Hard Salvation

Propers: The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 19), A.D. 2017 A

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved … No one who believes in Him will be put to shame … Everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved.”

That’s it. Everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved.

There go all our anxieties, all our doubts, all our fears. There goes our despair, our boredom, our ennui. There go all our frettings about whether we’re good enough, whether we have enough, whether we’re making the right choices or eating the right foods or maximizing our potential.

All who call on the Name of the Lord will be saved.

But-but-but, we want to say. But-but-but. Paul can’t really mean that. Terms and conditions apply. What about bad people? What about lazy people? What about people I don’t like? They can just call on the Name of the Lord and be saved? I put blood, sweat, and tears into this. I went to Sunday School; I got Confirmed; I come to worship every week; I attend adult ed; I make brownies for hospitality. Doesn’t that count for something? Doesn’t that give me a leg up? It can’t be that easy, that cut-and-dry.

All who call on the Name of the Lord will be saved.

Then what am I doing this for? Why go to seminary? Why go to Church? Why be good, when Joe Schmo down the block can lead a life of unrepentant sin and debauchery, only to pull a presto-changeo deathbed conversion at the last minute? There’s got to be more to it than that, more that you have to do, more you have to earn. You can’t just call on the Lord, because then—well, because then everybody might be saved! And what kind of world would that be, where I’m no better than anybody else?

Yet Paul is unrelenting. He doesn’t qualify. He doesn’t prevaricate. All who call on the Name of the Lord will be saved.

Now that doesn’t mean that salvation is easy, or that it’s once-and-done. It doesn’t mean that life will be happy, or that those who call upon the Name of the Lord will somehow avoid struggles and sufferings. Quite the contrary. Just look at our readings this morning. You’ve got Elijah, a prophet of great power, through whom God has worked wonders not seen since the days of Moses, and yet Elijah despairs.

He is on the run, hunted, persecuted for his faithfulness to what is good and true and beautiful, and he cries out in his anguish, “The Israelites have forsaken Your covenant, thrown down Your altars, and killed Your prophets. I alone am left!” What’s it all been for, he wants to know. Why have I lived a life of conflict and strife, only to have made no discernible difference in the people and world around me?

Or take Paul, someone who has sacrificed everything for the Gospel—his status, his wealth, his standing in the community—only to be beaten, stoned, flogged, arrested, shipwrecked, bitten by snakes, temporarily blinded! And ironically, he through whom God has healed so many, St Paul suffers from a “thorn in the flesh,” a persistent, painful ailment that will not go away, that God does not heal. Paul does not know why. But he continues to suffer for the sake of God’s people, Jewish and Gentile alike.

And then there’s Peter—good old, hot-headed Peter—who finds himself awash in a storm, battered by waves, far from land, with the wind against him. And then who should he spot walking towards his boat on the waters but Jesus Himself: Jesus, walking on the sea; Jesus, unperturbed by the raging storm and the darkness all about Him. And Peter, with a faith I can barely imagine, calls out to Jesus, asking Him to summon Peter, to call him out upon the waters. And He does so! And Peter, astoundingly, walks on the water with his Lord—something that the Psalms proclaim only God can do—until the moment he doubts, the moment he dreads. And then Peter, the Rock, sinks like a stone.

All our readings today involve faithful men who face astonishing challenges, struggles and persecutions the likes of which we can scarcely imagine. And yet all of them call on the Name of the Lord—and are saved.

Elijah is shown that he is not alone, that his work has not been in vain, and God pulls him up to Heaven in a chariot of fire. Paul is guided faithfully through the dangers that surround him and his mission takes root in ways impossible for mortal men alone. And Peter is caught by Jesus immediately—immediately, mind you!—and pulled up from the churning waters of chaos, destruction, and death.

Salvation isn’t fun. It isn’t something pleasant. It isn’t quick and painless. Sin is a cancer within us, and like any cancer it must be cut out, scourged and burned away, and we must salt the earth, as with chemo, as with radiation, to make sure that it never returns to master us again. It is a struggle, hard and heroic, but ultimately life-giving. And in this struggle, Christ is our Physician; the Holy Spirit is His blade.

In Christ, we are remade into who and what we were always meant to be, returned to the wholeness of humanity, purified by fire, hammered and shaped and wrought back into the children of God, cast in His image, destined for eternal holiness and fulfillment and joy! Salvation is the work of God, the regimen of our treatment, the medicine of eternity that will not only revive the human patient but build us up stronger and freer and truer than we have ever been!

This, then, is what it is to call upon the Name of the Lord. It is to have the din and chaos of the world pass away, that we might hear the still small voice of God, as Elijah. It is to suffer and be shipwrecked and cast upon foreign shores for the sake of strangers and enemies, as Paul. It is to be drowning in our own attempts to walk atop the waters, only then to be pulled up by the sure, strong grip of Jesus Christ Himself, as Peter, pulled up into the fresh air, into the new day dawning upon the horizon.

Life is hard, brothers and sisters. Nobody knows that better than Jesus. It involves tragedy and loss and questions that simply will not be answered on this side of the grave. And it is filled with distractions—with things to watch and things to buy and things to worry about, all of which obscure the true meaning of our lives, drowning out what is good and what is real amidst that which is merely pleasant and ephemeral.

Yet despite all of this, the promise remains, steadfast and true: all who call upon the Name of the Lord will be saved.

Nothing can take that promise from you. No amount of diversion or doubt or debt can obscure it. No pain can stop it. No sin can break it. The path ahead may be long and difficult, and we may find ourselves beset by many troubles along the way. But we are never alone in our struggles. And the end of our journey is clear in our sight—“because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved … No one who believes in Him will be put to shame …

“Everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved.”

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.