Salvation is More than a Ticket to Heaven

The following are my notes for the grade 11/12 unit on salvation. I did not use or read everything that appears below, but took my cues from what students had to say and contribute.

I covered a large area of a wall with white paper upon which students constructed a large mural about salvation over the course of the four-five weeks we discussed salvation. In the center, I put the following verse

Do not forsake me, O Lord;
O my God, do not be far from me;
Make haste to help me,
O Lord, my salvation. Ps 38:21-22

As we proceeded through the unit, I added the Bible verses upon which our discussion centered.

Class One: What do we mean when we speak of salvation?
[I drew a picture of a ticket with heaven written on it and placed it on the collage as a visual reference.]

Begin by exploring the way that many people think of salvation as a "ticket to heaven." If you have time, find a clip from a televangelist that illustrates the idea to which students can respond and react. A quick google search using the term "ticket to heaven" will lead to all sorts of sites that make use of this term with conviction. For example, follow the link to this Christian t-shirt page or this page on salvation from an organization called Halo Ministries. Here are some questions to prompt responses:

When salvation is treated as a ticket to heaven, what becomes the opposite of salvation?
What do you have to do to be saved?
What is comforting about this message?
What is problematic for you?
Is it too narrow a concept of salvation?

Explain to the youth that the Bible calls many different ways that God intervene in the lives of human beings and in the created order salvation. Rather than looking at salvation as a deal worked out with God where we receive a reward for acknowledging his lordship in our lives, the Bible invites us to look at much of our experience as salvation.

Read or tell the parable of the lost sheep from Matthew 18:10-14, and then ask the students to share stories from their childhood or more recent experience by posing the following two questions:
1. Have you ever been lost and found?
Some may have stories about friends that they have who have been rescued from death. You will find that students enthusiastically tell stories about their experience as small children. Use their stories to help them understand that salvation is the experience of being known by God and knowing God, the experience of being supplied with a moral/spiritual compass with which to orient your life so that you are not lost. Salvation is the comfort of knowing that God is there and that you have a spiritual home with God. Salvation is the joy that God feels in finding and knowing us. Salvation is the comfort and love that we feel knowing that God cares.

2. Have you ever been rescued from danger? Do you know any family stories or friends' stories in which people were saved from harm?

Read Luke 4:18-19: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and ecover of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

Use the youth's stories to help illuminate the story of salvation from the Old Testament found in Exodus. One paradigmatic (illustrative) story of God's salvation is how he took them out of bondage in Egypt and brought them into the land of Canaan where they were to dwell as his people.

If your youth are interested in social justice and world politics, you might have them identify situations in today's world and our own country in which people need deliverance. Be sure to emphasize that if people are suffering, it is not necessarily a result of sin. Young people tend to have an undifferentiated notion of salvation as being saved from sin that is an act of personal volition, so if God is saving his people, whatever state they are in must be their own fault. Help them see that the social and political conditions that give rise to such things as famine may be sinful -- for example, much of the hunger in the world is caused by war -- so that they begin to understand that sin, according to the Bible, is also a condition or state of affairs and not simply a personal stain caused by an individual's sinful act.

Move the discussion to a more personal experience of salvation. Most of us are not in a dangerous situation from which we need to be rescued or living under oppression, but all of us are trapped or imprisoned by our own bad habits or the temptations and customs of our social circles and culture.
Read Galatians 4:8-9: Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods. Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits?

Ask: What are the powers that fetter us in our lives? In order to facilitate discussion and involvement of all members of the group, I had them make paper chains. I provided them with 1 inch by 5 inch strips of colored papers, popular magazines, scissors, tape and felt pens. Each student wrote as many answers to the question as they could think up and found pictures of things that represented temptations to which they knew God did not want them to succumb. Then they turned them into paper chains and joined them together into one long chain that we then taped to our poster. I was surprised at how many youth had never made a paper chain, so I have included a picture here.

If you need some prompts, ask them to think about desires, temptations, superstition, anxieties, bad habits and addictions that keep them from feeling God's presence in their lives or hinder them from spending time praying, worshipping or being mindful of God.


Class Two: Forgiveness of Sins

Add to poster the line from the Lord’s Prayer: Forgive us our sins and we forgive those who sin against us. I also added a colored piece of paper with cheap grace written on it and forgiveness on tear off strips. If you do the activity, you will need small strips of paper (1" by 2"), pens and glue sticks.

