Reaching for Liberation – Part 6 “Salvation in Real and Historical Time”

This is the final of six posts in which I draw on an article by liberation theologian, Ignacio Ellacuria,¹ to reflect on and seek to re-frame the connected themes of sin, Jesus' death, and salvation.

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Jesus died because he believed in and proclaimed the real historical possibility of a different kind of world, a world that would subvert and fundamentally change the existing structures of his time. But his words were a worry, and the growing enthusiastic response from his followers became a threat to those who held the power and who benefited from the way things were, and so on the basis of trumped up charges he was found guilty and executed.

Jesus' core message, the salvation he announces, is the Reign of God. Not some far off reality in some distant “celestial” place. Not something we abide this worldly life for, awaiting our “reward” after our physical death. No, the salvation he came announcing is the hope and radical possibility that here in this world, on our planetary home called Earth, our lives together can be fundamentally different. This is what the Gospels are about. This is what “gospel” means: Good News! “This is the time of fulfillment,” Jesus announces. “The Kingdom of God is at hand!”

And the Kingdom, the Reign, he announces is not some unearthly place in glory flitting among the angels but, rather, a new way of being right here and now. In the society of first century Israel, illness, poverty, imprisonment were understood to be the result of one's own sins or the sins of one's family or ancestors. This is not unlike our own day where the tendency is to view poverty, crime and even illness still as reflecting, to a large extent, one's own individual bad choices somehow disconnected from the social and economic context in which one lives. We mouth the saying “it takes a village to raise a child” but often place blame on the lone individual who goes off course.

Jesus, on the other hand, turns this perspective on its head. He reaches out and literally touches the untouchables (see for example Mark 1:40-45) – and those who were outcast find themselves once again accepted and welcomed back into the community. Instead of blaming the victim, suggesting that the poor or the criminal deserve the suffering that is theirs, Jesus baldly proclaims that the imprisoned will be set free, the oppressed liberated, and the poor will be the recipients of glad tidings (Luke 4:18-19). This is what he means when he preaches the Reign of God! Furthermore he challenges those who would be his followers with the expectation that we will be neighbor and sister/brother to the rejected ones, the marginalized and outcasts of our own world (see Matthew 25:31-46 “the judgement of the nations”; see also the Jesus' comment on the Great Commandment followed by the parable of the good Samaritan - Luke 10:25-37).

The Latin American theologian, Ellacuria, does not stop with this re-framing of our understanding of salvation but takes the reflection one step further. While confessing that in faith we understand Jesus' life and death as uniquely reflecting “the definitive presence of God among human beings,” he reminds us that equally important is Jesus promise that, through God's spirit, His (Jesus') mission is continued in us. He challenges the community of folks who would be his followers to “take up our own crosses and follow Him.”² “This continuity,” argues Ellacuria, “is not purely mystical and sacramental, just as [Jesus' own] activity on earth was not purely mystical and sacramental. In other words, worship, including the celebration of the eucharist, is not the whole of the presence and continuity of Jesus.” In keeping with the theme that our faith must be practiced historically, must be rooted in real time, Ellacuria argues that “there must be a continuation in history of what he (Jesus) carried out in his life. . .”

"Many suffer so a few may enjoy,
many are dis-possessed so that a few may possess."

The understanding that Ellacuria proposes is that salvation continues to be proclaimed and struggled for and died for in our world today. This takes place especially in the lives of the “crucified people, whose crucifixion is the product of actions in history.” In our world, he writes, “the majority of humankind” experiences life as crucifixion, a deliberate and often times violent death that is the consequence of structures and systems that benefit the few at the expense of the many. “Many suffer so a few may enjoy . . . many are dispossessed so that a few may possess.” This is the way our world is today, writes Ellacuria, and surely the systems and structures that make our world like this “must be regarded as sin.” Nevertheless, in the midst of often unspeakable misery, loss and violence one still encounters - miraculously we might say - the prominent and palpable presence of grace in the real lives of suffering people, this in the experience of real and loving community. And in this reality, against all odds, is born the hope and belief that life still is victorious over death “a victory already announced in the resurrection of Jesus, but one that must be won in a process of following in his steps.” This is the faith-grounded hope and real, historical reality that we name salvation!

