Hilton Head Island, SC – December 31, 2017
The Chapel Without Walls
Luke 15:11-24; Luke 15:25-32
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Texts – “And he arose, and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.”… “And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.’” – Luke 15:20, 31 (RSV)
Sometimes words can have both secular and sacred meanings. For example, there is the term “church key.” In previous centuries, a church key was a key which would open the door of a church, if churches had locks on their doors, which until recent centuries most churches did not. But in the twentieth century, a “church key” came to mean a particular kind of can opener. It has a sharp triangular piece which points downward. You hook the church key to the lip of a can (a beer or pop or soda or juice can), force the triangle down through the metal, and then you pour out the contents or drink the contents directly from the can. Now modern drink cans have rings you grasp, pull up, and lo and behold, there is a hole in the top of the can, without the necessity of a church key. And if you’re wondering why they are called church keys, I don’t know.
The words “salvation” and “redemption” used to be exclusively religious words, but now they have secular meanings as well. “Salvation from sin” is what “salvation” used to mean. However, when Hurricane Irma went farther to the west than was originally forecast, it represented salvation for the east coast of Florida and also potentially for Hilton Head Island, but it was devastation for the west coast of Florida.
For generations churches used to be called “redemption centers.” Then S&H Green Stamps came along. Remember S&H Green Stamps? You’d go to a store and buy something, and they would give you stamps which equated to the cost of your purchase. Then you would stick the stamps in your S&H Green Stamp Book. When you got enough stamps, you would go to the S&H Redemption Center. With your bulging book you could redeem your stamps for certain kinds of stuff. Back in the Seventies I redeemed some stamps for a fishing tackle box which I still use, more than forty years later. People save coupons from the Sunday newspaper and use them to redeem certain items at a store for a lower price than they would otherwise pay.
The dictionary says that “to redeem” means, in the first instance, “to buy back or to repurchase.” If you sold a house and regretted it and then bought it back, you redeemed it. A movie is coming out soon about John Paul Getty, the billionaire whose grandson was kidnapped. Would the eccentric old cuss redeem him with the ransom, or wouldn’t he? If someone pays the bail bond to get someone out of jail, the prisoner is said to be “redeemed.”
Surprisingly, at least to me, it is that the last definition in my dictionary for the word “redeem” is the religious one. In that context, it means “a) to atone for: or expiate or b) to offset the bad effect of.” In Christianity, the ancient concept is that Jesus atones for or expiates (takes away) our sins. He takes away the bad effect of going to hell, presumably. He “pays the ransom” for us to redeem us, to free us. But to whom is the ransom paid? In the history of theology, some Christians said it was paid to God, and others said it was paid to the devil. If you believe one or the other, you can find support for what you think. If you believe neither, and that there is no ransom paid to anyone, you can make a case for that position as well. If you do that, however, you probably are among the “Salvation Christians” rather than the “Redemption Christians.”
So then, from the standpoint of Christianity, what is salvation? Again, according to the dictionary, the word salvation comes from a Latin verb, salvare, which means “to save.” The first definition of salvation it gives is this: “deliverance from the power and effects of sin.” Unlike “redemption,” which came to the religious definition last, “salvation” gets the religious definition first. Only at the end does it say that salvation can also be “a preservation from destruction or failure; deliverance from danger or difficulty.” Thus we were saved from the full force of Hurricane Irma. Had she come up the Atlantic Coast, she might have hit us head on, but she went up the Gulf Coast, so Ft. Myers and Tampa got it, and we were spared.
Now let us think about the words salvation and redemption in purely religious or theological terms. Usually, people make no distinction between salvation and redemption. They suppose they are synonymous, and mean the same thing.
But do they? Does God save us from our sins? If so, does that mean He redeems us, that He “buys” us back, or He “repurchases” us? If so, from whom does He repurchase us: Satan? Himself? Who?
The most linguistically correct core meaning of “salvation” has to do with health. “Salve” is an ointment that restores health to a cut finger or to itchy skin. Salvation brings health the “sin-sick souls,” about whom we sing in the hymn “There is a balm [a salve] in Gilead.” When we do wrong, we are not healthy, nor are the people to whom we commit the wrongs. Jesus went to eat a meal in the house of Zaccheus, the notorious Jericho tax collector. When Zaccheus promised to make restitution for all the many instances where he had extracted far too much in taxes, Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:9). Zaccheus was made healthy by confessing his sins, and by being shown forgiveness by Jesus. To experience salvation is to be made healthy in the eyes of God and in one’s own eyes.
To be redeemed is similar, but it is not exactly the same. If anyone is redeemed, that person either exchanges something for something else or is exchanged by someone else for something else. In its essential meaning, redemption connotes a transfer, an exchange.
To understand the similarities and differences between the two words, let us look at the two sons in Jesus’ parable of the Father and the Two Sons. It is far more widely known as the parable of the Prodigal Son.
In order fully to understand the many nuances in this parable, it is necessary to explain numerous cultural details in the story which make sense only in the context of first-century Judean and Jewish culture. However, it is not the complete parable itself upon which we are focusing, even though this magnificent story is The Entire Gospel in Miniature. If we had nothing else in the New Testament, the 15th chapter of Luke would suffice to tell us who God is and what He is doing in the world. But for our purposes, it is the attitudes and actions of the two sons which help to describe the differences between the concepts of salvation and redemption. Besides, everyone who has ever heard this parable knows its details, even if the nuances may be unfamiliar.
The younger son in the story asked his father for his share of what he would inherit at his father’s death. The shocking factor is that he asked for his inheritance before his father had died. It is even more shocking that his father gave it to him. So the younger son took his cash, went off to the far country, and spent everything in what the King James Version so artfully describes as “riotous living.” The beauty of that phrase is that all of us must decide for ourselves what “riotous living” is. Whatever it is, it surely is very scandalous.