Share the following introduction with the youth: In the biblical tradition, forgiveness is the provenance of God. In Mark 2:10, the scribes accuse Jesus of blasphemy for saying, "Son, your sins are forgiven" to the paralyzed man. When Jesus is on the cross, he does not say, I forgive you, he says "Father forgive them." Nevertheless, we are enjoined to forgive others when we are the violated party and to seek forgiveness from others when we have violated others. (Matt 5:23) Jesus makes clear that in order to receive forgiveness from God, one needs to forgive others as well and one needs to make amends to those from whom forgiveness is needed. Forgiveness is a performative: in the Lord's Prayer, we forgive those who have debts - sinned - trespassed, as God forgives us. In order to be forgiven/reconciled with God, one has to be reconciled to one's fellow creatures. The new person is a forgiving person, a person who makes restitution, an person who is honest about failings and weaknesses, a person who is open to the future, who recognizes the dignity of all.

This lesson examines the two sides of the forgiveness. Most youth are very familiar with the Christian doctrine that Jesus died for our sins and that his death pays for our debt and through this payment we receive forgiveness. This is an opportunity to explore from what we need forgiveness, how forgiveness brings liberation or salvation in our everyday lives. Youth also tend to know that Jesus teaches us to forgive others just as we have been forgiven. This is an opportunity to explore how forgiving others also brings liberation or salvation in our lives.

Activity: Have students write down on strips of paper the phrases “I forgive” and “I am forgiven.”
On the back side of the appropriate strip, have them write examples from their own lives. Then have them glue the strips on the poster with their personal information face down. The purpose of this activity is to have students name real examples of forgiveness in their lives prior to beginning the discussion, but to allow them privacy about their past.

Discussion Topic One: God's Forgiveness. The following questions are designed to lead students to acknowledge that the goal of seeking and receiving God's forgiveness is not simply that we be able to go to heaven but rather so that we stay in relationship with God. When we reach heaven and see God "face to face," we will be able to look God in the face. Nothing will stand in the way of love.

Questions: What happens in personal relationships when you do something to hurt another person or that violates trust or shows a lack of respect? What happens to that relationship if the other person does not forgive you? What happens to your feelings about your own guilt or responsibility? [I use this as an occasion to make sure that the youth do not carry around the false idea that there is no forgiveness in the Old Testament or Judaism, by sharing about Rosh Hashanah -- the Jewish New Year -- and Yom Kippur -- the day of atonement -- celebrations. In some orthodox synagogues, on the New Year, a festival that precedes Yom Kippur by 9 days, members of the synagogue symbolically throw all of the "baggage" (e.g. resentments and guilt) that they have been carrying so that they do not carry it into the New Year.] What happens if we let feelings of guilt or bad feelings associated with another person fester? How does that affect our feelings about or actions toward that other person? What does it mean when that other person is God?

Hannah Arendt "Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to a single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer's apprentice, who lacked the magic formula to break the spell.

Discussion Topic Two: Forgiving Others. The goal of the second part of the discussion is to recognize the consequences of failing to forgive. Failing to forgive leads to acts of vengeance and possibly the spiral of violence. Failing to forgive, locks us in the past and makes us perpetual victims. By forgiving others, we are freed from the horrors of the past. To facilitate discussion show one clip from the video Journey Toward Forgiveness (the story of the Cliff and Wilma Derksen). This video has a web site with discussion questions. Here are the questions that I use to help the youth understand how important it is to forgive.

Questions: What is the opposite of forgiveness? What happens when we seek revenge for harms done to us? How do we think we will feel after we enact revenge? Is this what happens? Have you ever sought revenge and done something you later regretted? Did you then feel that you needed forgiveness? What might the person upon whom we might enact our revenge feel he or she needs to do in response? Have you ever seen revenge get out of control? The film "Hotel Rwanda" draws our attention to the cycle of revenge in which the Tutsi and Hutu people of Rwanda have been locked. Under the colonial power of the Belgium in 1916, the Tutsi people were given more privileges because of their lighter skin and taller stature, this lead to greater oppression of the Hutu people, in 1994 when Hutu militia gained power, they sought revenge upon the Tutsi and began a course of genocide that led to the death of at least 800,000 Tutsis.The possibility of further acts of vengeance have been made real by the way the world court of opinion and the World Court of justice seek to blame one side without seeking reconciliation between the two peoples. This story of vengeance gets played out on an international scale and in our own families and communities on a regular basis.
What happens to our own "soul" if we do not forgive others? How must we think of ourselves in order to hold onto resentment or grudges?

