“Evangelicals need to cultivate a more eschatological understanding of salvation.”  I looked around the auditorium, filled with 90 or so of my fellow students. Heads were nodding knowingly in agreement at our professor’s words. And all I was thinking was, “Brother, you lost me at evangelical...”

 

Salvation is a whole life word- body, mind and soul. Our salvation is coming towards us, ever nearer, but not yet here. We’re in the process of being saved. Salvation has entered into the world, our homes, our lives. But its not yet been ‘perfected.’ The salvation to which Peter speaks, to which scripture testifies, that the Father has inaugurated through the obedience of the Son in the power of Spirit is an objective thing waiting to burst into this present age- so lush with fecundity- that heaven and earth will be made new, recreated, at its unveiling. Saved. But right now salvation’s fullness remains in the future.

 

 

Now, for the three non presby readers of this blog, a bit of background. As officers of the Presbyterian church (Pastors, Elders and Deacons) we take vows at our ordination. One of which is this;

 

Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God?

 

The problem is, we don’t define what we mean by “the essential tenets of the Reformed faith.” This has caused all manner of craziness - officers who deny the deity of Christ (Jesus’ virgin birth), officers who deny his bodily resurrection. Folks who can’t much speak about God in personal terms at all.

 

Ok, back to last week. It came to me, as I was saying something about boundaries being a good thing, a healthy thing, that we knew we had ‘em- I mean we made people vow to receive them, yet refused to name them- it dawned on me that we didn’t stand a snowballs chance in August.

 

And then an image came to me of a time when my oldest son was 7. We were living in Vancouver, BC-- and he wanted to go see eagles (birds, not the group- that would be his mother). So, one Sunday afternoon we got in the Jetta and tooled up the road, where we knew there would be Eagles. About fifty other folks had the same idea- it was a superlative Autumn afternoon. We walked to where others were standing and started counting eagles-- Golden and Bald, I think we quit at 27.

 

Do you know what they were doing? They were chowing down on the dying salmon. Like shooting fish in a barrel, so to speak. These poor salmon had come all the way from the Pacific, had made it this far inland to this part of the river (where we were at, it couldn’t have been more than 4 inches deep) and were getting picked off, left and right, by these magnificent raptors. Talk about your circle of life, Simba.

 

I don’t know where it came from- but the image of those salmon came to mind at Presbytery. Swimming upstream, jumping up falls, struggling against the flow to spawn... and then die. Food for Eagles. Yet another generation of Salmon is given life.

 

I’m still struggling with whether I was merely going to a ‘happier place’ in my head at Presbytery, or whether this was an ‘a hah’ moment, and an appropriate metaphor for the faithful Christian posture in these sad times. We struggle to be faithful to what we know to do, to throw off seeds of life for the next generation, trusting that God will preserve ... and then we die. Our salvation yet to be revealed. After the eagles have picked the flesh from our bones comes resurrection. Metaphorically and actually.

 

Its not all doom and gloom. The Kingdom is advancing by the power of the Spirit. The gospel is bearing fruit. Joy, and fellowship, and hope are ‘real presences.‘ But I wonder if the symmetry of faithfulness doesn’t ultimately always resemble, under the sun, the seemingly futile and down right odd, last swim of salmon. Salvation is not yet here.