Septuagesima Sunday 4.2.07 Salvation
St Paul mentions that he is working on his faith like an athlete prepares for an event. In another letter he says he is working out his salvation in ‘fear and trembling’.
St Paul does not take his salvation for granted mentioning in one place that he himself could still be lost.
Today people would politely laugh at St Paul and tell him that no one as good as he is could possibly be lost.
It is fashionable today to see salvation as highly probable, bordering on certain, for most people.
You would (in this view) have to be very bad not to be saved.
Still there are some who see themselves as so bad that they could not be saved.
So we have the situation where some are so good they don’t need saving, and others are so bad they cannot be saved!
The readings today speak to both groups and try to draw people away from the extremes.
The people who think they are so good they hardly need to be saved from anything are not actually sinless.
It’s just that they have lost the sense of sin. They are still committing sins but no longer consider what they do to be sins.
This is because of eroding moral standards in our society, which enable what used to be considered outrageous to be normal now (eg living together before marriage).
Unless you rob a bank or kill someone you are without sin. If you are as good as most other people then you are a good person and guaranteed salvation!
St Paul and other saints call us to a much more sober view of reality. Anyone can be lost and it requires vigilance to ensure that we stay in a state of grace.
The people who think they are so bad that they could not be saved are reminded frequently that God is merciful and desires their salvation.
The Gospel today speaks of those who come in at the eleventh hour and are still paid the full reward – that is, eternal life.
It is right to be ashamed of our sins and humble before God. But not so self-absorbed that we lose sight of God’s mercy and desire to save. It is by His grace we are saved and healed. Nobody is so bad as to be beyond the power of God to change.
So people have to come in from the edges to a more balanced position. We are neither too good nor too bad; neither certain of salvation nor certain of damnation.
We can make salvation certain and this is what St Paul was setting out to do.
He was working out his salvation.
‘Work’ has two senses.
1) The work of vigilance to make sure that we are confessing our sins and uprooting them. If we fall we acknowledge it, we get up and we go on. We are not overwhelmed with guilt; nor do we deny guilt – through it all the grace of God carries us.
2) The other aspect of ‘work’ is that we should be productive in God’s service.
Our Lord referred to those who heard and kept the word of God as yielding a harvest, even a hundred fold.
If we think we are too good or too bad to worry we are not being productive. But if we have a healthy awareness of our weakness and of the Lord’s mercy we can then be productive each day as we take the opportunities for good that present themselves.
So we come, individually and together, to the final payment, the one denarius of eternal life.