Simone Weil provides the insightful observation: "If someone does me an injury I must desire that this injury shall not degrade me. I must desire this out of love for him who inflicts it, in order that he may not really have done evil."

Here are some more quotations on forgiveness that I find personally helpful. Some of them may be too nuanced for a Sunday school class, but they may be helpful for your own pre class meditation upon the topic.

Miroslav Volf : Inscribed on the very heart of God’s grace is the rule that we can be its recipients only if we do not resist being made into its agents; what happens to us must be done by us. Having been embraced by God, we must make space for others in ourselves and invite them in – even our enemies." (From Exclusion and Embrace)

Robert Frost: If one by one we counted people out
For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long
To get so we had no one left to live with.
For to be social is to be forgiving.

George MacDonald: It may be infinitely worse to refuse to forgive than to murder, because the latter may be an impulse of a moment of heat; whereas the former is a cold and deliberate choice of the heart.

Fyodor Dostoievski: "Everything true and beautiful is always full of forgiveness."

Discussion Topic Three: Cheap Grace and False Forgiveness. (This may be better suited for a college age class).

Preparation Reading for the teacher: Jesus' teaching on forgiveness and the Christian doctrines of God's grace have often led to practices that Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls "cheap grace." Christians, through the course of history, have presumed upon God's grace. As individuals and communities, we have done things that we ought not to and then asked for God's forgiveness. Then we act as thought the past has no bearing on the present and commit the same acts over and over again, as though being forgiven does not require us to live any differently than we have been. Bonhoeffer, in a work called the Cost of Discipleship, explored the demands that Jesus makes upon his followers in the Sermon on the Mount. The other side of this coin is something that David Augsburger calls "false forgiveness." Sometimes, Christians are coerced into giving forgiveness in order to fulfill the demands of their community and sometimes we say that we have forgiven without really forgiving others.

David Augsburger lists the characteristics of false forgiveness:

"Sweet Saintly Revenge" in which the forgiven stands in a position of perpetual inferiority or obligation.
"A One Way" act of contrition or pardon.
"A Mechanical Trick" that eradicates responsibility and guilt.
"A Magical Fantasy" in which one pretends that no harm was done, nothing ever happened.

Cheap grace perpetuates violence because those who sin do not have to suffer the consequences of their wrong doing and so repeat their offenses.

If forgiveness is cheap, then peace is not possible because we can simply perpetuate our offenses and oppression of others in the hope or anticipation that by asking for forgiveness we will receive it.

Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship:
"Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of Good. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sin. The Church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso facto a part in that grace. In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.
Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. "All for sin could not atone." The world goes on in the same old way, and we are still sinners "even in the best life" as Luther said. Well, then, let the Christian lie like the rest of the world, let him model himself on the world's standards in every sphere of life, and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin. That was the heresy of the enthusiasts, the Anabaptists and their kind. Let the Christian beware of rebelling against the free and boundless grace of God and desecrating it. Let him not attempt to erect a new religion of the letter by endeavoring to live a life of obedience to the commandments of Jesus Christ! .... Instead of following Christ, let the Christian enjoy the consolations of his grace! That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs." pp. 43-44 SCM 1959 edition.

If you did not catch the sarcasm with which Bonhoeffer writes and that he admires the Anabaptists, read the passage again.

Desmond Tutu wrote the following about the Truth Commission in South Africa that offered forgiveness to those who committed acts of injustice under Apartheid in order to prevent the spiral of revenge, but demanded that truth be spoken before forgiveness could be granted:
"I hope that the work of the Commission, by opening wounds to cleanse them, will thereby stop them from festering. We cannot be facile and say bygones will be bygones, because they will not be bygones and will return to haunt us. True reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness which is costly. Forgiveness in turn depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgment of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth. You cannot forgive what you do not know. I hope very much that people, especially those who have not previously had the opportunity of doing so, will come to the Commission to tell their stories. I would appeal to churches and NGOs to make available their resources to provide counseling to such people before, during and after they appear before the Commission" (Response by Archbishop Tutu on his appointment as Chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, November 30 1995)

The South African experience teaches us that reconciliation is not possible without truth telling. We dare not forget, lest the past repeat itself; the past is not our fate or our destiny.

