From the Rector

My dear family in Christ,
 
Recently, I re-shared on one of my social media accounts a quote from a colleague and fellow Sewanee alum, the Rev. Boyd Evans, that I thought particularly relevant to the state of the Christian faith in our American culture.  To my surprise (and it’s always at least a little to my surprise to discover that every single person on Earth does not in fact see every single thing exactly the same way I do), my sharing of Fr. Evans’s quote led to a bit of controversy in the comments section.  Some compelling and interesting points were raised by some good friends who took issue with the quotation, and that indicates to me that there’s some good “faith talk” to be had in exploring these ideas.
 
Here’s the quote from Fr. Evans:
 
“Christianity was never about individual salvation.  It is well past time for us to get over this notion.  If you don’t believe that your salvation is bound up with your neighbor’s, you have entirely missed Jesus[’s] message.”
 
Now, we’ve talked in a number of different sermons, as well as in our Zoom Bible study and Faith Talk sessions, about the communal nature of the cultures in which both Testaments of Holy Scripture came to be produced.  Both the ancient Hebrews and the ancient Greeks put family and community first, and the individual second (or third…).  That is, of course, painting with a broad brushstroke; there were exceptions, and “community/family first” was not an etched-in-stone, inviolable law.  But the fact remains that it was characteristic of both cultures that one discovered and understood one’s individual identity primarily in terms of one’s family and one’s community.  “Who I am” was a question answered in the context of “who are my people” ~ or, better yet, “to which people do I belong?”
 
To be sure, the ancient Hebrews understood things like justice in communal terms:  if one individual in my community is the victim of injustice, then my whole community does not have justice, and I, as a member of that community, am likewise a victim of that injustice.  The Greeks, as well, placed emphasis on community, as can be seen in the philosophies of, for example, Socrates as recorded by Plato.
 
From such cultural perspectives, the notion that salvation could be something to which an individual could attain, regardless of the state or status of that person’s family or community (i.e., his or her “people”), would have been nonsensical.  And yet, in so much of contemporary American Christianity, that does seem to be the way the concept of salvation is presented, is understood, is ~ to a real extent ~ practiced.  We tend to commodify salvation, to turn it into a product or service that one person can possess or access without regard for or connection to anybody else.  “I am saved; as for the person next to me, who can say?  That’s up to God, and anyway, it’s none of my business” seems to be the popular understanding.
 
But a number of my friends took issue not only with Fr. Boyd’s quote, but with the kinds of explanation that I just mentioned, above.  One of them responded by asking, “So, individuals don’t matter, then?  Can God not save an individual?”  More than one person raised the concern about corporate culpability:  “Does that mean, if my family or my community is evil and unrepentant, I’m going to go to hell, even if I’m a good and faithful individual, myself?”
 
Personally, I didn’t see anything in the initial quotation to imply either of those meanings, but I have to admit that they are good, valid questions.  So, what do we do, then?  How do we respond?
 
Well, to clarify, I am not claiming, nor will I ever claim, that there is anything that God “can’t” do.  Full stop.  I don’t think the question here is about what God can or cannot do.  I think the question is, rather, about what it means to be human.
 
What I am saying, and what I believe Fr. Boyd is saying, is that we as human beings do not and cannot even really exist as individuals totally separate from other human beings. Our interconnectedness is not an abstract ideal to aspire towards, but rather a material fact of our present existence. In light of that fact, it’s simply not feasible to consider just my individual salvation one way or the other as if I existed in isolation in some sort of individual vacuum. It just doesn’t make any sense to think about salvation in such terms.
 
And it’s important to point that out emphatically because Western culture for centuries has elevated ~ really deified ~ the principle of individualism so much that it’s now gotten beyond the level of caricature. Western individualism has so distorted our subconscious conceptions and perceptions, of ourselves and of each other, that we’re often in active denial of the fact that we’re connected to each other at all.
 
And that’s a perspective that is so utterly alien to that of either Testament of Holy Scripture that our perspective actively prevents us from understanding the Bible accurately.  So again, it’s not about what God can or cannot do in terms of saving people. It’s that we in our culture are simply put unable to read the Bible correctly when left to our own cultural devices.
 
And that is dangerous, to be honest.
 
Likewise, it’s not “the group instead of the individual”; it’s that the individual is subsumed within the group, and the point of Jesus’s salvific atonement is the redemption and reconciliation of all humanity with (and within) God…
… whereas postmodern American Christians have a lamentable tendency to view salvation as we view every other “consumable” good in our culture, whether it be good, fashion, housing, education, etc.:  as a matter of individual benefit and/or privilege. I.e., “my salvation is my own, and as long as I’m saved, I might feel bad for someone else, but that between them and God, and in any event it ain’t none of my business, and it certainly ain’t my problem.”
 
If that is indeed how we look at salvation, even (especially) subconsciously, then I think we’ll have a devil of a time (that phrase chosen very deliberately!) actually grasping what Jesus it teaching us, and what He’s calling us to move toward and live into.
 
The other thing I think we need to consider is that “bound up with” and “depends upon” are not the same thing, just to clarify further.  To say that our individual salvation is bound up with our fellow human beings is not at all to say or to imply that our individual salvation depends upon any other human being.  The only One on whom our salvation depends is Jesus. But that same Jesus doesn’t allow us to imagine our own salvation in isolation apart from our fellow human beings.
 
Perhaps that is one of the greatest Mysteries of the faith ~ namely, that Jesus Christ did absolutely and in actual fact go to the Cross and sacrifice His life for me, lone me, an individual sinner, in an intensely intimate and personal fashion … and that is exactly what He did for every other individual, and also exactly how He effected Atonement for all humanity and indeed all of Creation at the same time.
 
Maybe we cannot really understand it fully as limited, individual human beings.  Maybe all we can truly, authentically do in the face of such a magnitude of grace is to shout ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA!
 
Happy Easter, y’all!
 
Fr. C

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