And so, salvation is not just about ME - as I began with in this series.³ In fact it is not about me, or you, or anyone individually. Rather it is about our world and the whole human race, about the well-being of every person (and of every living species and of the survival and health of the Earth itself). It is less about another world and more about a new world right here where we are, a world that emerges in real life, in the concrete, messy realities of human history. A world envisioned, struggled for, and made real, where all of humankind live in justice, in caring, in abudance, in healing. Where the presence and life of a loving and gracious God are found to be truly present, forming the very core of human community. This is SALVATION!

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1  The article is reprinted in various collections of Ellacuria's work. It is also availble online in Spanish (http://www.seleccionesdeteologia.net/selecciones/llib/vol19/76/076_ellacuria.pdf 2015-03-6) and

English (http://www.womenpriests.org/theology/ellacuria.asp 2014-01-18).
2  Note that this statement from Jesus stands out as so central to Jesus' teachings that it is recorded in all three of the synoptic gospels: Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23.

3  See the my first post, “Growing up Evangelical,” at http://spiritandpraxis.blogspot.com/2015/02/reaching-for-liberation-part-1-growing.html

Reaching for Liberation – Part 1: “Growing Up Evangelical”

This is the first of six posts, in which I draw on an article by liberation theologian, Ignacio Ellacuria, to reflect on and seek to re-frame the connected themes of sin, Jesus' death, and salvation.

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“On July 12, 1957, at the age of four and a half years, I, David Crump, accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior and was saved.”

In my family and in the evangelical-fundamentalist faith context in which I grew up, being able to pinpoint the date and time of this rite of passage was absolutely necessary and expected. As quoted above, it was even written down for the record.

The process followed a predictable pattern. Hearing and accepting the fact that one is a sinner and that as such one is destined for the frightening fires of an eternal hell, the invitation would be made – sometimes almost demanded - to say a simple prayer: “Jesus, I recognize and confess that I am a sinner destined for death and hell. I also recognize and believe that you died for my sin. I ask you to forgive and cleanse me and come into my life. Save me Lord! From this day forward I commit myself to live for you.”

Anyone who openly gave voice to this affirmation was deemed “saved.” In other words, they were no longer bound for hell but were guaranteed a blissful and eternal life with God in heaven. In the brand of evangelicalism in which I grew up, this guarantee was irrevocable: “Once saved, always saved” was the by-word. And so, in my fourth year, after hearing a sermon and invitation at a church camp and having heard this message since the time that I had suckled at my mother's breast, to my parents delight I responded, made my confession, and was saved!

During my early college years, at a Bible College, I would learn that within the Protestant and later evangelical-fundamentalist traditions various understandings developed to explain how this “salvation” works. All of these approaches hold some basic themes in common. First is the view that all human beings are irrevocably contaminated by sin. Secondly, is the understanding that a holy God cannot tolerate sin and so sinful human beings, although part of God's creation, cannot be accepted by God without some kind of intervention. Finally, it is believed that the intervention must be divine. Only God can fix this problem, and that is where Jesus comes in. Jesus comes to earth as “God in human form.” As such he can be the solution, and the solution comes in his death.

This is where the various theological viewpoints diverge. There are different understandings of how Jesus' death functions as an intervention to overcome human sin and thus bring about a re-alignment with God and the guarantee of heaven, i.e. salvation. One view, drawing on the Jewish understanding of sacrifice, holds that although all of us as human beings deserve to die in our sinfulness and separation from God, Jesus (like a sacrificial lamb) died in our place. Another view takes a more economic perspective. It suggests that as sinners, human beings although originally created by God, because of sin they no longer belong to God. In order for them to be returned to their rightful owner, a price must be paid and that price is the voluntary death of God's Son, Jesus. Yet another view holds that because of their sinfulness, human beings must be punished in order for God to forgive and accept them. According to this approach Jesus, in his death, takes the punishment in the place of humankind and transfers to humankind the resulting forgiveness and acceptance.

These approaches all share the belief that Jesus came to earth with the foreknowledge and primary purpose of dying, as the divinely demanded intervention on behalf of humankind. Also characteristic of the evangelical-fundamentalist faith in which I grew up was the insistence that human beings in some sense individually, personally, accept what has been done for them in Jesus' death in order to gain its benefits.

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In the next post we will explore how for me, this whole construction has become problematic.