April 6, 2003 - Fifth Sunday in Lent
Jeremiah 31:31-34
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John 12:20-33
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“The Way of Salvation”

I remember a Saturday afternoon when I was a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh.  I was helping with the campus chaplaincy and so I was walking over to the auditorium where I was to celebrate Eucharist for the students.  I was carrying my vestments and wearing a clerical collar – I don’t think there could have been a whole lot of question that I was a clergyman.  Going over my homily in my mind, preparing myself to lead worship I hadn’t noticed a young man walking purposefully alongside me.  When I did notice him I said, “Hello.”  His first words to me?  Well, they had nothing to do with the current record of the Pittsburgh Pirates or even the weather.  He asked me, “Are you saved?”  What a question, eh?  My response was that I hoped so – I’ll spare you the gory details of the theological discussion that followed.

“Are you saved?”  Have you been asked that question and wondered how to answer?  Have you been asked that question and made to feel uncomfortable in the process?  Have you ever pondered what the way of salvation might be?  I don’t think that we can ignore or play down an issue that is really at the heart of Christian faith.  So, what is the way of salvation?

Jeremiah begins to give us an insight into the way of salvation when he tells us that God is initiating a new covenant relationship.  Unlike the old covenant that was built on an external law, this covenant rests in the human heart.  The heart has traditionally been considered the seat of wisdom and emotion.  Though we know its physiology far better than the ancients, we still talk about the heart in that way.  So God says, “I will write my law on their hearts…I will be their God and they will be my people.”  The way of the heart is relationship and the covenant God makes now is one that brings people close to God’s own heart.

When we consider that the word ‘salvation’ derives from the word for healing, this involvement of the heart in the way of salvation begins to make sense.  The way of salvation, then, is also a way of healing, restoration, and reconciliation because it once again brings humanity into the fullness of relationship with God.  When we talk about God’s desire to be one with humanity in love we see it expressed in the covenant.  The Congregational theologian, Thomas Shepard, wrote so beautifully:

Oh the depths of Gods grace herin . . . that when he deserves nothing else but separation from God, and to be driven up and downe the World, as a Vagabond, or as dryed leaves, fallen from our God, that yet the Almighty God cannot be content with it, but must make himself to us, and us to himself more sure and neer than ever before! . . . The Lord can never get neer enough to his people, and thinks he can never get them neer enough unto himselfe, and therefore unites and binds and fastens them close to himself, and himselfe unto them by the bonds of a Covenant. [spellings are those of the original]

God’s desire for relationship, then, is at the core of the very way of salvation.

Jesus shows us that the way of salvation is one of selflessness and a way of service. When the happy Greeks came looking for him they got an answer that was probably very different from what they expected to hear. Jesus didn’t speak to them of lofty belief systems or of exalted philosophical approaches to life’s situation or problems. He talked instead about how a grain of wheat only becomes its true self when it dies – when it was planted in the ground. When it is planted then it could grow and become something that bore fruit. Jesus was teaching them and us that the way of salvation doesn’t begin when we accept a set of doctrinal propositions or say some little rote prayer. The way of salvation begins when we die to self and begin to live toward God and for others.

Jesus certainly showed his grasp of human nature here, because we humans have a great deal in common with seeds.  We aren’t born with hard protective shells, but we acquire them pretty quickly.  Since these shells are spiritual and psychological they’re often much harder to break through, and sometimes resist being planted.  All of us have known individuals who have remained seed-like, refusing to grow or to bloom.  It’s as though they don’t want to let the life-potential in them to escape, lest they can no longer control it.  It’s always such a pity to see a seed sitting forlornly by itself when it is meant to add its glory to a garden.

Jesus told us, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  He showed us what he meant in his own life.  He sowed himself in the fields of people’s lives; brightening the darkness of the blind, restoring the sick, freeing the oppressed until he sowed himself on the wood of the cross -- pouring himself out to bring heaven and earth back together.  That Seed bore fruit in the resurrection.  It continues to blossom in the heart of each believer.

The Greek seekers also remind us that we don’t need to leave our minds behind when we come looking for Jesus and begin to walk the way of salvation.  We can come with our questions and our doubts without fear of being rejected.  What is more, we can readily welcome those who also are struggling with questions or doubts.  We can welcome them as surely as we welcome those who have a strong faith and don’t want to question any part of it lest they lose it.  How we come isn’t the issue here, it’s that we come willing to walk the way.  What we’re shown in the life and teaching of Jesus is that the way of salvation is an open way so long as one is ready to walk it in unselfish, loving service to God and to others.

The sacrament we share today is, indeed, the “visible Gospel” of the way of salvation our Congregational forebears thought it to be.  In these simple elements of bread broken and shared and the cup poured out we see the way of salvation made concrete.  For what are these elements but the result of growth and change and loving labor?  What are they but sources of nourishment and signs of fellowship?  Isn’t that the way of salvation?  Isn’t that what we’re to become for each other and the world around us?  The way of salvation is the way of becoming Eucharist – thanksgiving, communion – for the world.  As we ask to see and to follow Jesus, we become he became for us – broken and poured out – so that others might be nourished, might grow, and live.