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Summer Series - Week One
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
That is finding the way home.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 1:Well, hello, everyone. Welcome here. If we haven't met, I'm Bobbie, and it is one of the joys of my life to serve as a pastor on the team at Commons. And we have all been through quite a time, haven't we? And we're still in it.
Speaker 1:Sure, sure, it's summertime, but it's also pandemic time and reopen time. And of course, it's time for a deeper commitment to social justice and anti racism to take hold in the world. Now, I don't know about you, but when I am in a time, a time of change, of struggle, of growth, I search for words. Words to hold onto and words to express. Words that help me to know my own mind and move me towards who I want to be.
Speaker 1:And today we begin our summer series, which is all about words. The series is called Speaking Sunday, and we are taking a fresh look at the vocabulary of faith. And here's what you need to know right at the start. We're shifting format for the summer. We're going from thirty minute messages to twenty minute messages.
Speaker 1:So pray for us, preachers. And there are actually a couple of really good reasons for this. Number one is this helps our Commons Kids program as the team gets their bearings during this phase of reopening at church. A smaller window for the program during the message just seems really wise to us right now. And two, it's summer, and many of you are still worshiping with us in the live stream.
Speaker 1:So we want to honor your summertime. With a more compact service, you can be intentional about setting aside time for worship together, and then you can head out to soak up all that summer sun. Of course, don't forget your sunscreen. Seriously, people, take good care of your skin out there. Other than that, you will be hearing from a diversity of voices in Speaking Sunday, and that's a real value for us at Commons.
Speaker 1:So enjoy the differences. Celebrate them even. Well, today we are talking about salvation. And if you take notes, your outline is this. Number one, salvation.
Speaker 1:Two, what a mess. And three, finding the way home. But before we dive in, let us pray. Loving God, we bring so many different experiences and sensations to the language of faith. Thank you for the paths that we've traveled and the ways that we've been shaped from childlike play and acceptance to youthlike questioning and rebelling, to adultlike phases of deconstructing and reconstructing.
Speaker 1:And there are words in the vocabulary of faith that bring life. Maybe there are also some words that are harder for us to hear, maybe even triggering. And still, you are the word that meets us again and again, Jesus. You are the word that we encounter in scripture, in history, in creation, in reality. So spirit of the living God present with us now, will you renew in us a commitment to the language that makes space and invites us into love and helps us to participate in the renewal of all things.
Speaker 1:Amen. So again, our speaking Sunday word today is salvation. Now, for a moment, trace your own history with the word. Did you become aware of the word salvation as a child, maybe in something like a simple sinner's prayer? Maybe were you taught something about salvation in a youth group?
Speaker 1:Something about who's in and who's out? Or are you drawn to the word salvation now? Or does it give off an air of judgment that you're not very comfortable with? But maybe salvation is actually all comfort for you. Well, for me, my childhood recollections of the word salvation involve being eye level with a crucifix at the front of the church viewed from the choir loft in my small town Catholic parish in Saskatchewan.
Speaker 1:And later, I encountered some of the scare tactics of evangelicalism that told teenager Bobbi that either she accept Jesus into her heart or she would spend eternity in hell apart from those she loved. And maybe you're thinking, wow, Bobbi, that's intense. And I guess it is, but I've made my peace with it. In fact, I've dedicated my life to the language of faith, both personally and professionally. I went on a spiritual search for something between extremes, and I really do think I found my way.
Speaker 1:You could say, I'm at home where the vocabulary of faith has led me. Now we're hanging out with the words of the Apostle Paul today in two Corinthians six. So let's start by reading the first two verses. As God's coworkers, we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain, for God says, in the time of my favor, I heard you. And in the day of salvation, I helped you.
Speaker 1:I tell you, now is the time of God's favor. Now is the day of salvation. Okay. It's impossible to read the Corinthian letters well without being versed in the conflict that simmers behind the words on the page. Paul spent about eighteen months in Corinth between stops in Athens and Ephesus.
Speaker 1:And in Acts chapter 18, you can read all about the drama in Corinth. There are these high profile converts, Paul's trouble with the law, nighttime visions from the Lord, and beatings. Now, what we know as one and two Corinthians is as many as five letters Paul writes to this community. They just get stitched together over time. So one letter addresses, say, sexual impropriety, and then another letter addresses excess in worship, and another letter confronts the accusations of some hotshot preachers who say Paul is a low status apostle.
