It’s been a challenging few weeks in Gospel-lectionary Land for people who believe in universal salvation, the doctrine that all are saved by Christ’s redeeming work, whether or not they believe or want to be included. Last Sunday it was Jesus’ vision of the final judgment, with the righteous sorted from the damned. This week we hear about the end times, and this troubling verse: “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.”
Just what, or who, is meant by “his elect?” Can anyone join that party, or do you have to be invited or, worse, elected? For us the word “election” implies a democratic process, but theologians of old used that word to connote God’s choosing us for salvation. It’s more selection than election, and in some passages Jesus suggests it is not automatic, giving rise to the doctrine of predestination, the belief that some are chosen for salvation - or not.
There is some comfort in the notion that there is nothing we can do to secure eternal salvation – that is grace, which is pure gift. But most folks like to be able to control their destinies, to earn their way. And what if some get the gift and some do not? What if “winning the lottery” on earth, by where we are born, and in what color skin, and with what accompanying resources and privileges, means we are shut out of the heavenly courts? What about faith and belief? Some passages imply this is the key, the one response required from us to what God freely offers.
It is human nature to look at a phrase like “his elect” and immediately wonder about the opposite – who loses. But nothing in that word implies a limit – everyone might be God’s “elect.” If the love of God is as merciful and all-encompassing as Jesus implies in some of his teaching, then we might imagine that those being gathered from the four winds includes most if not all of humanity. It's one reason we are to make the love and power of Jesus known in our lives.
It is not given to us to know who is or is not “elect.” Christians who presume to judge that for others are usurping a role reserved strictly for God. Jesus told us only to love one another as God has loved us – with mercy and compassion and truthfulness and healing. That should keep us busy enough not to have time to worry about who’s “in” and who’s “out,” even ourselves.
One of my parishioners once told me of her 4-year-old grand-niece, who had spoken about her recent baptism at Show & Tell. Asked by a teacher what baptism meant, the girl said, “It means that even when you’re not perfect, God forgives you.” Bingo!
Instead of worrying about whether or not we’re included, let’s set about being the kind of Christian community in which that girl, and all her peers, grow into adulthood holding that perfect knowledge. A church that knows that in its guts can transform the world in Amazing Grace.
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SATURDAY - ADVENT RETREAT MORNING "SPA FOR THE SPIRIT" (online) December 2, 9-12:30. Register here; information and Zoom link will be sent prior to the event.
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