something God does.

So says United Methodist Bishop William Willimon, author of our current read, Who Will be Saved? Contrary to what many otherwise smart people believe, the salvation of humanity, the promise of creation restored, comes not as a result of our own fine efforts, or from the skills of "the brightest and the best" among us. The salvation of the world will result not from collaborative work, or from nations agreeing to live together in harmony. History laughs at such nonsense, and it is almost silly that any of us (who actually live on this planet) can still be so credulous. Maybe there's a lesson in there for us as November approaches.

"Salvation is learning to live with the God that we've got, now and forever, learning to love the God who saves" (10). The problem with such a statement is that the meanings of the words "God" and "love" are not self-evident. These are words awaiting content, content that is supplied by the stories of Scripture. "We must attend to Scripture, listening carefully, enjoying the particulars, looking for the overall picture that emerges, so that we may know the God that we've got, or, more specifically to the way Scripture tells it, the God who has got us" (10).

We can begin, for example, with the story of the Good Samaritan in which a man, mugged, robbed and lying in a ditch, is passed unassisted by a priest and then a Levite, two very devoutly religious people. Finally a despised half-breed Samaritan comes along and helps the victim. "This is your ultimate hope for rescue," Willimon writes, "but you are aghast to learn that your hope, your salvation is none other than a good-for-nothing, anything-but-poor-and-pious, lousy Samaritan" (10). The story of the Samaritan is about "the odd, threatening, humiliating and extravagant form by which God draws near to us for our rescue. And in noting our reaction to the story, it's a story about our shock at the peculiar One who risked all for us" (11).

Like most of Scripture, the story of the man in the ditch is a story about God before it is a story about us, about the oddness of our salvation in Christ. I've used this interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan before, and I can tell you my congregation didn't like it. They like stories about themselves more than they like to hear stories about God. They are resourceful, educated, gifted people who don't like to be cast in the role of the beaten poor man in the ditch. They would rather be the anything-but-poor Samaritan who does something nice for the less fortunate among us. In other words, they don't like to admit that just possible they need to be saved.

Why is this story not about us? Doesn't the story end with Jesus saying, "Go and do likewise"" "Go" and "do" what? I'm saying that more difficult even than reaching out to the victim in the ditch (which is difficult enough for us) is coming to conceive of yourself as the victim, learning to live as if your one last hope is the Savior whom you tend to despise (11).

Salvation is when God finally gets what God wants in creating the world. Salvation means finally, safely to arrive where you have always been intended by God to be. One might expect God's restored good creation to be a redeemed garden to make up for the paradise we botched up in Genesis. Instead, Revelation says that God's crowing act of restoration is communitarian: New Jerusalem, a populous, raucously singing city, rather than a serene garden. You get this sort of result from a God who loves a crowd.

1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; 4 they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Revelation 22:1-5)