Sermons on the Christian Creed of 381 AD “For us all and for our salvation he came down from heaven.”

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 11:1-9; Luke 4:14-21; Phil 2:6-11; 2 Corinthians 5:14-21

Life in the presence of God

ãSalvationä! The word we know. But like many things, it is no longer ãwoodä. It has become ãplasticä. It no longer breathes fear or joy into us. It no longer releases within us the deepest longings of life; or the highest joys; or the deepest fears. ãSinners in the hand of an angry Godä was a sermon title that echoes through the corridors of the churches. ãHow can Godâs honour be protected or restoredä, theologians have asked through the ages. Martin Lutherâs or even Dietrich Bonhoefferâs struggle for a God of grace, though it be costly and worldly grace, has become strange to many of us who live in comfort and ease.

Many of us have become soft. Faith in the Crucified One has been replaced by a general belief in God. We have lost this deep inner struggle for the meaning of life. We have lost sensitivity for the ãothernessä and the holiness of God. God has become a ãbrotherä or a ãsisterä, a ãfatherä and a ãmotherä – and in many ways God is! But God is also ãalmightyä. God is also ãcreator of heaven and earthä. God is also the judge ãof the living and the deadä. God is in heaven while we are on earth, God is holy while we are sinners.

Will we ever sense a need for salvation, if we lost a sense of the holiness of God? Yes, we have decided to follow Jesus; we have heard the call to discipleship; we know that it has to do with crosses and stony roads and deserts of temptation and gardens of struggle and narrow gates. But then we have said to ourselves – and I am a culprit – ãGod is loveä; and with human ingenuity we have romanticised ãloveä; and a promising, but demanding and difficult journey, has been watered down into a comfortable religiosity. The nomads for Christ have found a waterhole in the desert – and they want to stay!

Can we get a hold on what the creed means by ãsalvationä?

Tuning into the creed

Turning to the movement of the creed, we had seen how after describing God as ãFatherä and as ãalmightyä, the creed explodes into language when it begins to speak of Jesus Christ. It was decisive to say, with all the inadequacy of our human language, that in Jesus Christ it was really God who has spoken into our lives, into our world, into our history; and since it was God, the ãfatherä of our Lord Jesus Christ, therefore his word was a word of grace and joy and liberation. It is what the Bible calls shalom – ãtotal well beingä – which we have watered down to the somewhat abstract and colourless word ãsalvationä.

Shalom (Salvation)

When we speak of ãsalvationä, we must be shocked into awareness that grace and joy and liberation had become necessary and that it was costly.

You see: salvation means repairing what is broken; restoring what has been terribly damaged; reconciling what has been estranged. Bringing together what belongs together.

Estrangement

Salvation has become necessary. The human predicament has made salvation necessary. The great human experiment which has determined ãWesternä culture for the last 200 years, and which is still very much alive around us and within us, has failed. We have tried to make it on our own. We have tried to kill or forget God. But the air has gone out of it! We hear about a vacuum of meaninglessness, about suicide, and intolerance and selfishness. A vital dimension of our life has gone missing. Lostness has resulted and aloneness. We long for the campfire of warmth and belonging. We long for company that lasts.

We know that it must come from beyond; from where newness is possible.

God, the author of salvation

Salvation has become necessary. Salvation is also costly. God has gone into the far country in order to bring us home. Jesus Christ “came down from heaven”, the Christian Creed says. ãHeavenä – that is the place of God! We pray with all Christians in the world: ãOur father in heaven …ä That is the place where Jesus Christ is grounded. Grounded in the being of God. Of course, he was a human being. We all know that. He walked the earth like us. He had to make decisions, like us. He was tempted, and he was uncertain, like us. He shared the sorrow and the pain of human life. But in all that he was very close to God, so close that we have to speak about God and Jesus in one breath.

ãFrom heaven you came …ä we sing to Christ (Hymn 529), confessing thereby that in Christ, God has opened his heart to us. It was painful and costly. In that act God became a suffering God. The opposition, the suffering and the death that became part of Jesus were written into the life of God.

But by opening his heart, Godâs heart, something has touched our life that we needed but that we could not produce ourselves.

In Jesus Christ, God is speaking to us. And he is telling us a story. He does not just want to give us some information about himself. No, God wants to share his very life with us. In Jesus Christ, God himself has become part of our history. That is a beautiful story.

I was in Rome some years ago when the Vatican had a special exhibition of the most beautiful Russian icons. I learned that icons are ãlanguageä, not merely paintings. They tell a story. Francis of Assissi, it is said, was converted to a simple and beautiful life for God by hearing the story of God’s salvation from an icon. God spoke to him through an Icon. It became very clear to me what that meant. You see, many icons do not just have one picture, let us say of the crucifixion. But around the one large central picture of the crucifixion there are many small pictures that tell the story of the crucifixion. These smaller story-pictures makes the large picture speak. And it speaks of God’s unspeakable love for us.

