Has anyone ever asked you if you were saved? How
would you answer?
I was visiting the other day. Someone was sharing
problems but he set them against what he called ‘the happy go lucky attitude’
he had because he knew, in the end, everything would work out. He knew he was
saved.
This came back to me as I looked at this morning's
Gospel which has a lot to say about salvation and what it is to be saved. These
last few weeks we've been reading through the sixth Chapter of St.
John's Gospel, a chapter that ends with Peter's famous summary: Lord, to whom shall we go to? You have the
message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God.
Salvation, eternal life, is a gift, a promise
and a choice - three headings gathering up the teaching of St John Chapter 6 -
so we'll take them one by one!
1.
The
Gift
Looking over the whole Chapter we see a
tremendous emphasis on the wonder and mystery of the gift of Jesus.
The chapter starts with a tale of miraculous
feeding. Five thousand are fed - an image of overflowing, wondrous grace.
Then Jesus begins to make many points about this
sign, bringing out not just the meaning of that lunch in Tiberias but the
ultimate meaning of all things - and how we can enter into that.
The
bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world he
says in the passage we read last week, v33.
The multiplication of the loaves represents the
abundance of life-giving grace that has come to the earth.
Who is the
bread of God? He answers at the start and end of today’s gospel v35: I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me
will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty and
the end sentence v51: Whoever eats of
this bread will live forever. .
What a gift! To live for ever! Always we are
longing, we human beings. We long for security, for love, for identity, for
purpose and reason for life - and here it is, all of that for which we long,
offered at last - through the great mystery of Jesus, God come to earth,
lifting earthbound beings to live with him for ever!
To be saved is to welcome the gift of Jesus, the
Bread of Heaven. The passage on the Heavenly Bread interprets and brings out
the full meaning of the gift we welcome in this service week by week.
Can there be a passage in the Bible which speaks
more strongly about the need to participate in the Eucharist than verse 53 of St.
John Chapter 6 just after today’s section: Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the
Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
Salvation is about welcoming Jesus - and what he
has done by the separating of his body and blood in sacrifice. It is a gift
given for us in the coming to earth, dying and rising of Jesus. You can't be
saved, says Jesus, by contemplating your navel, by the vague religiosity of
crystals and New Age, or even by our efforts for justice and peace, admirable
as they are - but by welcoming the gift
of Christ into our souls
Salvation is presented here as a gift - and also,
secondly as a promise.
2.
The
Promise
You
have the words of eternal life says Peter at the end of
the chapter. He is confirming his understanding of the earlier teaching where
Jesus makes it clear that when we welcome him we also inherit a promise, the promise of eternal life: Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my
blood
has eternal life
When someone asks you if you are saved they are
really touching on whether you feel sure that your life will not be lost when
you die.
Are you sure?
Do you know that you have eternal life?
St Cyril of Jerusalem speaking to those preparing
for Christian initiation in the 4th century said we have no modest aim, but the gaining of eternal life… we endure everything that we may
gain that life from the Lord… the Father is life really and truly. Through the
Son he pours forth upon all in the Holy Spirit the gifts of heaven as from a
fountain. The experience of salvation is to be playfully ‘happy go lucky’
under that fountain. It’s taking God at his word when he promises you
something.
I remember someone rather surprisingly asking a
holy and thoughtful priest whether he believed in God. There was a long pause. Finally the wise old man replied - I'm not sure,
but I'm sure of this - that God
believes in me. Those humble,
thoughtful words back away from arrogant certainty and they reach powerfully into
our spirits.
We
may lack belief but that doesn't stop God
believing in us. We may be
unworthy of salvation - but that does not stop God promising it! If I know I am saved it is because God has
promised it to believers and I believe God - I trust God to keep his word
to me - the key is knowing the promise.
Evangelism is about spreading good news, which
means letting people know about the gift and the promises of God so that they
can choose for themselves to believe - which brings us onto the last heading.
3.
The
Choice
At the end of this sixth chapter of St John’s Gospel
we read in v60 that many of the followers
of Jesus said, "This is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it? And they
choose to leave Jesus. He then says to the Twelve later in the passage: What about you, do you want to go away too?
When we contemplate the mystery of Christ we
should be profoundly moved, awed by the generosity of God in sending his Son to
save us and then giving us the choice of whether we accept him or not.
This is awesome - for us to be given a
choice. Awesome, but also perilous for
us to be so honoured with freedom to choose in a matter affecting our eternal
welfare.
There is a further mystery of how God himself
seems to make a hidden choice of those who do respond positively to him, so
that our choice of God is almost pre-empted by his choice of us.
What a wonder and a mystery - the choices of God!
We are saved by choice not by chance.
No one has a right to heaven. You may
think you're as good as the next person - but what does that matter when we are
talking about having eternal life with
God? Who are we, so full of deceit and inadequacy, made of the dust of the
earth, full of frailty, to be worthy of God in his holiness?
Only by God's gift and his promise
- and our choice of him.
Lord, to
whom can we go? You have the words of
eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of
God.
To whom
can we go? There
is one giver of salvation who gives us today his flesh and blood as life to our
spirit!
You
have the words of eternal life. You, Jesus, Bread of Life,
promise us through our communion with you a quality of life that is in its
nature unending.
And we
believe Given such a gift and such a promise the choice
is ours, to live not by chance but by a definite choice, a choice for Jesus our
Saviour, to whom be glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and for
ever. Amen.
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