A few weeks ago my mother asked me if I wanted to attend this church retreat with her. It was only one night at a camping ground I knew well. I broke my arm there once as a kid. I said yes because it looked kinda interesting, but I was still skeptical about it. Adult retreats always scare me because they are either structured like corporate retreats and you really need to be a joiner, or they are coming to Jesus meetings. Neither of these options work for me. But as I'm listening to the Bishop of the Oklahoma UMC Conference, my attitude began to change a little bit. I've heard the Bishop speak before and knew he was a powerful orator, but maybe because I've been working on my thesis a lot, his words touched something that made me soften my skepticism and open up to the possibility of finding something that's been missing in my life.
Then the key note speaker for the weekend rose to give the welcome plenary. I've never heard him speak before, but I had read one of his books so I knew I liked his perspective of things. He started in on a passage of Acts that I've always struggled with. In Acts 16 starting with verse 11, we read the story of Paul and Silas when they meet Lydia and save her slave girl, and then get sent to prison for it. Now here in the South, we know all about being saved. We know that one has to be saved in order to be a good and proper Christian. Otherwise, no one will eat your dessert at the potluck. I've always had problems with that notion. I never understood how that was the golden ticket or how so many came to believe salvation was the golden ticket. Then the speaker said something that made the passage so clear to me. The word used in the Greek for be saved is the same word in the Hebrew Scriptures for liberation. So when Paul saved this slave girl, he wasn't saving her soul from damnation, but rather he was freeing her from the burdens that weighed her down. This notion of salvation that has been bastardized is the same salvation given to the slaves in Egypt when they flee from pharaoh. Freedom!
What a world we would live in if the church concentrated on freeing people, human beings from the oppressive states surrounding their being, instead of seeking empty baptisms. Could you imagine it? I want to.