Speaker 1:And I honestly love this backdrop to salvation in Paul's letter. Whatever salvation is, it's not a simple transaction that just secures your entrance into heaven or solves all your personal problems. Heck, you can be saved and even get things wrong about God. For one thing, you know what Paul believed about the way the world would be saved? Paul believed that the end was literally at hand.
Speaker 1:He believed Jesus' return was so imminent that the people in Corinth shouldn't bother making long term plans. And none of that happened. Every one of those Corinthians died before Jesus' return. So what's up with that, Paul? Now, the noun Paul uses for salvation in these verses is soteria, and it means our rescue, healing, and liberation.
Speaker 1:And here, Paul is using it in a temporal sense. Paul says grace has already arrived for the church in Corinth. In chapter five, the letter reads, if anyone is in Christ, the old is gone and the new is here. Then using a passage from the prophet Isaiah, he reinforces the immediacy, saying the day of salvation looks like God's favor and God's help. And salvation isn't something we wait around for.
Speaker 1:Salvation has arrived. God's favor is all around. Can you feel it? But Paul's letter isn't all butterflies and new beginnings, it's real. Paul addresses rifts and accusations and painful situations in the community.
Speaker 1:Remember those hotshot preachers who are out for Paul's reputation? Well, they say Paul's too poor, He's too undignified. He's had too many hardships for the Corinthian church to trust him. They want status. And Paul says, You want status?
Speaker 1:Listen to the mess I'm in. So verses four to 10 read like this. As servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way, in great endurance, in troubles, hardships, and distresses, and beatings, imprisonments, and riots, in hard work, sleepless nights, and hunger, in purity, understanding, patience, and kindness, in the Holy Spirit, and in sincere love. In truthful speech and in the power of God, with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left, through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report, genuine yet regarded as impostors, impostors, known yet regarded as unknown, dying and yet we live on beaten and yet not killed, sorrowful yet always rejoicing poor, yet making many rich, having nothing and yet possessing everything. So Paul turns status on its head.
Speaker 1:His defense is this, it's not might that makes you strong, it's service. Yeah, yeah, he says, my life is hard, so what? You think these struggles alter my character, my integrity, my trust in the divine? What kind of leader can't endure a little hardship? Theologian Ronald Allen says, Paul's language is new creation and he lives it even while the old creation is collapsing.
Speaker 1:And I wonder if there's something here for us too, right now. In the middle of a pandemic and a climate crisis and political upheaval and economic uncertainty, can we come to a place where the good and the bad sit side by side? Can we admit that hardship, struggle, the brutality in life are not signs that we are weak, but signs that we are human? It doesn't mean that God is far away. And Paul says salvation is here.
Speaker 1:Salvation is now. But I actually think salvation is harder than we think. Salvation is saying sorry before you really mean it. Salvation is facing into rather than hiding out from the storm of all you've lost. Salvation is educating someone who doesn't understand your story.
Speaker 1:It's standing up for yourself when everyone has you all wrong. It's fleeing the forces that make you feel like a stranger to yourself. It's participating in the generosity and the solidarity that is at the heart of all things. But it's not easy living like this, living salvation. Now, while we're thinking about salvation in grittier terms, I have got something on my mind.
Speaker 1:I'm haunted by a question lately, and I'm still kind of forming it, but the inquiry goes something like this. If the church has been around for so long, and it has, why hasn't the church been able to do more about injustice? Like, with the number of church buildings spread across our cities and countries, why are we still so far away from eliminating violence against women and children, reforming racist institutions that oppress people, calling out politics that pillage the resources of the poor. I mean, could go on. So really, why hasn't the church saved us from at least some of this by now?
Speaker 1:And here's what I wonder. Maybe when we think that salvation is about our own souls, we end up sitting on our hands doing next to nothing. We wait for God to do it all. And the whole time, God is saying, I made you for this. Get up.
Speaker 1:Get to work. My plan for salvation always involves you. A favorite theologian, Dorothy Sowell, says that if we understand salvation individualistically as salvation of the soul alone, as something that does not liberate all creation, then we run out of room to be taken seriously. Salvation is co creative. It's getting your hands dirty.
