Beyond Winning/Losing: Redefining Salvation

The Rev. Sara Warfield

Scripture: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

In the book Why We’re Polarized, author Ezra Klein explores how our political party has become enmeshed with our personal identity, which has changed how we engage the political process. This is actually a relatively new phenomenon. 30 years ago, plenty of people split their ticket when they voted: they might vote for a Republican governor because they are concerned about lower taxes for their small business but a Democratic president because building up public education is really important to them. It wasn’t about what party the candidates were from or even what party the voter claimed, it was about how the candidate’s policies would impact the voter.

That has shifted dramatically over the past two decades. Now many of us, and probably many of us here, wouldn’t dream of voting for a candidate from the other party. Klein talks about this in terms of being a fan of a sports team. He writes,

Every week, millions, perhaps even billions, attach their happiness to the outcome of a game that they are not playing, whose material spoils they will not enjoy. They are not watching for sportsmanship or prowess; they are watching…because it is the winning that is important.

This, he says, is what our politics have come to be about. Not governing philosophy. Not morality. Not even the impact of policies on one’s own life. But winning. Because when our candidate loses, it’s a hit on our team on whom we stake our identity, so it is a hit on our very identity.

Now this isn’t something any of us have consciously chosen. The rest of the book goes on to describe how we got to this point: politicians realizing that anger motivates more than policy or even hope; that creating enemies of immigrants or trans folks or billionaires creates teams, which creates winners and losers—and no one wants to be a loser.

Politics has become a zero-sum competition, not a way to choose how we’ll organize and tend to our society. It has become more committed to winning, to being right and someone else being wrong, than it has to building a healthy community.

Which brings us to today’s gospel, the parable of the prodigal son. I think probably all of us have heard this story in one form or another. A younger son gets impatient for his inheritance and asks his father to give it to him now rather than waiting until after he dies. And his father gives it to him, seemingly no questions asked. Then this young man goes off to the big city and rents a fancy penthouse that he turns into a party den. Maybe booze, maybe drugs. Maybe women, maybe men. The scriptures only say “dissolute living.”

He squanders every penny of his inheritance and finds himself working literally on a pig farm, and he’s not making enough even to eat. But then he remembers how his father treats his farm workers. They eat well. They’re taken care of. So he decides to go back home and beg his father to take him back, but only to work as a hired hand. In his mind, his father would surely reject him as his son.

But that’s not what happens. His father has been scanning the horizon since the day his son left, waiting for him to return. And when he finally sees him, he runs to his youngest and kisses him. He’s overjoyed to have his son back. We need to throw a party, the father says, to celebrate my family becoming whole again.

So the party begins, and it seems that the oldest son, the son who didn’t leave, the son who has dutifully managed his part of the farm, hasn’t heard about his brother coming back. But he does hear the music and joy from far off when he’s coming back from working his fields. And when he gets to the house he immediately confronts his father.

“What the heck, Dad? I’ve done everything right. I’ve followed all the rules. And the kid who ran off and wasted literally half of your wealth gets the party? You’ve never thrown me a party.”

Here’s the thing: to the sons, this was all a zero-sum competition. Someone had to win and someone had to lose. The youngest son thought he got the W when his father gave him his inheritance early. He lived large for a while but then lost. And when in his mind he had become the loser, he couldn’t possibly imagine that his father would embrace him as his son again.

And then there’s the oldest son. I can only imagine what he was feeling when his brother ran off with half his family’s wealth. I’m an oldest child, and I probably would have thought, wait, those aren’t the rules. At best his younger brother cheated, and at worst his younger brother cheated and still won. But when news trickled in that his younger brother had lost everything, the oldest started to feel like he was going to be the winner of this game. The good son. The one who had followed the rules, done everything he was supposed to do. Slow and steady—and without cheating.

But their father isn’t interested in a competition. He defies both his sons’ expectations. When his youngest is bracing for rejection, the father takes him into his arms and celebrates. And when his oldest expects the same thing, that his father will reject his wayward brother, that he will be hailed as the good son, the winner, he instead finds that his father has not only welcomed the cheater back but has thrown him an extravagant party.

