"Are you saved?" This was the question that came from the two Jehovah’s witnesses that knocked on my back door a couple of years ago. I was a bit shocked to say the least. After all, they had stopped by a house that was obviously connected to a church and I was even more shocked that this was the gist of their opening statement.

I explained to them that I was the pastor of the church next door. "What church?" they asked. I pointed in the direction of the church and it was obvious they had come from the opposite direction and had not yet seen the church.

Even after I had explained my connection to the church, they persisted and politely asked if they could read some scripture to me and leave a copy of their magazine with me to look over. So one of the men read a few verses from Jeremiah and I took their magazine. I admit that I took their magazine mostly as a way to get them to move on down the road. As they were leaving, they invited me to come to worship at their Kingdom Hall and in turn, I invited them to come to worship here at New Concord.

I confess that I merely glanced at the magazine they left with me before tossing it in the recycling bin. But there was something about that visit that has been gnawing somewhere at the back of my mind ever since then. Was it that they had questioned me about salvation? Was it because they had come to a pastor’s house? Or, was it because I didn’t have the vocabulary to express my understanding of the question, "Are you saved?" This question of salvation is a prevalent and persistent one.

I overheard a conversation not too long ago between two church leaders. They were discussing the neighbor of one of them. This neighbor refused to go to church. It was brought out that this neighbor leads a good life and would say he believes in God. "But does he know Jesus?" one questioned the other. "Yes, I think so. He just doesn’t go to church," replied the other. "But if he knows Jesus and is saved, that’s the important part."

So, are you saved? The many times I’ve heard that question either directed at me or at someone else, I’ve always wondered what’s really behind the question. I admit it sounds like a very Baptist question to ask in this very Presbyterian setting. As I dug a little deeper into what’s behind this question I’ve come up with a few insights.

First, many who ask the question have a very specific understanding of what "being saved" means. Primarily it means they will go to heaven when they die. For most of the people I’ve encountered with this question on their lips, the sole purpose of salvation is to ensure entrance into heaven upon their death, like getting your passport stamped to enter a foreign country. So salvation is what matters when you die. It is, shall we say, death insurance.

So being able to "save" someone ensures they’re going to heaven and that’s all that really matters. Salvation or being saved is what matters only at the time of death. With this understanding of salvation, there is an urgency to save people. After all if someone dies and they have not been saved, it’s a hopeless case. So for many who ask the question of "Are you saved?" there is the urgency that they are saving people from spending an eternity in hell and ensuring they spend eternity in heaven. Salvation is a question of eternity.

Second, many who ask the question see the major requirement of salvation as having a personal relationship with Christ. They want the person answering the question to be able to say not only that they accept Jesus Christ and their Lord and Savior but that they have a personal relationship with him. However, what that personal relationship means or how it looks, is unclear and many can’t find words to describe it.

The ideal answer for some to the question, "are you saved?" is not just "yes" but "yes and I have had this personal relationship with Jesus Christ." Then they usually go on to say how they have experienced Christ or God at work in their lives.

While these definitions and understandings of salvation or being saved are very common, especially in our Baptist-dominated culture, I wonder if there’s something missing. I wonder if salvation has more to say in our life than where we will go when we die. I wonder if salvation is not just insurance for when we die but guidance for while we live.

The warden in Acts was ready just to end it all. He awoke and saw the prison doors were wide open. He had no hope that (a) the prisoners would still be in the prison or (b) that his supervisors would view an earthquake as an acceptable and forgivable defense for a prison break. As he drew his sword, the jailer must have been thinking about how jailers who let prisoners escape do not live for long.

When Paul’s voice rang out from the depths of the prison assuring the warden that all the prisoners were accounted for, it must have felt as though the hangman’s noose had been loosened from his neck. It was too good to be true. Why, when they all had the opportunity to escape, didn’t the prisoners take their freedom and run?

With a perplexed look on his face the warden asks Paul and Silas, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" Scholars have debated and come to the conclusion that when the jailer asked this question, he wasn’t looking for some in depth theological treatise but was instead asking something more along the lines of, "How in the world am I going to get out of this mess?" The jailer’s question about salvation wasn’t about where he would go when he died but how he could live.

Over the past two months the devotion at our session meeting has focused on the first of the Great Ends of the Church. The Great Ends of the Church are laid out in our Book of Order and serve as purposes or reasons for the existence of each local congregation and the denomination as a whole. The first Great End of the Church is the "Proclamation of the Gospel for the Salvation of Humankind."

In our study of the word salvation, we explored what the writers of scripture mean when they use the word salvation. The first misconception about the word salvation is that it is only about the soul. When the writers of the Bible talk about salvation, it’s not only about where you go when you die. Salvation encompasses the whole person: body, mind, spirit. Salvation is about the wholeness of the person. It’s not just about spiritual wholeness but the health and wholeness of the entire person.

One of the transformative understandings of the word salvation is that it is not an individual thing. The wholeness that salvation refers to is not only the wholeness of the individual but the wholeness of the community – the wholeness of all humanity.

So "are you saved?" isn’t just a question we can ask an individual and get an individualistic answer. Salvation is not merely about an individual being able to say, "yes, I’m saved." Salvation is about the community being able to say together, "we are saved."

Salvation isn’t just some insurance about where you will go when you die. It’s about how you live your life. The jailer wasn’t looking to know what would happen when he died. He wanted to know how he could live. Paul’s answer was to give the jailer a new way of living – a way of living toward Christ.

But this salvation – this new way of living – cannot be experienced by the jailer alone. His whole household is included in this step toward wholeness. Salvation cannot take place in an individualistic vacuum. Salvation only takes place in the community.

If we look back at our jailer we also notice that when he hears the word of the Lord that Paul spoke, he didn’t just say, "okay, I believe" and have that be the end of the story. Instead, belief was only the beginning of the jailer living into the salvation he had experienced. After hearing the word of the Lord, the jailer tends to the wounds of Silas and Paul. He feeds them and he and his family rejoice with him.

And when the jailer and his whole household are baptized, it isn’t some sort of graduation ceremony. It isn’t as though he can now check the baptized box and continue to live his life as he used to. He didn’t just get the baptized stamp on his passport to heaven.

I think back to that encounter with the Jehovah’s Witnesses and wonder how I would respond now. Maybe if asked again, "Are you saved?" my answer would sound more like this: "Through the abundant grace and mercy of God we are saved. Saved in death and saved in life. Now, how can we together embody the wholeness that God’s salvation offers us all?" I wonder what the reaction would be to that?

Maybe it’s not just a matter of being saved from but being saved for. Through the amazing action of Christ’s resurrection we have been saved from death as a final answer. But I don’t think that’s the end of the story. I think we’re not only saved from something but we’re saved for something. We’re saved for living our lives as God’s people, joined together in the community God began when it was agreed that it was not good for one human to be left alone. Community, a joining together, is at the very root of our creation. Doesn’t it make sense that the amazing gift of salvation would also seek to bring us together as a community? So what are we saved for?