Thursday 28 May 2009

I just simple loved reading this piece from "Salvation as God's Work" in William Willimon's " Who Will Be Saved?"

In saying that Christ's incarnation was "for our salvation" we see the major reason why the church so strongly asserted that Jesus was truly, fully human. If all we needed for salvation was a helpful moral nudge, then God would have sent a skilled teacher, another Moses to instruct us. If our problem were simply liberation from unjust social structures, God would have surely given another ranting Amos. Knowing that our need was greater than the didactic or the political, the agent of our salvation is both fully divine and fully human; any less complicated a Savior would have been unhelpful.

Several weeks ago we started talking about 'the suffering of God' in our adult Sunday school. One of the ways it is being talked about is that we must see God's action - becoming human with us - as one that is best understood by focusing the discussion around the Trinity. In that sense, we are reminded that - all of God - God's totality - God completeness is within this storytelling that comes so close to us it is here and now. There is no mere envoy sent to be with us. God is with us. In the middle of the humiliation and death and utter abandonment that takes place in human life, God is in the middle of it and God take us through it all. In that closeness, God pulls us into a new place in which our humanity can be seen as that which is always ready to face death without letting death lead us around and attempt to rule all that we do.

Connection: It is okay for this notion of God as Savior to be 'complicated.' What it gives us is a real way to encounter the fullness of life that is handed to all of humanity and still know that we can face all that will come...not with simple quotes or bumper sticker realities.

As you continue to come alongside us and participate in the fullness of our humanity, O God, we long to be sustained by your breath of life. There are too many ways for our breath to be taken from us as we move through the day and yet you continue to revive us and fill us with the life that is needed to shape again in your image. Amen.