Their father wasn’t interested in crowning winners or shaming losers. Their father's greatest concern was for the wholeness of the family, for belonging. All the father wants is to be in loving, authentic relationship with his sons. He’s seen that his youngest is dejected, ashamed, but he came back, so the father showers him with love. And he tells his oldest, I love the relationship we have. You’ve always been with me, and you always will be. What’s mine has always been yours, and it always will be. The only thing that’s changed is that your brother is back, and I’m going to love you both with everything I have.

Now if the father is supposed to be God in this story, as many Christians throughout the ages have assumed, I think it shows us something important about God’s ultimate priority, God’s ultimate hope for us. I think it shows us a lot about what salvation means.

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As I shared in our newsletter on Friday, our Vestry gathered at St. James’ in Tigard last month with other vestries in the diocese to plan for the year ahead. Each Vestry discerned the gifts and needs of its own community, and we each set our own goals. Our Vestry decided that our goal for this year is: To develop evangelism at St. Luke’s. You can read more about this goal in either the newsletter or the insert in your worship handout this morning.

The truth is, evangelism is inextricably linked to the idea of salvation. We evangelize, which is literally translated from the Greek as sharing the good news, to invite people into salvation.

Oh, I can already see you getting squirmy. The Vestry got squirmy, too. I was squirmy about the concepts of evangelism and salvation for years. No, squirmy’s not the word. Traumatized. I was traumatized. When I was a kid, even through high school, I prayed every night that God would forgive me my sins, and I repeated the words that, according to how I was taught, would save me from hell: confessing that Jesus was lord and believing that God raised him from the dead. I did this every night just in case I died or just in case the rapture happened. I was so afraid of hell.

Because what I was taught is that salvation is a zero-sum game for our souls. You were either a winner whose soul went to heaven after you died or a loser whose soul went to hell.

But when I really let myself read and drop into the actual gospels—and the word gospel derives through many twists and turns from the same Greek as evangelism—when I read the good news of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and especially when I read and let myself understand this parable we heard today, the words salvation and evangelism got a lot less scary and a lot more life-giving.

Because the father in this story, God, teaches us that salvation is not a zero-sum competition with strict rules. It’s not screw up and you’re out, toe the line and you’re in. It’s “you already belong.” God’s arms are always open. Sometimes we drift away from those open arms, but that doesn’t mean God closes them, shutting us out forever. It also doesn’t mean that you need to do particular things before God will scoop you up.

We don’t earn God’s love, nor do we ever lose it. That’s what grace is. There’s no deserving or undeserving. What there is, is sanctification. Oh, I know, that’s a fancy seminary word, but it has a beautiful meaning. Sanctification means how we live our lives in the light of that all-encompassing belonging of God’s grace, in the knowing that God’s arms are always open.

We can test that belonging, as the youngest son did, wandering away, not trusting that those arms would still be open when he returned. Or we can be mistrustful like the oldest son was, holding more tightly to rules than to love.

Now that doesn’t mean tossing all the rules out the window. It doesn’t mean continuing to let people harm others or themselves. I’ve said it over and over again: setting boundaries is an act of love; holding others accountable when they do harm is an act of love. But there’s a big difference between those things and making an idol of rules, of laws. And sometimes we’re forced to choose between rules and belonging, between laws and love.

So we can either test God’s grace, or even reject God’s grace, for the sake of holding too tightly to guilt or rules, or we can let our lives be led by that grace, be modeled on that grace. How do we let God’s grace change us, open us, make way for something more expansive than us vs. them, winning vs. losing. If God’s love is always available to us, what does that mean for how we’re supposed to love?

That’s what our Vestry and by extension our community will be exploring this year. How to live God’s love in all the circumstances of this tangled life. How to invite more people into God’s grace. How to bring more people into God’s all-encompassing belonging. Because that’s what salvation is. That’s the good news.

Amen.