When his money was all gone, the younger son “came to himself.” He remembered his father, and how life was back home, and how good he had it there. So he decided to go back and throw himself on his father’s mercy.
Did the younger son feel sorry for what he had done? Did he realize how much he hurt his father by insisting on getting his inheritance right then, long before the father had died? Did he repent for what he had done? Jesus doesn’t tell us! I believe Jesus deliberately intended to leave those questions unanswered. He wanted people to be discussing this parable twenty centuries after he first told it. He is a shrewd operator, this Jesus of Nazareth! He did not just fall off the theological turnip truck!
The story informs us that “while [the younger son] was at a distance, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran and embraced and kissed him.” One small cultural observation: everyone who heard Jesus tell this parable would have been appalled at the father in the story. He acted like no other father any of them had ever known or heard of. This father had every right to be angry, and should have been angry, the listeners all thought. This was the father! The father is the paterfamilia, the head of the family, il capo de tutti capi. And this was the son, and even the younger son, at that! The older son was supposed to be the favored son, and all the listeners knew it. But the father welcomed this foolish younger son back into his household, no questions asked, with a hug and a kiss, and a big party and a ring and new shoes and a fatted calf and the whole nine yards of paternal acceptance. Jesus wants us to see the parabolic father as God.
We are meant to understand that the younger son experienced salvation. He was instantly granted mental and physical and spiritual health once again, not by anything he did, but by action of his father’s undemanding love. God wants His love for us to transform us, but He does not demand that of us. Instead, He lives in constant hope that somehow it will happen.
When the older son came in from working in the fields, and saw the party going on, he was angry. He was incensed. He was enraged. He wouldn’t even go into the house, but demanded that his father come out to him. The father did just that, without a stern word of warning to his older son for his impudence. The older son let fly with his white-hot wrath, and the father patiently waited to hear the entire over-the-top explosion, until it had ended. Then he quietly said to the hurt, angry, incredulous, spiritually and psychologically blind older brother, “Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive again, he was lost and is found.” No recriminations, no attempts to put the self-righteous older offspring in his place, no snarl or sneer. Instead, there was only a gracious outpouring of love, the love of a heavenly Father who is determined to save or redeem all his children, because all of us need either salvation or redemption.
The older son technically was given redemption, not salvation. He came to receive what he thought he had earned and what he thought he had lost, to re-purchase his father’s love (which he had never either earned or lost). He didn’t think he was spiritually unhealthy, so his father gave him what he thought he deserved, which was his redemption.
All of us have an amazing God as our heavenly Father. He wants to save and redeem us, all of us, and He will do whatever it takes to make it happen. We may make the process very hard for Him, but He, God, will see to it that it does happen, one way or the other, whether by salvation or by redemption. People who know they have done wrong are Salvation Types, and people who think they have always done right are Redemption Types. God accepts all types, regardless of how well or badly we understand either God or ourselves.
On Christmas evening, I watched Roman Polanski’s movie, The Pianist, on television. This 2002 film won Oscars for Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, and was nominated for Best Picture. It is based on the autobiography of the pre-World War II Polish radio pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman. Mr. Szpilman had gained great fame among his fellow Poles for his outstanding talent via radio broadcasts. When the war came, Szpilman and his fellow Jews were all forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. The musician’s family all ended up in Treblinka, but he was saved by a friend who pulled him out of the line headed into the Treblinka railroad cars.
The movie depicts the deprivations which the autobiography so vividly described. For over two years the pianist lived in one hideaway after another in the destroyed Warsaw Ghetto. Almost at the end, when he was near starvation, Wladyslaw Szpilman was discovered by a high-ranking German officer, a man named Wilm Hosenfeld. Hosenfeld asked him to play the piano in the house in which he was hiding. Out of fear Szpilman had never set a finger on those keys , but he had imagined playing on them many times during his lonely time in his self-induced prison. Out of compassion, the German brought him food, and ultimately saved him from starvation. He asked him what his work had been. He said he had been a pianist. Then he asked what his name was. He told him: Szpilman. The German said, “A good name.” Szpilman means, in German and Polish, “Play-er-man,” or more properly, “Musician,” or in this particular case, “Pianist.”
The German Army officer Wilm Hosenfeld gave the Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman redemption, and he saved him from certain death. The editors of the autobiography noted that Szpilman died at age 88, and Wilm Hosenfeld died in a Soviet POW camp in 1952. The musician was granted redemption, while in the end the soldier received salvation. On subsequent evenings I watched Kramer vs. Kramer and The Zookeeper’s Wife. It was a heavy, horrible, woeful, wonderful week of mind-challenging, spirit-replenishing film.
When I was a seminary student, I went to help out in a Billy Graham crusade when he was in Chicago. At the end of the long, emotion-packed service, George Beverly Shay led the massed choir and the huge congregation in the singing of Just As I am, without one plea. Assuming you have seen televised Billy Graham crusades, you will remember that at that very carefully orchestrated juncture, people would start coming down the aisles of the arena or stadium. When eventually they were all assembled below the pulpit for the altar call, Dr. Graham would say a few things to them, and then lead in a prayer. Depending on who they were and why they came forward, it was intended that either they were to experience salvation or redemption.
Some of us believe that our sins irreparably alienate us from God, and we need salvation. Others believe we simply want to redeem the offer of salvation God has made to us throughout our lives, and so we seek redemption. One way or the other, the Father stands ready to grant us unassailable new health and an unassailable new lease on life.
From all that dwell below the skies
Let the Creator’s praise arise!
Let the Redeemer’s name be sung
Through every land, by every tongue!
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia --- Hallelujah --- Praise God!