Words, words in any language, give me a kind of ecstasy. My love for words has helped me appreciate their subtle power in human experience. One of those words plays a central role in our efforts to grasp what our faith in Christ means. So, I thought I would begin this sermon with a reflection on this word. Here is a sampling from everday conversation of how we use the important word save and what it means.

I'm trying to save my marriage. The person who says this doesn't want his marriage to end in divorce.

Jose Mesa has saved more games than any other relief pitcher in Phillies' history. A relief pitcher in baseball saves a game, when he helps his team hold on to a lead and win the game instead of losing the game.

"A penny saved is a penny earned." Ben Franklin expected to put that penny in a piggy bank, instead of spending it. If he spent it, it would be gone.

You'll save about 15 minutes, if you take the tunnel instead of the bridge. That is, if you take the bridge, you'll spend 15 minutes longer behind the wheel. If you take the tunnel, you'll have 15 extra minutes to spend on something else you had rather do.

If you'll listen to me, it will save you a lot of heartache. I'd like to help you avoid going through an experience that will be hard on you and maybe on other people as well.

they saved the coal miners in PA. The miners were trapped, when an explosion sealed off their tunnel several hundred feet below ground. They dug another tunnel and got them out before they suffocated or drowned.

Save yourselves from this wicked generation. Don't be deceived by the clever talk and clever people who reject God. Choose wisely. Choose Christ, and you'll be able to resist temptations.

"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, and your household." There are dangers greater than losing money or time or baseball games or dying in a coal mine. Faith in Jesus Christ, the Lord, gives you access to powers that can protect you from those greater dangers in this world and in the world to come.

In each example to save means to hold on to something and not lose it. Obviously, it is more important to save 15 coal minters, who are trapped below ground, than to save 15 minutes' driving in order to spend an extra 15 minutes watching a football game.

I have done this exercise with the word save, in order to build in our minds a working model of salvation. I wanted to do this, because salvation is a central idea in the biblical view of reality. Just how central and important it is becomes clear in this statement from John 3:17. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. You don't get more central and important than in saving the world.

That of course raises a profound question. What dangers does the world neeed to be saved from? It is right here that Jewish and Christian thought speaks clearly. Let me take you to several statements from the Bible that identify two of those world-threatening dangers.

In 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 the Apostle Paul told that newly founded congregation what kind of reputation they had with their neighbors. He told them this: They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead - Jesus, who rescues (saves) us from the coming wrath.

Writing to another congregation he started in the province of Galatia Paul opened his letter to them by saying, Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue (save) us from the present evil age.

According to those two statements, our world faces two catastrophic dangers: the coming wrath of God and the present evil age. The profound Christian conviction is that Jesus Christ can save humanity from both those dangers and others as well. On what grounds does the Christian faith believe and teach this conviction? Let me mention three: Jesus' miracles, the resurrection of Jesus to an indestructible life in a new kind of body, and the preservation of Israel and the Church.

Israel, as a distinct people group, traces its origins back 3500 years or so. It has been destroyed as a political entity and exiled twice in its long history. It has been restored as a political state twice. The first restoration took place after nearly a centry of exile from its native land. The second restoration took place after nearly 1900 years of exile from its native land. Between each exile and restoration it wandered over the face of the earth but never lost its identity. There is nothing else like this on earth.

The Church, as a branch of Judaism, claims the first 1500 years of Israel's history as its own. The parting of ways came initially because of a disagreement about Jesus of Nazareth. Since then, the Church has spread to every continent on earth and to nearly every people group on the face of the earth - most of it without use of force.

The Church and Israel embody in flesh and blood the presence of God in human life. God's permanent presence in human life bears witness, we believe, to His intention to overcome the evil that dogs human experience now and to acquit us on the Day of Judgment. Jesus stands as the permanent and material evidence that ou Creator intends to be merciful to us in this way.

Jesus' miracles support the same conviction. He healed the sick, made the blind to see and the lame to walk, and raised back to life some people, who had recently died. All those miracles were acts of salvation. In Him the powers of the future Age to Come broke in on our present world to show us what God has in store some day for humanity. Jesus also sought and forgave sinners as an anticipation of the acquittal to come on the Day of Judgment.

Finally and supremely, the resurrection of Jesus supports this conviciton in two ways. First, Jesus' resurrection is called in 1 Corinthians 15:23 the firstfruits. We would understand it better if we called it a down payment or earnest money. Later, at the Second Coming of Jesus, the rest of His people will also come out on the other side of death with a new body that does not deteriorate, decay or die.

Second, the resurrection of Jesus supports the idea that we will come out okay on the Day of Judgment. Paul puts it this way in Romans 10:9: If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. You will be saved on the Day of Judgment.

I have spent a fair amount of time on this, because it is easy in our Christian circles to use the word save carelessly. I wanted to give a better working understanding of salvation from a Christian point of view. It also prepares us to read the next installment in the story of how Christianity became the faith for all humanity, Acts 4.