Speaker 1:It's staying up late to listen to a friend. It's demanding more from politicians. It's being informed about systems that oppress. There's no plan for God to pack up and leave this world. Instead, Christ hands us the scriptures, the apostles, the kingdom and says the spirit is here.
Speaker 1:Let's get after salvation together. So what if we find a fresh metaphor for salvation? Something more than a statue at the front of a church or a ticket to heaven. Metaphors inspire and transform and renew our imagination for God's creative work in the world. Let's find our way to a metaphor through a story.
Speaker 1:So during the pandemic, Jonathan and I had this big realization about our life. While we had spent almost five years together in his condo, the 532 square feet wasn't going to cut it much longer. With home being such a central part of daily life during a global health emergency, we started to wonder, like, wouldn't it be so great to have a little more outside space and a garage for Jonathan to tackle some carpentry projects he's been dreaming about. And what if we could have a place with a full size fridge? I'm 42 years old, and in all my adult life, I've only had apartment sized fridges, so a girl got dreams, you know?
Speaker 1:Well, we did it. We bought a little house with just enough room for the two of us and eventual visits from nieces and nephews. And while we can like imagine it, the home we are going to settle in together, we aren't even moved yet. There are nine more sleeps. But we're still in the condo.
Speaker 1:And even while we're there, the house is basically all that we can talk about. Sometimes we say to each other like, this is too good to be true. Do we deserve this? Like, why not? Right?
Speaker 1:Why not us? So here's the metaphor. Just because Jonathan and I got a house and moved there in ten days, it doesn't mean home is ready. Or for as long as we live there, home will even ever be finished. The process of making a home is ongoing.
Speaker 1:And I think the same is true for salvation. Yeah, sure, you were saved. God's favor is upon you. Yippee. But also you're being saved.
Speaker 1:That process is ongoing. Home is a metaphor for union. Union between God and all creation. And some of the earliest Christian theologians called this union theosis and it meant deification, to participate in the energies of God. Paul writes these letters for real and messy people.
Speaker 1:And he can see that they share union with Christ and he pleads with them to remember their union with him as well. And Paul explains salvation as affection. He writes, We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you. We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. As a fair exchange, I speak as to my children.
Speaker 1:Open wide your hearts also. In other words, I know you don't always understand me and we see the world quite differently, but we're family. Paul says wherever we go with God, we go there together. We are saved together. Maybe for you, salvation has been something that you needed to earn.
Speaker 1:Maybe salvation was this gift that you felt God gave to you when you prayed for it. That's fine, that's great even. But maybe it's time to think about salvation as union, as the work of God already at action in the world. And you, you make your home in it. You look around and make sure that other people are at home too.
Speaker 1:So you light a fire in the backyard and you say to your neighbors, come over. It's warm here and the mosquitoes aren't too bad tonight. Maybe you make a meal with only the best ingredients like local everything. And you sit down with your family and your friends and you say eat up. There's more where that came from.
Speaker 1:Or you take your loneliness, your heartache, your bruised and burdened memories, and you say, this shaped me. And it makes me more compassionate. And I am going to offer that compassion to each and every weirdo I meet. That feels like salvation to me. That is finding the way home.
Speaker 1:Let us pray. Our loving God, some of our lives are really hard right now. And we aren't always so sure of what salvation looks like in our lives. So for the anxious ones, God be peace. For the hurting ones, be healer.
Speaker 1:For the wondering ones, be guide. And show us Jesus that you involve us in these prayers too. To the anxious, we can listen. To the hurting, we can heal. And to those who are wondering, we can hold out a hand or walk alongside or we can cheer until our voices are hoarse.
Speaker 1:So may your joy meet us with simplicity and complexity. And may each breath we breathe remind us that you God are near. Amen. Thank you so much for being here today with us in the livestream for the first of speaking Sunday. If you'd like prayer, you can send a request to our prayer team at commons.
Speaker 1:Life. We also have a prayer volunteer in the Zoom lounge who would love to hear your story. And speaking of that Zoom Lounge, it's a great place to connect after the livestream. So jump in and say hello. You don't even have to stay long.
Speaker 1:It would just be so great to see your faces. Finally, we'll end as we always do. Love God, love people, tell the story. Peace to you today. Thanks again for joining us, everyone.