Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
September 25, 2011

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

The last couple of times that Manny has served as lay leader he has mentioned the name Kierkegaard. Søren Kierkegaard was a 19th century Danish theologian whose work is important for, among other things, laying a foundation for the existential theology that Paul Tillich and others would pick up and develop further in the 20th century. Every time I read the passage from Philippians that we heard this morning I think of one of Kierkegaard’s major works that has the title Fear and Trembling. I’m sure Kierkegaard got that phrase from our Philippians passage, from Paul’s statement “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”. The book to which he gave that title is mostly about the story from Genesis of Yahweh’s instruction to Abraham to kill his son Isaac as a holy sacrifice. The connection between the line in Philippians that gave Kierkegaard his title and the story of the sacrifice of Isaac may not be readily apparent, but Kierkegaard clearly thought that there was one, and so do I. Maybe that connection will become clearer as we take a closer look at what “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” might mean for us.

Right off the bat we encounter a big problem with these words of Paul’s, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. At first blush it might sound like Paul is saying that our salvation is up to us, that we have to work it for our ourselves. Yet we know that Paul can’t really be saying that. Paul’s main point in all of his writing is that salvation is a free gift of God’s grace and isn’t the result of anything that we do or possibly can do. So “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” can’t mean what at first it seems to us to mean. So what does it mean? And what does it have to do with fear and trembling?

Let me suggest that it means a couple of things other than figure out what you need to do to be saved, which it doesn’t mean. The first thing that I think it means has to do with the meaning of the word “salvation” itself. Salvation, you see, can mean many different things for different people. We are saved, yes: but what does that mean specifically in each of our lives? Generally speaking it means that all barriers between us and God have been removed, that God has accepted us and loves us just as we are; but what significance does that have in our individual lives? What significance it has depends, I think, on what the things are in our lives that are keeping us from wholeness of life and that are keeping us from a living in full communion with God. Maybe being saved means that we can give up the guilt of previous wrongs that we have done. maybe it means that we can admit that we need help to overcome an addiction and that we can find the strength to find that help and battle our addiction. Maybe it means that we can find meaning and purpose in life where previously we could find none. Maybe it means we can find the courage we need to face other difficult challenges in our life and find peace in the assurance that God goes through those challenges with us as our companion and comforter. Salvation can mean all of those things and, I suppose, many more things besides. Just what it means for each one of us is indeed something that we need to work out. That I think is the meaning of Paul’s phrase “work out your own salvation.”

OK, but Paul goes on to say that we should work out the specifics and the meaning of our own salvation with fear and trembling. But why? Why fear and trembling”? Isn’t salvation a good thing? Isn’t salvation the best thing there is or ever could be? Well, yes, it is; but. There’s always a “but” isn’t there. The “but” here is that while God gives us salvation as a free and unmerited gift, that is, as an act of grace, and while that is indeed a very good thing, salvation isn’t the only thing we get from God. Salvation comes from God without preconditions, but it doesn’t come with nothing attached. It comes with expectations. It comes with demands. It comes with expectations and demands from God.

We know that our salvation comes with those divine expectations and demands when we really, truly get it that God has saved us. We realize what an amazing, fantastic, nearly unbelievable gift God’s salvation is. We realize that we can’t even imagine anything greater, anything more awesome, anything more fantastic. And we realize that we can’t think of anything more life changing. Anything more world shattering. We come to realize that God’s salvation is life changing and world shattering because we come to realize that God’s salvation makes great demands on us. As the great old hymn that I quote so often puts is, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”

Try thinking of it this way. When someone holds a door open for us we say thank you. When someone sends us a birthday or a Christmas card we may send a thank you card. When someone invites us to dinner we may take flowers or a bottle of wine to say thank you. To these little acts of kindness we respond with little acts of thanks. So what about God’s gift of grace, a gift greater than any other we can imagine, a gift that only God, who is greater than anything we can imagine, can give? If we say thank you when someone holds a door open for us, what are we called to do when God holds open the door to salvation for us?

That’s where the fear and trembling come in. Kierkegaard used Paul’s phrase for the title of a book about the sacrifice of Isaac because he wanted to make the point that God’s grace makes demands on us that can be really, really scary. Of course God doesn’t tell us to kill someone. Never has. Never will. But that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t make really radical demands on us. A simple thank you is enough of a response to someone who holds a door open for us. A simple thank you isn’t anywhere near enough of a response to God for the gift of salvation. God’s gift of salvation is so great that it demands nothing less than a total reordering of our lives. The only appropriate response is that after we know that we are saved we live a life totally dedicated to God. If we ever truly understood that truth everything would change. That’s why, I think, Kierkegaard used Paul’s phrase “fear and trembling” for the title of his book, since that story about Abraham and Isaac is also about being totally dedicated to God.

Now, that’s not to say that the appropriate response to God’s free gift of salvation is the same for everyone. Just as the specific meaning of salvation in a person’s life depends upon the circumstances of that person’s life, so does the appropriate response to salvation. For some the called for response might be quite radical. Go to Africa and open a clinic like Albert Schweitzer. Lead a freedom movement like Martin Luther King. For some it will be less radical but still pretty extreme. Give up the law and go to seminary for example. I know several people who have done that. I can’t say what the appropriate response is for you, although of course I would be happy to talk to you about that any time you want.

What the appropriate response to God’s salvation is for you I can’t say, but I can say that there is one. And that’s why, I think, Paul says we must approach our salvation with fear and trembling. Whatever the appropriate response is for you, it’s a pretty good bet that it involves some significant change in your life. A change in what you do. A change in how you think. And we humans tend to fear change. We want to stay with what we know, even when what we know isn’t working very well for us or for the world. The best thing we can say about the life we know is that we know it. We know it’s comforts. We know its challenges. Yes, we never truly know what the future holds in any event, but most of the time we’re pretty satisfied with the life we know.

The thing about change is that it brings life we don’t know, and nothing is scarier than the unknown. Yet God calls us into the unknown. God calls out of our comfort. God calls us to work for the Kingdom, and we never know what that work will bring. Yet as God calls us into the scary unknown God never calls us to go into the scary unknown alone. God promises to go with us. God promises to hold us always in that grace that we’re responding to. Yes, we approach our response to grace with fear and trembling, but God is there with us to make it possible for us to continue despite the fear and trembling.

So don’t deny the fear, don’t try to stop the trembling as you work out what your salvation means in your life and how God calls you to respond to it. They’re natural enough, and they certainly are real enough. But know that God is in them with you. God is in them with us. Thanks be to God. Amen.