Fourth Sunday of Easter Year B 2024
Easter • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 4 viewsBoth love and salvation are poorly defined today. Salvation, as we see in Acts, is not simply political deliverance or temporal healing, but wholeness and integration, rescue in its fulness, that only the transcendent Jesus can offer “in his name.” And love is laying down one’s life, seeking the good of the other, but in such a way that the sheep are raised to family status and the shepherd has life in himself and so can take his life up again. Ultimately it is to be known by God, to be known as family. That is the transformation in thinking and behavior that we need through the Spirit so that we too can transcend the world.
Notes
Transcript
Title
Title
The Meaning of Loving Savior
Outline
Outline
We use a lot of terms vaguely or romantically
We use a lot of terms vaguely or romantically
One of these is, of course, love
And another is savior or save
Look at Acts
Look at Acts
Peter uses a number of terms interchangeably: save in various forms and healthy. This is done by a person “filled with the Holy Spirit.” Salvation means to be brought to wholeness, in this case physically, although the man cannot be pried loose from Peter. There is one source for such wholeness, physically or spiritually, which is “the name of Jesus Christ” or the authority flowing from Jesus Christ, whom even death could not hold. He is the only source of salvation for the whole human race.
Now that was not good news for the Jewish leaders whom Peter accuses of crucifying Jesus and being indeed “you, the builders” but who had rejected the cornerstone. While he does not deny their rank and role in the nation, Peter does condemn them to be in need of salvation. But their idea of salvation was political and power based, much like today.
Peter means much more by salvation than either political leaders or many religious preachers mean today.
Look at John
Look at John
If salvation is the wholeness and rescue of another, John points out that love is indeed seeking the good of another. In the letter we see this in our being children of God and therefore unknown to the world. Jesus puts it in terms of the shepherd laying down his life for the sheep. Nothing romantic there and nothing realistic there in this world’s terms for sheep are not worth a human life. The world thinks in terms of hired shepherds but while the human - sheep contrast is kept in the distinction between the Father-Son family and human beings as sheep it is not raised to a greater distinction transcended by love: I know my sheep just as the Father knows me and I the Father. The sheep are raised to be family. And I lay down my life for the sheep in harmony with the Father, but since I am life I lay my life down in order to take it up again. I transcend death. And that unity with the Father is why the Father loves me and out of which I love “my sheep.” The result will be Jew and non-Jew hear the voice of the Shepherd and are brought into one fold, that of the known, of the family.
There we have it [brothers and] sisters
There we have it [brothers and] sisters
The world thinks in terms of power and politics and wealth and temporal deliverance from death
God thinks in terms of salvation as wholeness, integration, and transformation beyond death.
The world thinks in terms of the romantic or perhaps manipulation through the romantic.
God thinks in terms of seeking the good of the other, even giving the other a new worth so that they have a good worth seeking. Ultimately love is bringing the person within the family, into union.
That is why there is no salvation in anyone other than Jesus, than in the Divine Son, for not only has the Father ordained it so, but also only the Son has transcended the categories of the world, including death itself.
And that is why we need our thinking transformed so that we think from the perspective of God and our status as children of God, for otherwise we will get caught up in the categories of the world.
Peter could do this because he was filled with the Holy Spirit and we can also as we through contemplation of the one Savior open ourselves up to the Spirit so that we too can do the will of the Father.