We are All Rescues

March 14, 2021 4 Lent, Year B The Rev. Mark Pendleton Christ Church, Exeter We are All Rescues You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved- and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God- not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. Ephesians 2:1-10 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God." John 3:14-21 This morning I want to talk about a central pillar of Christian faith, namely how it is God saves us. You might rightly ask: save us from what and save us for what? We know that history has called Jesus of Nazareth many names. Yet the name, or title, linked forever to this Jesus is Christ, which means Messiah or anointed one. In confirmation classes I make this point in another way: Jesus' last name was not Christ. This Christ connects the Jesus who lived and worked and taught and healed around Galilee and died in Jerusalem two thousand years ago to the hopes that this long-awaited Savior descended from King David would restore their fortunes. He would change their lives and free the people from oppressive rule like Moses did, who lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, saved the ancient Israelites from their slavery in Egypt and led them through 40 years of wilderness and into a better more promising land. The name Jesus itself means God saves or God rescues. So, this saving act goes to the heart of our faith. How does that saving and rescuing work itself out? What if we want to be self-directing religious libertarians? - left alone to work out of our understandings and not expecting God to swoop in and save us from living and potentially squandering this one life. We could claim freedom of choice after all, which does get some foundation in Genesis when Adam and Eve took matters into their own hands and ate the forbidden fruit. How does Gods saving and rescuing impact and touch our lives? Let me offer an analogy from my early college years. Like some of you I'm sure, I took one year of Economics. The year was broken down into two sections. The first semester was 'microeconomics' and the second part 'macroeconomics'-- 'micro' meaning small and 'macro' meaning big. So far so good. What I vaguely remember from my professor in microeconomics was that it was all about the decisions that individuals and companies make every day in the marketplace, i.e., what is sold and what we buy as consumers. This was when the concept of supply and demand was hammered home. When the demand last April for toilet paper, pasta and frozen pizzas went up, the supply went down. You get my point. Macroeconomics looks at the big picture: wages, taxes, interest rates. I believe salvation gets worked out and offered in similar ways. It gets played out in the small and simple of individual and personal lives, and the universal, the global and cosmic. Micro and macro. The macro part we hear about in the gospel reading for today. The familiar verse: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (John 3:16). The whole world is included. And global meets local: we are all wrapped up in this action of God to intervene whether we accept, embrace, or acknowledge it or not. It has already happened and continues to happen each day. John's gospel adds this: God did not send the Son to condemn or judge, but to save. "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." v. 17. Our lesson for today in Macro Christianity: there is a rich supply of salvation with a small delivery of judgement. Oh, if only the followers of this faith through the centuries could remember that true balance: more mercy, less condemning. For the micro side of the argument, we can hear it playing out in the letter to the Ephesians we hear today. Paul brings the message of the gospel to the individual and states the matter starkly: you were dead. You were following the cues and the rewards of this world and going nowhere, and you were dead. For the people who heard Paul's word, physical death was a known constant companion. Life expectancy was low. Yet the people also know of an inner death, a place where the light does not reach and where nothing really grows. Even then there were seekers. They came out in crowds to be baptized by John and listen to the teachings of the itinerant preacher Jesus. Death, in words of Adam Hearlson, a Presbyterian pastor in Philadelphia, "is not merely a process; it is a land through which we all walk." Which makes sense to me when we consider the words of the 23rd psalm: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me. You and I walk through the shadows of death throughout our lives. Places and times when it can feel as if we are surviving instead of flourishing, existing more than living, grasping for air instead of breathing deeply. Holding on instead of letting go. This is the kind of deadness that Paul writes about. Where no words can reassure us fully and no shiny new object can take our minds off from what troubles us and leads towards anxiety and fear. We would have to be numb or blind to the world over this past year if we did not, at least, in a small way feel -- even for a passing moment -- a sense of fear that the unknown future can seed in us. We have all been through a great deal on macro side of this pandemic even if the micro impact has left us individually unscathed health wise and we remain financially sound. Too many in the world has suffered and are suffering. And less we forget, Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 12:26: If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. This teaching came long before "We are all in this together." Let me add another current rallying cry of our political leaders: "help is on the way." This is how Paul puts that promise: "But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved." Grace is a key word for us to understand and receive the saving help that God offers through Jesus the Savior and Rescuer. I've been thinking of a different way to explain the theology of grace. This may not be perfect but hear me out. Many us have vaccines on our minds: when are we getting ours and when might life return to normal. And we've learned that science can discover a miracle vaccine for a novel virus in record time, but then comes the next part: how does it get manufactured and distributed quickly and fairly. I suppose we've all taken a crash course in the economics of supply and demand these past months whether we knew it or not. The salvation God wants to offer the world and us is like the Covid vaccine. It is the means towards the hope for a return to a fuller life and health. Grace is the actual vaccination - a shot in the arm if you will -- getting that saving help directly into the lives of those who want to walk out of fear, darkness and the shadow of death into the hope that God has called us to. Paul writes: For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God- not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. (2:8) The vaccinations that we have already gotten or eagerly await are not of our own doing. They are and feel like gifts. They can feel a whole lot like grace. So, the question before us is this: Do we want a shot of God's grace or not? Do we want to be rescued by a Christ whose nature reflects who God is? A nature that forgives all that we have done and fail to do. To search us out and know us intimately and still love us. We have been created in Christ Jesus, in Paul's words, for good works. The gift we choose to receive is meant for more than us. It is meant to be given away, shared, multiplied so that God's Kingdom might come closer. Let's roll up our spiritual sleeves and get a shot of what God so wants to give. Grace. Amazing, unending grace. 2