The Promise of Salvation

Luke 2.21-40

A Sermon Preached by Dave Shull

First Sunday after Christmas, January 1, 2006

University Congregational United Church of Christ

Seattle, Washington

It’s interesting to have to write a sermon on honoring your father and your mother while your parents are visiting . . .

Yesterday morning, Mom, Dad, Peter, and I were driving up I-5. I asked them what connection they saw between the commandment to honor your parents and salvation. Immediately, Mom piped up from the back seat: “That’s simple: honoring your father and your mother is the only way you can be saved!”

There was no one to show honor to the prophet Anna in this morning’s gospel reading. Luke lifts her up as a model of faithfulness. After her husband died after only seven years of marriage, Anna has spent the last 60 years living in the Temple worshiping, praying, and fasting. What a model of faithfulness. And what a tragic reality in a society where a woman with no husband and no children had no value. Honoring your father and mother is a commandment directed toward adults. God is saying, “Adults, when your parents no longer can contribute to the financial health of your household, when they no longer have the physical strength to earn their keep, honor them. Do not turn your back on them. For the day will come when society no longer sees you as valuable. Then you will need someone to honor you enough to take care of you.”

But Anna had no children to honor her. She probably had no source of income. Likely the Temple was her only home. But in spite of being without any social supports, Anna saw this baby and gave thanks to God. God had not turned her away. When God-with-us came into the Temple as a 6-week-old baby, Anna was there to see. Anna was there to see one who would grow up to tear down the walls that religion and state had constructed to keep women down and out. She had a glimpse of the salvation God was preparing for all the peoples to see. She was drawn into the saving circle of God’s love in a brand new way.

And seeing this baby transformed Simeon as well. As a good Jew who knows the Hebrew scriptures by heart, Simeon expects the Messiah to announce salvation only to the Jews. But God’s love made flesh in this child shatters the limits anyone would place on the reach of such a love. So Simeon sings that this salvation shall be

a light of revelation to the Gentiles

and the glory of Your people Israel (Luke 2.32).

God’s love draws in people who are not Jewish as well as those who are. God has shattered the plans of all who would ration and restrain Her love. Simeon’s song proclaims the radical message that God’s love will not be limited. God’s love will not be boundaried. God’s salvation is for the whole world.

Salvation is one of those words that we use a lot in church but usually don’t bother defining.

First, what salvation isn’t.

Salvation isn’t something Christians have that people of other faiths don’t. It isn’t something that promises Christians front-row seats in paradise while non-

Christians spend eternity in hell.

Salvation isn’t something that happens only once when we have some powerful personal experience of God’s presence.

Salvation isn’t primarily about what happens after we die. Much more it’s about how we live our lives in the here-and-now, day-to-day, moment-by-moment.

For Christians, I believe salvation is about being in a relationship with Jesus. People of other faiths have different images for salvation that are powerful and real for them. For Christians, I believe salvation is best expressed when our relationship with Jesus connects us with a community of people committed to trying to love the way Jesus loved. Salvation is letting Jesus’ love live so powerfully inside us that we put his love into practice. St. Francis of Assisi offers a picture of what Jesus’ love looks like: Followers of Jesus, St. Francis says, commit ourselves to heal what is wounded, unite what has fallen apart, and bring home those who have lost their way. These are the fruits of salvation. Healing, uniting, and bringing home are the gifts people who are saved give the world.

Salvation is saying yes every day to the invitation Jesus extends to us in the Gospel of John: “Make yourselves at home in my love.” Make yourselves at home in my love. Your home is where you are nurtured and nourished, where you are steeped in the values that shape your living and loving. As my disciples, make yourselves at home in me and my love. So you can live in this world knowing you are honored, confident you are loved as your are, and strengthened to be those who bless creation with justice and joy.

I learned a lot about living Jesus’ love in my home growing up. My dad spent his first 17 years in India, and my parents took our family there for a year when I was nine. They gave us the uncomfortable and invaluable experience of being a racial minority, of feeling like everyone was staring at us, of feeling very out-of-place. We ate dinner together most nights, and we discussed world events and ethical ways of dealing with war and poverty and racism. Dad took me to an anti-Vietnam War rally once. We went to church every week and I think many mornings the janitor told my parents to be sure the door was locked when they left because he’d done his work and was ready to go home. By the cars the drove, the hotels we stayed in, the way we lived, my childhood home steeped me in the humility, the justice, the commitment to nonviolence which are the hallmarks of the love Jesus calls us to make ourselves at home in.

Growing up, I learned by the way my parents lived what it means to live in the way of Jesus. I learned what it means to heal wounds, unite what has fallen apart, and bring home those who have lost their way.

As an adult, I continue to build on this foundation. I see salvation as making myself at home in Jesus’ love. As trying to live his love even though it’s so much easier to love only people who are like me instead of trying to love with the unboundaried love Simeon’s song proclaims.

What helps me make my home in Jesus’ love?

Daily devotions that call me to make room and time to listen for God, to write prayers and reflections that tell God what my life is like and ask Jesus to walk by my side this day.

Bring an active participant in a faith community that draws me into loving relationships with others and reminds me that this is God’s world and therefore is deserving of honor. It is not just about me and my needs. God has made this world and it is my joy to have a place in it and to care for it. And part of that caring is to join with others to live the salvation we are given. Confident in the love of Jesus that is our home, we go into the world and love. Loving as Jesus loved, we especially build relationships with those beloved children of God who have no true home in this world. Those who never have a special place at anyone’s table.

It is this kind of love you have offered me for the past 11-1/2 years. And it is this love that I now know I need to take from here to Guatemala. I know I need to learn from people whose lives know so much poverty and violence about how to hope and love more deeply. How they live into God’s salvation. I need them to teach me something only I believe only they can teach me about Jesus’ love. And then I can return to Seattle, and give and receive that love in new ways.

This new Year, as I walk into God’s future and as you walk into God’s future, I have a hope. I hope you and I will make ourselves more and more at home in Jesus’ love. More and more may we feel fed, held, and strengthened by that love.

And in this new year, at home in this saving love, may we walk as Jesus’ disciples. May we live into the salvation God has prepared. Let us heal what is wounded, unite what has fallen apart, and bring home those who have lost their way. Amen.