There are so many words ubiquitous in the church that have fallen flat from overuse; words like sin, redemption, atonement, perfection, faith, righteousness… just to name a few. It is a long list, and through their overuse these words sadly have lost their meaning, their resonance, most particularly the meaning intended by the authors, who used them quite deliberately in speaking and speculating as to the relationship between humanity and God. Words embody imaginative process, so scripture at its best is the process of imaginative speculation, artful speech as to the most and the best we might say about God and humankind. So we need to take seriously these words, beyond their face value, beyond their popular usage. Perhaps the most overused and therefore misunderstood word in the church is salvation. It is a very important word to be sure, central to our faith, but a word that needs, as all words of scripture need, shall we say, revisiting.
In our hyper-individualistic culture the word salvation is decidedly personal. It has to do with me: “Jesus my personal savior.” Salvation in our western consumerist society is a commodity. It is something to possess, to own, to keep, to guard. Salvation is that possession that will insure life after death, and the way to possess salvation is to believe in Jesus…. “believe in Jesus,” another worn out phrase rendered meaningless in post modern religious-speak. Such an awareness has engendered perhaps the greatest plague that afflicts Christianity, and that is the plague of exclusivity. I would argue that salvation, according to the scribes of scripture, is not about the individual, but about a people. Salvation is not personal but a dynamic in and of community, in and of the commonweal of humanity, addressing the ancient question of “how then shall we live with one another”. Plato asked it for western philosophy, but the question is and has been carried by every religious tradition on the planet.
I would also argue that salvation is not an end, but a process, a process which would render absurd the question, “Are you saved?” Salvation is ever becoming, ever being forged. Salvation is not about a “right” belief, but is about the process of the Good, the process for which we are born… the process of engendering in our world well-being and dignity. Salvation is the well-being and dignity of our neighbor, the well-being of the whole which indeed includes us… us, not me. The process is about the created order becoming what God intends it to be. We are co-creators of the process… artisans, midwives, bringing salvation which at its heart is a sure and certain hope.That makes salvation a term that encompasses the social, the economic, the political, the spiritual… all rudiments of well-being… all rudiments of dignity. Salvation is the vocation of all of us who trust the time-honored rubric that to love God is to love one’s neighbor.
God is another word we have allowed to become ossified and vacant. There are of course over the ages many metaphors for God… We can only speak of such a thing in metaphor…. God is wind… God is light… God is fire… God is warrior… God is father… God is mother…. God is antagonist… God is lover… all metaphors; all artful speculation. In the Gospels we are taught that God is compassion… that God is inclusion and embrace for all… outcasts included…God is lover of justice and kindness… God is grief for the oppressed and forsaken… God is passion for the poor and the sick and the lonely… In short, God is process, process another high metaphor for this God we worship. God is process drawing the world into Godself. God is a process into which we all must live as people of God… God the very process of salvation… a process uncompleted weaving truth and beauty, well-being and dignity into the fabric of our world…. the world becoming as God becomes… and we intimately implied, becoming as well.
The process of God is a process of hope… hope becoming still… hope unvanquished… intrepid…inexorable… real. Such a hope requires our lives to make it so, the whole of us… the whole of us for the world to be made whole…. It is all there is, and all there needs to be.
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on these words that, as you say, have become so overloaded with meanings that they have become “meaningless,” at least on the gut level. Your scraping away to a realization of their true worth help me very much. I am a “word” person, as you know, and I hope you keep on with
the interpretations that restore and realize these special words..
Sorry to be missing church these days, but we have chickened out making the trip across the bay during Mardi Gras traffic. Hope to be at Ash Wednesday service. I miss All Saints! There is a great article in the latest New York Review of Books about W.H. Auden and his little known charities to people needing help in their education and health problems I hadn’t known that he had such close ties to the Episcopal Church that he attended in NYC—in the Bowery, I think .