Salvation here and now: It’s not about being saved from life, but to be saved by life, in life, for life

I have a friend named Neil. We have known each other for twenty years now. I think it is fair to say when we first met we didn’t see eye to eye, we had lived very different lives. We got to know one another though because we suffered from a common problem. This though is not what led to us becoming friends. That just happened over time. We have been on a spiritual journey along side one another, some of that time we have been very close and others not so much, there have been many parallels and crossings over. We were members at Cross Street chapel together. These days Neil has returned to his Catholic faith; yes he is Catholic, but he is certainly one with an open mind, heart, spirit and soul.

I conducted Neil’s wedding to Rosemary at Dunham Road, I think it was the second wedding I ever conducted. I did not introduce them to each other, although I did meet her before he did. When I was a student minister at King Edward Street Chapel, the home of Macclesfield Unitarians, Rosemary was attending. They met not long after I left there and realised that they had a common acquaintance in me, it is a small world. Rosemary has her health troubles and Neil has been a loving and devoted husband throughout this time, she has even survived his terrible jokes and puns. Neil retired many years and since then returned to education, a few years ago he completed his History PHD on the Irish in Manchester.

Like I said earlier at different times Neil and I have drifted apart and then reconnected. We have reconnected in the last couple of years and he has been a good supportive friend to me, during a few personally difficult times. We see each other, along with other friends most Fridays. We met last Friday and he told me that he was meeting his brother a little later. This was wonderful to hear as I know that they had fallen out a few years ago, they had had their differences about life and the world, the kind of things that seem to cause so much division in society these days. Neil though wanted to make things right, his brother had been his best man at his wedding. So, Neil plucked up the courage to contact his brother’s son and offered the hand of friendship, between two brothers. That afternoon his brother Ged, had agreed to meet him.

A little later I saw them having coffee together. I cannot begin to tell you how much seeing the beaming smile of Ged’s face meant to me. It was so wonderful seeing two brothers reconciled with each other. Neil told me later “When I met him I hugged him and said ‘I love you Ged’. After that it was as it should be with brothers.” It touched my heart. I had already seen two men levelling their pride earlier that day and reconciling with one another and then there was Neil and Ged. If only the rest of the world could behave that way. One thing I am grateful for in life is that I have never fallen out with any of my siblings, nore they me, despite the many troubles and fallings out there have been and still are in our large and complicated family. This includes all the half siblings and step siblings and ex step siblings too. There have been tough times, but we have all vowed never to let these things destroy our relationships with each other. I hope we keep it that way.

Neil and Ged reminded of a verse from chapter 5 in Matthews Gospel, from the “Sermon on the Mount”, which for me is the essence of the teachings of Jesus, something regardless of whether you are a Christian or not seem as good a code as any to live by. I know that Gandhi, a Hindu, believed so. The verse is as follows:

23 So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. 25

It is no use proclaiming faith etc, showing your piety, if your human relationships are a mess. Unhealthy pride can be destructive in human relationships. So often it is the levelling of pride that leads to reconciliation. It takes faith and love and courage to build the bridges of reconciliation, it takes someone to make the first move to bring healing for their relationship but also the wider relationship. You see if two people are in conflict, it is not only those two individuals who are damaged by it, all who are connected to them are damaged too. Reconciliation can bring healing to so many. I see this every day, just as I see the damage done by disputes and resentment.

In life there are many things that separate we human beings, often our beliefs and disbeliefs. Whether these be religious or anti-religious, political, social, cultural, we separate ourselves through them and yet we are all human. We all love and we all grieve when we lose those we love. To quote Eugene Ionesco “Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.” We are united by a common humanity, united by our shared hopes and despairs. We are each of us unique and complete as ourselves and yet we only truly know ourselves through our relationships with one another and with life. To quote Mark Nepo “It is a great paradox of being that each of us is born complete and yet we need contact with life in order to be whole. Somehow we need each other to know that completeness, though we are never finished in that journey.” I know how precious my relationship with others is to my well-being.

We are living in ever more dividing and divisive times. We do not see ourselves as one people. This is dangerous. Not only to ourselves but to our shared humanity. By separating ourselves we will never know wholeness, we will never truly be all that we can be. No one is an island. We need to be at one not only with ourselves, but with all of life and whatever it is we believe is at the core of all life, to truly become completely ourselves, to touch perfection. Perfection means completeness. This is what salvation means by the way. To quote Forrest Church. “What I'm talking about…is salvation. The Latin root, salve, means health. The Teutonic cognates, health, hale, whole, and holy, all share the same root. Being an agnostic about the afterlife, I look for salvation here—not to be saved from life, but to be saved by life, in life, for life.

Such salvation has three dimensions: Integrity, or individual wholeness, comes when we make peace with ourselves; reconciliation, or shared wholeness, comes when we make peace with our neighbors, especially with our loved ones; redemption, in the largest sense, comes when we make peace with life and death, with being itself, with God.”

When we experience this wholeness we are as close as we will ever be to perfection, to completeness, although only for a moment as our lives go on. We begin to truly live our lives. Life is the greatest gift of all, the ultimate Grace. So choose life.

This brings me back to “The Sermon on the Mount”, this time verse 48 of the 5th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, the final verse of that chapter. “Therefore be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” This is heaven on earth, this is the Kingdom of Love right here right now. This is the purpose of the spiritual life, this is the religion of love, of true communal spirituality. This is what it means to live in perfect love Perfection is not flawlessness as we often think it is. Quite the opposite perfect love is sincere, it’s about showing our cracks, our flaws, our scars, showing who we truly are. The Latin root of perfection is “perfectus” which meant “completeness”, or wholeness, health in mind body and spirit, wholeness with self, others, life and God.

This is the purpose of spiritual community; this is the purpose of our free religious faith.

But how do we become whole, complete, perfect? How do we become at one with ourselves, one another, life, with God? Well it begins by being truly present in what we are doing; it begins by not being caught up in worry and fear, our own and others. It’s about not going into things hard, but rather by softly melting into what we are doing, by being who we are in what we are doing, by almost not focusing too hard, by looking through soft eyes. By being natural, who we are, by becoming what we are doing.

We are never truly whole complete unless we are at one with ourselves, one another, life and whatever it is that we believe is the power that permeates all life. We can never truly become ourselves alone. This is why true community is so vital to the spiritual life. We need right relationship to become wholly who we are. To me this is the purpose of what we do as a community, what we are doing here today. Yes, it’s about becoming who we truly are, but this cannot be done in isolation. This is the purpose of free religion. It allows the birth of the true spirit in each of us, but no one can completely give birth to themself, by them self. To repeat those words of Mark Nepo: “It is a great paradox of being that each of us is born complete and yet we need contact with life in order to be whole. Somehow we need each other to know that completeness, though we are never finished in that journey.”

This begins with reconciliation. By putting things right with our relationships with ourselves, our God, those important people in our lives, in our families and our communities and of course putting things right in our relationships with life.

This is salvation here and now. It’s not about being saved from life, but to be saved by life, in life, for life.

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