At Lord of Life, we open each of our weekly staff meetings with a devotion. This week, office manager Cara read the first sentence of the devotional she chose, “In spirituality, there are basically two paths, what I’ve called the path of the fall and the path of the return.” When “fall and return” appeared as a dichotomy, my mind drifted away from the author’s purpose, though it was a good one, and I wondered, “What does it mean to think of salvation as a return?”
Typically, we think of salvation as an arrival; “we have reached the top of the spiritual hierarchy.” Eternal life in our lives, or the life of the world to come, is reaching somewhere or something we previously did not have. But this narrative ignores our creation story that we often label as “The Great Fall,” that is, the story of Adam and Eve picking and eating the forbidden fruit. Allegorically, this story serves as an explanation for who we are as human beings - people created in the image of God, yet, “fallen” as imperfect people in an imperfect world.
This theme of fallen and returned is in play throughout scripture. The prodigal son does not arrive at his father’s house, meeting his dad for the first time. Rather, he returns to where he was raised. The shepherd does not leave the ninety-nine sheep to go after one that doesn’t belong to him. Rather, he goes out to claim the sheep that is rightfully his. When the lost sheep is found, it is a returning moment.
In the philosophically rich show The Good Place - a comical NBC series mostly taking place in the after-life, Chidi explains life and death,
Picture a wave in the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it's there. And you can see it; you know what it is. It's a wave.
And then it crashes on the shore and it's gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while. You know it's one conception of death: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it's supposed to be.
This concept echoes the reality of what it means to be Christian in our current lives. Matthew 16:25 reads, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” As Christians, we confess that out of death comes resurrection, and out of dying to oneself comes new life. Just as a wave dies and returns to the ocean, by dying to oneself we return to God.
So what would it look like if we embraced salvation as a return? How would we feel if our baptismal liturgy said, “By the power of the Holy Spirit, you are returned to our Heavenly Father, baptized in Christ?” If we were to think of repentance as returning to God - thus, not simply turning - we would confess like the prodigal son, that God’s righteousness is our home, not our straying ways.
We are fallen like Adam and Eve, lost like the missing sheep, astray like the prodigal son, but by the grace of God, as a wave returns to the ocean, God has returned us to Godself, the One who claims us, forgives us, and renews us.
Your sibling in Christ,
Pastor Alec Brock, Seminary Intern (he/his)