Kethuvim

Did you whince when you read the title for this post? Me too. This may sound heretical and sacriligious, but I can't stand that word. Maybe that's not 100% true. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I can't stand what the Church has done to that word. We've neutered it, narrowed it down to just a select few that we can't agree on, and, in turn, lost nearly all of the original meaning of the word itself.

When you think of the the word salvation, what comes to mind? For some of us, the thoughts that come to us might be positive. Mine would be positive, but also incredibly muddy and odd. But for a great many people, the word salvation conjours up nothing but horrible memories. I have a kid in my youth group who's dad will have nothing to do with the Church because, as a child, he was at a church camp where they blocked him onto a boat dock and wouldn't let him off until he "accepted Jesus and was saved." That makes me want to puke, but many people have similar thoughts about salvation. So what else comes to mind? Heaven? Hell? A helmet-haired televangelist admonishing you to secure your place in heaven by sending that check? These are some of the thoughts that come to my mind as well.

I'm pretty tired of hearing about salvation in the Church. I'm tired of salvation being reduced to a future thing, while ignoring this life. I'm tired of Christians talking about who they "saved" this week, as if people are part of some giant checklist.

It sounds scandalous to a great many Christians, but the salvation that Jesus spoke of had very little to do with the afterlife. It had everything to do with this life. There's a great story in the book of Luke where Jesus talks to a man named Zacchaeus (evidentally a wee little man). Zacchaeus was a tax collector, which meant that he was basically a rip-off artist who preyed on the poor and oppressed in order to line his own pockets (did tunics have pockets?). Jesus comes into town and calls to Zac (I'm tired of typing his whole name) and invites himself over to dinner at Zac's house. The religious people start grumbling about the fact that Jesus is associating with a "sinner," but Jesus continues on to Zac's house anyway. Zac's first words to Jesus are this:

"Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount."

Interesting words from Zac, because he's essentially agreeing to bankrupt himself. Keep in mind that the text never says whether or not Zac followed through on his promise. All it says is that he makes this promise to Jesus. Jesus' response is, "Today, salvation has come to this house..." An interesting note here is Jesus' play on words. The Hebrew word for salvation is "Yeshua," which, incidentally, is Jesus' real name in Hebrew.

So this passage leads to a lot of questions. What does Jesus mean by salvation? If he means what most American Christians believe he means, then we have to conclude that all it takes to get to heaven is to say you're going to do something. Forget all of our doctrine on baptism being the means to salvation (it doesn't say anything about Zac being baptized, and interestingly enough, the Bible never mentions any of Jesus' disciples being baptized either). Forget all of our doctrine on "accepting Jesus into your heart" or "professing Jesus as oyur Lord and Savior. All we get from the text is that Zac said he would give half of everything he had to the poor, and Jesus in return "saves" Zac. If you're going to stick to the fundamentalist view that salvation is all about heaven, then you're quickly painting yourself into a corner that you can't get out of. We'll talk more about that in the next post.

I contend that Jesus is speaking of a much deeper salvation; a salvation that takes place in the here and now. I believe that Zac was saved from a life of materialism. I believe that he was saved from a life of ripping people off. I believe he was saved from a life of selfishness and greed. That's real, down-to-earth, present-day salvation, not some "pie in the sky when you die" garbage. Jesus realized that Zac needed to be saved from his ways. He needed to be saved from a horrible life of not caring about anyone but himself.

In the next post, we'll explore the root of the word salvation and, according to the Bible, how you attain it.