My mother was quite offended by the church group that came by their apartment-extended care facility some days before Christmas. It was advertised as a Christmas concert but, as Mom said, “They wanted to know if we were saved.” She was insulted by the implied assumption that she wasn’t, and she was irritated that these folks took advantage of a captive audience or as she quipped, “Just to get a hold of all of us old folks before we kick off.” Possibly, like you, my mother does not take kindly to someone “in her face,” trying to sell something, questioning the validity of her faith or hustling for Jesus.

Are you saved? The “in your face” approach is irritatingly confrontational and often arrogant, but “being saved” is actually a good question. What does it mean? Is it relevant to how you will live your life this week, make up a family budget, raise kids or advocate for public policy? What ... in the world ... does it mean to be saved? Try out this definition and then we’ll turn to the gospel to see if it holds true. To be saved is to participate in the joy and justice of the kingdom of God. Or, with a slight twist in wording, to be saved is for the whole person - body and spirit--to be engaged, claimed and nurtured by the justice and joy of the realm of God. Now, let’s turn to the gospel lesson; I think I got this from the Bible. You test it out.

The opening chapters of each of the gospels have introductions that frame the entire story. John speaks of the light coming into the world, Luke includes the quotation from Isaiah as Jesus’ mission statement--the one that speaks of preaching good news to the poor, release for the captives and liberty for those oppressed. Mark, the shortest of the gospels, introduces Jesus’ public ministry with the line: “And he went through Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.” Matthew, our text for the day, provides this summary: “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.”

Jesus was a teacher and a healer. The content of his teaching was the kingdom of God, proclaimed right in the midst of the kingdom of Caesar. He embodied this good news of the kingdom by moving among the people, eating with outcasts and healing persons from all sorts of backgrounds, even non-Jews. Looking at the entirety of the gospels, Dominic Crossan, one of the best New Testament scholars of our day, writes that Jesus’ “strategy, implicitly for himself and explicitly for his followers, was the combination of free healing and common eating, a religious and economic egalitarianism that negated alike and at once the hierarchical and patronal normalcies of Jewish religion and Roman power.” (Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, p. 198) Jesus did not set himself up as a broker or mediator but announced that there are no divisions between the human and the divine or between persons. Again, using Crossan’s words, “Miracle and parable, healing and eating were calculated to force individuals into unmediated physical and spiritual contact with God and unmediated physical and spiritual contact with one another. He announced, in other words, the unmediated or brokerless Kingdom of God.” (Ibid.)

For this ministry, Jesus was killed. The powers of Rome and the authorities of Temple could not stand for such a witness. Rome could not tolerate any alternative kingdom that might challenge Caesar, and the Temple could not stand for unmediated contact with God. So, Jesus was killed. Yet, needless to say, his death did not stop the message. Easter was God’s response to the attempts to kill the message and the messenger.

Yet, back to the question, “Are you saved?” From the gospels, the question can be phrased like this: Have you been so healed that you can participate in the kingdom of God? Jesus said little about heaven. My sense of this relative quietness is that he left heaven to the mercy of God. His job was to witness to the kingdom of God on earth.

Some years ago I heard of stories of the Presbyterian Church within the hollows of Appalachia. The children in that particular corner of God’s creation suffered from a variety of ailments that could all be attributed to the fact that garbage and human waste went to the ravine behind their homes. In response, the Presbyterians worked to develop a system of garbage collection and waste management. And the word went around, “The Baptists save souls and the Presbyterians save garbage.” The Presbyterians understood that a sick child would have a hard time participating in the joy and justice of the kingdom. They collected garbage.

Regardless if the setting is the chain of Presbyterian hospitals in the states of New Mexico & Arizona, the crisis nurseries in Malawi, the village clinics outside of Chimaltenango, Guatemala, or the AA groups in our Fellowship Hall, the ministry of the church has always been connected with health and healing. In fact, one of the main reasons that the Pentecostal churches in Africa are growing so rapidly these days is that they deliver health care (in this case, faith healing) in areas with no medical facilities. The healing of body and soul are integral to the good news.

Yet, healing is also tied to the kingdom of God. And this is where we modern Presbyterians get shy or weak-kneed. We are often all “gung ho” for the medical care, yet get a bit quiet when it comes to the kingdom part. Healing, in Jesus ministry, was tied to the joy and justice of the kingdom of God, the bigger picture. Healing and witnessing go hand in hand.

My mind has been swirling around the big question of what it means to provide a Christian witness in the midst of a complex world of many religions and no religions. Prior to my week away, I was working behind the scenes to set up a gathering of clergy from a variety of faith groups, to look at the call to dialogue issued by Muslim and Christian leaders around the world. I am seeking an intentional, local response. Respectful dialogue, I firmly believe, is a component of our witness. Then, Alison and I went off to Vietnam to attend the wedding of the daughter of the family that her congregation sponsored as immigrants six years ago. (Yes, we have lots of pictures and stories, plenty to inflict on family and friends.) Last Sunday, we went to the 9:30 mass at the Roman Catholic Cathedral in the midst of Ho Chi Minh City, quite coincidentally the one service that is given mostly in English. That afternoon we visited Buddhist temples and the day prior we spent some time in a Hindu temple in the neighborhood of our hotel. I love to look and try to learn. Little things catch my attention. In the Roman Catholic mass in Ho Chi Minh City when all are standing for the communion liturgy, the locals open their hands for the Lord’s prayer then take the hand of their spouse or children. It’s nice. In the temples the practice is to hold a small bundle of incense over one’s head when in prayer. In the Miriamman Hindu temple it is common for persons to press hands or face against the stone of the center altar to offer prayer; the walls were all discolored at the height of hands and face. It is fascinating and intriguing to witness persons in worship. I am moved by the passion and fervency of prayer and I affirm that God is bigger than our understanding of God and our practice of the faith.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Passion and fervency are not the sole signs of faith. Painfully we remember that many German Christians were passionate and fervent in their support of Hitler’s Nazism. Passionate Christians in our country supported slavery and some in our midst, committed to faith, left our church in the 1960's primarily in opposition to the ordination of women, somehow embracing misogyny as God-given. With hindsight, we assert that such passion and fervor, while sincere, were misguided and dangerous. Passion and fervor can be signs of authentic faith ... or not. Yet God is much bigger than our creeds and definitions and more wondrous than our parochial boundaries.

How do we live in such a complex world where one neighbor is Muslim, another agnostic, another fundamentalist Christian? How do we live together when one of our own children embraces the faith of a parent, another drifts away and still another welcomes a whole new and foreign faith? One way, a good and wise way, to be faithful within the complexity of our global community is to follow the lead of Jesus, who healed and witnessed to the kingdom of God. Like Jesus, we eat with strangers and provide healing across the boundaries of class & race, age & gender, religion & nationality. And, like Jesus, we bear witness to the joy and justice of the kingdom of God.

I suggested to my mom that she give the activities director at their facility a note to the effect that she did not appreciate being subjected to heavy-handed proselytizing under the guise of a concert. It was a bit of a set-up. But it’s not a bad question to ask of ourselves--just what does it mean to be saved. From what to what? As Matthew leads us, we move from disease to health, from isolation to community, from the void to intimacy with God, from random actions to support of the kingdom of God. My prayer, my hope is that even this week you might be so touched and healed by the spirit of God that you will encounter the joy and the justice of the kingdom of God ... and then live in gratitude.