March 16, 2003
Better Reasons for Being Saved
The Rev. Dr. Riley E. Jensen

It’s contrary to the dictates of good sermonizing, but I won’t keep you in suspense.  This story has a happy ending.  The story is about a young girl, Vicky, whom I met as a teenager in one of my youth group’s years ago.  Vicky as a child and as a teenager was one of those kids who had to find her own way spiritually without parental guidance or church direction.  Her parents were good, moral people who had had some negative religious experiences of their own.  So, not wanting to expose Vicky to similar trauma, they chose a course of upbringing (at least with regard to spiritual things) which could best be described as hands-off.

By the time I met Vicky she was a high school junior -- attractive, intelligent, well-liked, and determined to fill the spiritual vacuum which she felt she had in her life.  Our paths crossed when she made an appointment with me one day.

Now you have to understand that when most teenagers find themselves in a minister’s office, it’s either the result of some heavy finessing or outright coercion, but Vicky came to me “out of the blue” on her own initiative.  That appointment began a friendship which lasted many years, a friendship which allowed me to participate in some significant moments in her life including her baptism and later her marriage.

I share all of this with you by way of background because when I saw Vicky that first time in my office, I might well have classified her among the great company of mourners with whom ministers come in contact regularly.  The cause of her mourning had nothing to do with death or boyfriend problems.  It rather had to do with a spiritual vacuum that she desired to fill.

What Vicky told me that day went something like this.  The previous summer she had been riding a ferry to the family summer cottage on Bainbridge Island near Seattle.  While on the ferry, she had been approached by a young man.  Now we all understand that girls like Vicky are used to being approached by young men, but his one was different.  He wanted to talk about being saved, and he left her with a religious tract which explained what he meant.

This experience for Vicky was neither positive nor negative.  It was just interesting, because she discovered that she was in fact interested in being saved.  She just didn’t know much about it.  And during the course of the summer (as she tells it) she went again-and-again to a little log down on the beach where she would sit reading and re-reading this gospel tract and considering its message.

When she came to me, her question was the product of a whole summer’s reflection.  She framed her question to me thoughtfully and with a maturity beyond her years.  The tract said that in order to be saved, a person must accept Jesus as their savior and follow him.  Anyone who would not do this would go to hell.  That was essentially the message of the first paragraph; the tract then went on to describe in great detail how hell was more than just a hotter version of Tahiti.

Then came the zinger, and when it came, I wish the author of that tract was sitting by me so I could have heard his answer.  “Are there,” Vicky asked, “better reasons for being saved than just getting a kind of insurance policy against going to hell?”  Here, I thought, was a young woman who intuitively understood more about God than people who have claimed to be Christians for years.  Thus began a journey of faith for Vicky which resulted in her baptism and continued Christian maturity through a variety of ups and down that her subsequent life brought her.

I have shared this story with you at length this morning because whenever I read the second Beatitude, I think of Vicky.  “Blessed or happy are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”  In Vicky’s case (as in our own) I believe that mourning comes not so much from a fear of hell and an afterlife of torment, but rather from an experience of hell in this life.  You want better reasons for being saved!  I will give you three, and I promise you there are more.

I.  There Is No More Pretending

First of all, we are saved, not so much from going to hell as being delivered from hell.  Those who mourn are called “blessed” because for them there is no more pretending.  They are called happy because they have the courage to face their grief rather then pretending there isn’t any.

Someone has said, “The shallow recover quickly because you can’t bruise a pillow.”  I’m always suspicious of those people for whom everything is going fine.  I don’t believe it.  If their constant reassurances to me that everything is going fine is just an amenity because they don’t want to get into it, I can accept that.  But if they have worked themselves into such a state of denial as to what this life is all about, then they are in deep trouble.

I don’t know much about the hell of the next life, but I know a great deal about the one in this life.  C.J. Jung was asked, “Do you believe in God?” and his reply was, “No!  There are some things too important just to believe in.  I know him.”  The same can be said about the dark side of life.  It’s too much with us just to believe in.  Because it’s part of our experience, we don’t need to be convinced by some creed.

Frederick Buechner paraphrased Jesus’ cry of agony from the cross in this way,  “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?  My God, where the hell are you, meaning -- if thou art our father who art in heaven, be thou also our father who art in hell, because hell is where the action is, where I am, and where the cross is.  It is where the pitiless storm is.  It is where people labor and are heavy laden under the burden of their own lives without you, where they cut themselves shaving, and smoke three packs a day though they know the Surgeon General’s warning by heart.”

You see, hell is where the action is and those who mourn instinctively know that.  Vicky wanted a better reason for being saved than just an escape from hell.  And so I offer this, “You don’t have to pretend anymore.”  Those who mourn are able to face the grief of their hellish experiences and to meet God there.  There is no more pretending, and certainly church is the last place where we should need to pretend that everything is coming up roses.

II.  There Is More Caring

Secondly, I want to tell Vicky that a better reason for being saved, a better reason for becoming a Christian is that she will discover the meaning of caring.  I have a plaque that reads, “The Irish say your trouble is their trouble, and your joy is their joy.”  That is as good a definition of caring as I know.

