(This is the second of three sermons on this date.)

Poet Maya Angelou has been interviewed many times about her faith, and frequently "she has expressed her amazement at people who boast that they are saved, who think that their growth in grace stops with their profession of faith, or who are confident about their status as Christians. 'You are a Christian,' she asks, 'Already?'" (Johnson, p. 45)

In the cultural Christianity of the southern United States, and really in many pockets of American Christianity, salvation is often couched as a decision, marked by the common questions, "Are you saved?" or "When were you saved?" Those questions have always been somewhat problematic for those who find themselves in the Reformed family of faith. You see, in our tradition, salvation is not dependant on us, on anything that we either do or say. According to our theological heritage, the elect have always been promised and granted salvation from the very beginning of time, and it was all because of who Jesus was and how Jesus lived that we have that grace from God. As Paul reminds us, "Nothing can separate us from the love of God we have in Jesus Christ our Lord."

John Calvin believed that God's role was 100% complete without any action on our part. Theologian William Stacy Johnson writes in his latest book John Calvin: Reformer for the 21st Century that Calvin thought that "even if the whole fabric of the world were to fall apart the assurance of our salvation would be secure." (Johnson, 45) Now for Calvin, that didn't necessarily mean that all people will be saved. What it meant was that God's picture of salvation has never been flawed, and has never been in jeopardy. The more important part of God's plan of salvation is not what it does for us, but that it brings glory to God. Now that can be either comforting or unsettling depending on how you look at it. The good news is that we can't mess it up. God knows our hearts and minds even better than we do. The bad news is that our assurance of personal salvation, the "Will I go to heaven or hell?" question is not as easily answerable. If you need a formula or code to be assured of your own fate with God - perhaps this is not the tradition for you.

Being elected for salvation, rather than simply being "saved" can be a tricky theology to go with. Those who consider themselves among the elect can be just as annoyingly self-righteous as any street-corner preacher who pleads with passers-by to "make a decision for Jeee-sus." In fact, holding oneself among God's predestined elect is a fairly snooty way to go with things. On the other side, the "God has always known from the beginning of time who will be the elect and who will be the unforgivable sinners" - the "predestination" part of this doctrine so to speak - has also led to lazy Christianity. If I have no way to tell if I'm saved or damned - what motivation do I have to try to do anything about my fate? No need to be good. No need to change the world. That's God's problem, not mine.

For me, though, it is ultimately reassuring to know that I'm not the Savior of the world. Jesus already did that. God's plan fortunately does not depend on me getting it "right" all of the time. And the Bible, our holy book, shows me over and over again that God has chosen, elected, and saved people of all sorts of backgrounds, beliefs, and life circumstances. So I can trust that putting my life in God's hands is about as good as it gets.