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Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Sink or Swim Salvation
Genesis 7:1-10; 1 Peter 3:13-22
If you're suffering for your faith, you're in the best of company. So says Peter in this week's sermon text. For Jesus himself suffered to the point of death at the hands of his worst enemies.
Not just the religious and political authorities, bad as that was. No, behind them and between the lines of Peter's message was the Devil himself.
Picture it... The. Son. Of. God. Hung out to die on a cross, like the commonest of criminals. Stone cold dead for all to see, then buried away for good. Out of the way once and for all. Satan chuckles, does a little jig step, at last laughs out loud.
But wait. What's this?!
Peter says that, there in the shadowy realm of death, Jesus preached his good news "to the spirits in prison." They'd been there ever since Noah's day (see Genesis 6 and 7 for details on that). In a sort of suspended spiritual animation, they waited and waited for whatever would come next in God's cosmic plan. And what came next was spiritual liberation!
Let's not get into charts and diagrams of the afterlife here, tempting as that can be. The main point I take from this for now is this: There is no corner of the universe where God's gracious goodness in Christ cannot do its redemptive work -- touching, forgiving, transforming, blessing any single soul with a penitent heart and mind.
So I picture the Devil and his demons breathlessly amazed at the sight -- Jesus and all the dead, just a moment ago securely locked behind spiritual bars, stand together now tall and proud in the power and freedom of everlasting life! Death and hell and the Devil himself have been blind-sided by the saving grace of God.
Pondering this in preparation to preach on it, I remembered Charles Colson. One of Richard Nixon's hard-nosed White House enforcers, Colson was ultimately tried, convicted, and sent to federal prison for his part in the Watergate scandal. In the process, he became a Christian and received a pledge of faithful fellowship and support for the duration, from the small group of men who'd led him to Christ in the first place. Colson served his time and eventually was released into everyday life. But life would never be the same as before, for now he knew what prison does to a person and to his or her loved ones on the outside.
Colson formed the Prison Fellowship ministries, to serve the spiritual and material needs of inmates and their families, and to press for prison reforms over the long haul as well. That was thirty years or so ago.
Our Alameda church has participated for the last five years or so in Prison Fellowship's "Angel Tree" project, providing Christmas gifts to inmates' children in our area in the name of their imprisoned mothers or fathers. Volunteers from the church family collect those presents and deliver them a few days before Christmas.
I don't know who is the happiest when those visits take place -- the kids, their parents/guardians, or our kind couriers. But I do know that the transaction drastically diminishes prison's power to deaden the human spirit, and that all the souls involved get to breathe in more deeply than ever the clean fresh air of God's gracious Spirit.
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posted by Jack Buckley at
5:43 PM
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