Yet those of you who have been raised by over-protective parents or who have friends whose support can seem suffocating at times may feel that you have been cared for to death.  You are well-acquainted with that person Virginia Glasgow describes,  “She loves to help others; you could tell the others by their hunted look.”  Maybe your theme song has become that well-known country-western ballad, “I’m so miserable without you it’s almost like you were here!”

In spite of all of that, I say to you, don’t knock it.  Be thankful for those over-protective parents.  Be grateful for those concerned friends.  At least their heart is in the right place.  And be thankful for the influence of the Christian Faith on our culture as it has produced agencies of compassion from the United Way to the Salvation Army, from Guilda’s House to Degage’, and from God’s Kitchen to the Westminster Food Pantry.

In a world of many religions the great besetting sin of liberal religion is to appear intolerant or (God forbid) imply the superiority of one religion over another.  But I am a Christian and clearly one of the great marks of the Christian faith as we have learned it from our leader is the exercise of compassion – food for the hungry, water for the thirsty, shelter for the homeless, and healing for the sick.

Certainly, compassion is not the exclusive domain of Christianity, but it is safe to say that more than any other group worldwide our institutions are present to reach out and to build up, to educate and to heal.  If you ever have a chance to observe a member of Hari Krishna at the scene of an automobile accident, you will find only an interested observer.  For the Hari Krishna as a matter of religious commitment, cannot exercise compassion for fear of invading someone else’s karma and forcing them to go through this life again.  If you find yourself in Calcutta and in need, don’t wait on the steps of one of Kali’s Hindu temples.  The better bet would be to find one of Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity.

“Blessed are those who mourn” rather than those who deal with their grief in quiet indifference.  The word for mourning here is the strongest word for the pouring out of your feelings in the Greek language.  It is used to describe Jacob’s grief when he believed that Joseph, his son, was dead.  It is descriptive of a person who is racked with emotional pain, and who is beyond any concern about who might know about it.

In short this is the kind of gut-wrenching, God-questioning turmoil of the soul that turns us all into agnostics and causes us to ask where God is.  Where then is the happiness in this kind of mourning?  Where is the caring?  Where is God?  Have you ever heard someone share, “I never knew how many friends I had until I went through this or that crisis experience.  In this church we have heard similar testimonies many times from those who piggybacked on the faith and compassion of their Christian friends to get them through a crisis experience.

You see, it is a unique property of the Christian faith that because of the Cross of Jesus Christ we have learned how to value compassion.  I watched my children growing up just as you watch yours, and I didn’t want them hurt.  I didn’t want them hurt by wearing their heart on their shirtsleeves and being exposed to childish cruelties.  As young adults I don’t want them hurt as they are introduced to the callousness of the real world.

And yet what are we to do because at the same time we want them to know love, and love by definition is being vulnerable to those same cruelties.  So what should we teach them -- the indifference of stoicism where there is no pain or the compassion of Christianity where there is a great deal of pain.

Vicky will have to decide for herself but I feel that another good reason for being saved, another good reason for committing myself to the God of Abraham and Sarah whom I know in Jesus Christ is that our way of life includes offering care and compassion to those who mourn.

III.  There Is Real Comfort

Finally, Vicky, perhaps the best reason I know for being saved is not to get that insurance waiver like a chance card on a Monopoly board that tells you to proceed directly to “Go” and collect your $200.  The best reason for being saved is not to escape hell but rather to know the presence of God while living there.  Perhaps we pass over the words of the Psalmist too lightly, but this is what he is getting at when he says, “The Lord is their refuge in time of trouble.  The Lord delivers them from the wicked and saves them because they take refuge in him.”

To put it in a word, the best reason for being saved is “comfort”.  Recently a friend made what seemed to me to be a startling statement, “The older we get, the more we need a loving parent.  We need to have the comfort of the loving God of the prodigal son.”  Perhaps that is just to say that there is never a time in our lives when we don’t need a place of refuge, a place of comfort.  As one person put it, “to be comforted is not to be talked to but to be touched, as hands touch, as bodies touch, or as we are touched by music or poetry at inner points of loneliness or joy, at points of hidden pain and depression, at levels of deep longing and love.”

The word comfort is literally from the Latin “con/fortis” – “to abide in strength”.  It is true that the older we get the more our human frailties are exposed, the more we realize that our omnipotence is illusion.  Age and wisdom teach us an appreciation for the mysteries of the universe (and more importantly) that we are people who desperately need to be comforted in the face of uncertainty.

My friends, this is one of those times isn’t it when we need to be comforted in the face of uncertainty.  With the Psalmist we cry out to the One who promises to be our refuge and strength.  With heaviness of heart we long for deliverance from the wicked, and saved from the consequences of a war we feel helpless to prevent.  We need to be comforted.  We need to abide in the One who is our refuge and strength.

For Vicky and those like her these are not arguments that will have much clout in the debating forum.  For those who feel powerless in the face of the steady push of the war machine, the loss of a future where peace seemed possible just a few years ago is mourned. You see, the mourning of the beatitude represents a heaviness of heart with which Jesus was familiar.  And the comfort promised was the kind of strength that enabled him to face the suffering of the cross.