Jesus Christ is Godâs icon. The story of Jesus, the Christ, tells us that God does not live in splendid isolation, but that God is love, and love, as we all know, wants to share. Our salvation is grounded in God.

Salvation became necessary, and it was costly. We donât know why, but we know that God tied salvation to Jesus Christ. He healed what is broken, he reconciled what is estranged: “for us all and for our salvation he – Jesus Christ – came down from heaven.” In Jesus Christ, God has done what we needed but what we could not do. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (v. 19). He has dealt with the problem of estrangement. That is an established fact. A fact established by God himself: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (v. 21)

Holistic salvation

Now, we all know that ãsalvationä has had a bit of a bad press lately. For some it means ãsaving souls from hellä; for others it means ãsnatching souls from Satanâs pervasive influenceä; for others again, it means nothing, and it raises anger against a church that has become so other-worldly that it does not seem to be of any earthly use.

But as long as salvation is linked to Jesus Christ, it can certainly not be other-worldly. Who has stood more in the world than Jesus? Who manifested his divinity, not by withdrawing from the world, but by living in it? Who displayed his sinlessness, not by shunning life, but by having fellowship with publicans and sinners?

Salvation is the affirmation of life. The whole of life and the wholeness of life. Jesus Christ makes whole again what we have torn apart. Where we have caused estrangement, he brings reconciliation; where we defend our privileges with war, he brings peace; where we shape instruments of hate, he teaches us to love.

It reconciles us to God. We know the importance of food and money, but we also know that we cannot live by bread alone. One of the great human attempts over the last two hundred years has been to dethrone God and put ourselves and our reason in its place. It has been a massive failure. Often we discover our need for God in a situation of crisis.

Do you remember the man who was crucified besides Jesus? “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” To which Jesus gladly replied: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:42f.)

It reconciles us to each other. The other side of salvation is that we are reconciled with each other. God created the human being as a relational being. We need each other. But sometimes our vision becomes so blurred that we donât realise our need for each other.

Zacchaeus was a tax collector who had cheated many people. When Jesus looked at him with the eyes of God, Zacchaeus repented and said to Jesus: “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then (!)

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, …ä (Luke 19:8f.).

It reconciles us with our selves. It is very important to understand that salvation also reconciles us with ourselves. So many of us do not really like ourselves. We are unsure. We are hesitant. We have not yet said a clear ãyesä to ourselves. When we accept that we are accepted by God then it is so much easier to accept ourselves.

It reconciles us with nature. Salvation also includes our relationship to nature. We are integral to nature. But for so long we have not realised that. It is good to see that our consciousness has been raised in recent days that our faith also makes us see the precious grace of God in nature. When we are reconciled with the creator then we look at creation no longer with the eyes of a conqueror but with the eyes of a carer.

It reconciles us with history. God is ãoneä. ãWe believe in one God.ä The God of nature is also the God of history. And yet there is a little difference. We shape history by actualising possibilities.

Salvation as a process

A final word. Salvation is a process. You may have thought that my description of salvation is fairly idealistic. That you are much more aware of the brokenness of life than of its reconciliation.

Both our experience and the biblical message speaks of salvation as a process. He ãcameä and he came from beyond, ãfrom heavenä.

We have been saved. In Jesus Christ God has done something for us that we could not do for ourselves. In Christ, God did not only display his love for the world, but he reconciled the world with himself. That is a fact.

We are saved. This fact flows over into our life through faith and baptism. It shapes us. It changes us. We regularly participate in the Lordâs Supper to remind ourselves of the presence of Christ in our life.

We are being saved. Salvation is a journey. The New Testament speaks of the ãwayä of faith. It starts with the experience of conversion; the life transforming experience that God is my God and that I live coram deo. But soon we realise that other people are part of this new discovery. That sin has created structures of injustice and that therefore salvation must remove these structures. It is therefore part of our salvation that we oppose structures of injustice and create structures of justice.

We will be saved. But the journey has a goal! Salvation is life in the presence of God. It starts now and carries the promise of eternity.

Invitation

It has become clear, I hope. Salvation is not a world denying thing. It is the divine affirmation of our life in its manifold relationships. These relationships need healing, and God has done what we could not do. In Christ, God reconciled us with himself.

That makes us servants of reconciliation!

We can start everywhere. In our marriage; in our relationships at work or in the church; in our attitude to people; in our refusal to participate placing dehumanising names on people. “For us all and for our salvation he came down from heaven” – let us accept it for ourselves and let us help making it known in the world in which we live.

Thorvald Lorenzen: Canberra