The Bible is the scripture of a forgiven people reconciled to God, who do not forget their past. Israel's confession of sins accent God's willingness or desire to forgive and to reconcile. God, the offended one, is the one who desires and reaches out for reconciliation. God spurns Israel only in the effort to help Israel understand the nature of the relationship and to long for it. Read: Exodus 34:6-7; Jonah 4:11; Hosea 11:1-9; Luke 15:11-32 The Parable of the Prodigal Son; Matt 18:23-35 The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.

Discussion Questions: Have you ever forgiven someone and then have them repeat the same offending act? Has any one ever accused you of being unforgiving because you have hesitated to forgive over and over again? Are there ever occasions when you have been forgiven and then done the same thing?

When someone offers us forgiveness, what ought we do in order to show that we accept the forgiveness and recognize that forgiveness was needed?
Have you ever been made to forgive a sibling by your parents? What happened? Did it work?

Has someone ever said they have forgiven you, but then made you feel guilty or inferior to them by the way that they act?

In order for there to be true forgiveness, how do we expect the person who is forgiven to act? How do we expect the one who offers forgiveness to act?

Class Three: What does it mean to be born again?

In the large group opening meditation, we read 2 Cor 5: 17-20

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

I also summarized a section from Victor Hugo's novel, Les Miserables (several students in the group had just finished a series of performances of the musical at Goshen High School), and emphasized how the story was about a man who was transformed by an act of Christian grace. Jean Valjean is a poor man who steals a loaf of bread. He is arrested and sent to prison where he becomes a hard-hearted man who hates the society that sent him to prison. When he leaves prison, he is given temporary shelter in the home of a bishop whom he repays by robbing him of his silver. Jean Valjean is caught, but when he is brought to the bishop's home, the bishop explains to the police officer that the stolen property is a gift. In the musical, Jean Valjean leaves the Bishop's home a changed man, but in the novel he does not realize that he has chanced. After nearly been sent back to prison and being saved by the grace of the Bishop, encounters a young boy on the road who accidentally drops a coin. Jean steps on the coin. When the boy confronts him, Jean taunts the child to tears and steals the coin. When the boy leaves crying, Jean finds that he is no longer the man he once was and is filled with remorse and tries to return the coin. He is born again.

In the small group, have students describe what people who ask, “Are you born again?” mean by the question.

The phrase "born again" comes from a dialogue in The Gospel of John chapter 3. Jesus tells a Pharisee by the name of Nicodemus, "I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above" (John 3:3). The Greek word for above, anothen, can me either from above or anew. Nicodemus takes Jesus' words to mean again by asking, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" (3:4). If we follow Nicodemus' story through the Gospel of John, we can see one example of what it means to be born again. Nicodemus belongs to a voluntary association called the Pharisees that helps its members hold themselves accountable to keep a very high standard of piety through observation of purity, tithing and Sabbath laws. This association gives Nicodemus his identity and is his social world. When the Pharisees begin to accuse Jesus of violating God's law, Nicodemus defends Jesus. It soon becomes clear that he runs the risk of losing his status and friends if he sides with Jesus and so Nicodemus falls silent (John 7:45-52). When Jesus is executed, Nicodemus helps Joseph of Arimathea prepare Jesus' body for burial. This is something the women of the family normally do. He gives up his purity by touching a dead body. His actions suggest to me that, in the end, he would rather associate with a dead Jesus than with his old friends whose accusations led to Jesus' death. How many times have we kept our views, our faith, or convictions about the right thing to do to ourselves for fear that we might be rejected by the group? Being born from above, can mean that in our actions and words, we make clear that we seek God's approval rather than human being's approval.

Discuss the many ways people can be radically transformed by the Gospel message. We may not necessarily experience dramatic reversals in our lives because many of us are raised in Christian households and have been encouraged our whole lives to live a life of Christian discipleship, but if we stop to think about it, all of us have experiences change in our lives that we think of as a change for the better.
Discuss ways that they have experienced change for the better in their lives.
Students may need prompting with simple questions but they will have stories to tell.
Have you changed your mind about something?
Did you ever given up a bad habit?
... change in attitude?
... change in moral orientation?
... change in understanding?
... change in worshipping community?