Conflict in Jerusalem
Chapter four is a continuation of the story in chapter three. Peter and John had been the instruments through whom the power of God had healed a beggar, paralyzed from birth. When people got excited about it, Peter preached a sermon in which he made it clear that the power came from Jesus and was an anticipation of the restoration of all things that God has in mind for His human creation.

Something about Peter's sermon bothered the Sadducees and some of the temple authorities. Verse two explains. They were greatly distrubed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. They sent the police, and verse three tells what happened. They seized Peter and John, and because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day.

That may seem excessive, but put yourself in the authorities' shoes. Peter and John were saying Jesus had come back to life, and they were saying it to the people. If you are in charge, don't you say something like this? "I know we can't find the body, and we know this talk about resurrection is nonsense. But these two guys are not talking to us. They are talking to the people, and they might believe anything. And if they get it in their craw that Jesus came back to life, we may have serious public unrest on our hands. That can't happen. Let's talk to these two bozos from Galilee tomorrow and shut them up."

And they tried. Verses 8-14 report the conversation. Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, did all the talking for the Church. Once again, he made it clear that the power that healed the paralytic came from Jesus. Once again, he declared that God had raised Jesus from the dead. Then, in verse 11 he said this: "He is 'the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone.'" In other words, Jesus is what being a Jew is all about, and you, who are leaders of the Jewish nation, missed it.

Verse 12 was a blockbuster then and is a blockbuster now. "Salvation (there is our word!) is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to (humanity) by which we must be saved," (there is our word again).

Once again, put yourself in the authorities' shoes. They knew that language, and they knew that nine times out of ten it meant saving Israel from Roman oppression. In other wrods it was a code word for violent revolution. All the pieces fit. They couldn't let that happen on their watch.

Verse 16 expresses the dilemma they were facing. "What are we going to do with these men?" they asked. "Everybody living in Jerusalem knows they have done an outstanding miracle, and we cannot deny it." Verse 17 reports their decision. "But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn these men to speak no longer to anyone in this name" - the name of Jesus.

Now, if you are Peter and John, how do you respond to this direct order of the temple authorities, including the high priest? Their response captured memorably the defiance that may be properly thrown into the face of all tyranny. Verses 19-20: But Peter and John replied, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard."

The authorities didn't know what else to do at the time. They threatened them but let them go. Peter and John went back to the Church, which numbered 5,000 by now, and told them what had happened. The Church prayed, and verse 31 tells the upshot of it all. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Do you realize how much effort goes into the task of human salvation? Properly speaking, the task of medicine is to save people from deterioration and death as long as possible. Properly speaking, the task of our legal system is to save our society from its seemingly endless threats to self-destruct. Properly speaking, the task of education is to save people from ignorance and its consequences. There are many other similar, human tasks of salvation. But there is a fly in the ointment.

Last week, I quoted a famous piece of biblical wisdom that has God saying to His wayward humanity, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate" (1 Cor. 1:19; Isa. 29:14). The God, who put a stop to the Tower of Bable project, might just be leaving His calling card in the confusion that increasingly besets so much of our medical, legal and education efforts to save humanity.

The confusion expresses itself in a variety of ways. When physicians close down their practice of Obstetrics or Orthopedic Medicine, we wonder what's going on. Where will it end? When we find ourselves in a world of terrorists, Iraq, loss of jobs to other countries, and an uncertain economy, we wonder if it's ever going to stop.

As I said last Sunday, Let us not retreat into our shell. Let us not belittle those who labor in the fields of medicine, law and education to wrestle with our besetting problems. Their efforts are part of God's blessing on humanity. But if the Apostle Peter spoke the truth before the Jerusalem high court, we are bound to say that left to themselves, these human tasks of salvation will not be enough to save humanity.

There is within human life this terrible drag on everything we do, constantly pulling us in the direction of chaos. We experience it in our institutions and in our personal lives. In fact, it is the drag within ourselves that we take with us into our institutions and drag them toward disorder. Is there any relief from this constant drag on our personal lives and institutions?

Most religious people say that the relief we need must come from God. We can't stop the drag, can't reverse the drag by ourselves. In the Christian understanding of reality the help we need focuses on Jesus Christ. Why on Him? Because He has experienced the ultimate deterioration, death, and then defeated it for good. God raised Him from among the dead to an indestructible life in a new body that is not subject to disease, decay and death. That monumental achievement stands as a signpost for all humanity through the ages that a power is at work in our world that can stop and reverse the terrible drag that threatens our personal lives and our institutions. And the Gate-keeper to that power is Jesus Christ.

That's why Peter could say of JEsus to his startled accusers, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." He wasn't being some narrow-minded bigot. Christ was risen from the dead, and the power that could do that is what every person needs, and you can't get that power anywhere else.

We in this congregation and in hundreds of thousands of congregations throughout the world stand as human signposts for all humanity through the ages that a power is at work in our world that can stop and reverse the terrible drag that threatens our personal lives and our institutions. And the Gate-keeper to that power is Jesus Christ. We don't labor any less in medicine, law, education, business and the arts. But we say, "They can't save us from the drag on human life. For that we need Christ. Seek Him."