Discuss the consequences of having changed? Have you had to change friends? Have you had to change the places that you go or the activities in which you participate? If a member of the class has become a vegetarian, have that student share about experiences at various meals and how different people have reacted to their convictions?

Point out that the biblical notion of being a new creation is not individual but corporate.
The New Testament calls the community of God's people to imitate Christ's selflessness on the cross and to live as a resurrected (a born again) community as a sign of God's new creation.
What would it mean for the American people to become a new creation?
Like Jean Valjean: the shift is from anger, retributive justice to love and restorative justice, reconciliation. From the closed fist to the open hand.
What are our weapons of the old creation?
What are the weapons of the new creation? Read 2 Corinthians 10: 1-5:

I myself, Paul, appeal to you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ--I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away!-- I ask that when I am present I need not show boldness by daring to oppose those who think we are acting according to human standards. Indeed, we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards; for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.

Poster Activity: On gray paper, draw and cut out tomb stones with the names of old habits and weapons that belong to the old creation and paste them at the bottom of the poster. On yellow paper, draw and cut out star shapes with the names of the weapons and habits of the Kingdom written on then and paste them in empty spots above the grave yard.

Class Four: Sanctification and Blessing- God’s presence in one’s life.

When we talk about God's salvation, we tend to focus on the mighty acts of deliverance like the Passover and Exodus. The Bible speaks about God's acts of blessing as salvation just as often as it speaks of God's deliverance from harm as salvation.

Ask the youth to answer the questions: When are the times that you feel closest to God?

Anticipate students sharing times like Youth Convention and retreats and family holidays. Look at God's commandment and blessing to creation in Genesis 1:22 (God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth."), God's promise and blessing to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 (Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."), and the blessing that God speaks over all his people in Num 6:24-27 (The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.So they shall put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.)

Discuss the various ways that we feel blessed.

If the students' initial response to the question of when they feel God's presence in their lives focused upon happy memories, prompt them to share sadder times in their lives?
Why does God meet us in the wilderness?
Why do we encounter God when we are at our lowest?

Discuss how important it is to our faith that God is with us in times of trial, that God himself through Jesus suffered pain, humiliation and death on the cross.

Class Five: What is Heaven?

1. Discuss our view of salvation as a place: promised land, paradise, kingdom of heaven, heaven, utopia
2. Discuss the different ways of thinking about the kingdom of heaven regarding when it will come and our responsibility for helping it along. Liberal theology – responsibility to realize it; Anabaptist emphasis upon being a pilgrim people.
3. What is paradise for you? What does Gen 1 tell us about the ought?
4. Show how the Bible uses the language of Shalom or Eirene (Peace) to describe God’s Reign.
Here are a few key passages:
Rom 14: 17 For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
2 Cor 13: 11 Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in prosperity; and the God of love and peace
Phil 4 7 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Phil 4: 9 Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.
Col 1: 20 And, having made prosperity through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, [I say], whether [they be] things in earth, or things in heaven.
Col 3: 15 And let the prosperity of God rule in your hearts,

5. Share about how Farley Mowet has created a sanctuary in his own back yard since he cannot control what the world is doing with the environment. What are the ways that we can make a peace zone in our own lives?

Add a picture of paradise to your poster or two students peace journals.
Give students green pieces of paper (4” by 5” or so) upon which to write the things that they will do to make a peace zone in their lives.
Keep violence out of my life: vegetarian, no drugs, no crime
Egalitarian relationships – no exploitation of others, no class structure? Work?
No weapons in my home? Hospitality?
This activity gives rise to a great deal of discussion as students share what they have in their peace zone. You can help them along by prompting areas. You may want to think about areas that are of particular concern for which you hope the group will give some thought.
I talked about how I keep crime and the violence of the drug trade out of my life by not using drugs. During the 2003 Superbowl, the U.S. government debuted ads that suggested illegal drug use supports terrorism.
I was startled and pleased when three senior males said bluntly that they would not use drugs. This came after some joking about how they would grow their own.
One student shared how she would try to be more patient with her family in order to make home a more peaceful place.
Have students select a few of the things that they have shared to put on their salvation poster.