Bible for Catholic Nerds – Conversion and Salvation

Conversion and Salvation

They informed Jesus about a recent event. Pilate had some Galileans killed who had done something unlawful in the temple in Jerusalem. They asked Jesus if the death of these Galileans had been caused by their sin. Jesus answered by making a clear distinction between that political action and the responsibility of the Galileans. They were not more sinful than the others, he said, just as those 18 masons who died in a construction accident were not more sinful than all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. But Jesus concludes: “If you are not convert, you will all perish in the same way.”

The topic of conversion is a topic very dear to the evangelist Luke. If there is no conversion, there is ruin; either conversion or death. Conversion means changing direction. Luke uses two Greek verbs to indicate this attitude. One is ‘epistrefo’ which is the verb that recalls the image of the road. In traveling, we change direction if we realize that we have taken the wrong road, we must reverse the gear, make a U-turn.

This is the concept of conversion. If I want to get to the goal, and I realize that I have taken the wrong road, I must change direction and take the right one. There is another much more beautiful verb that Luke uses and it is the verb ‘metanoe’ that indicates the change of head, a change of mentality. It is necessary to change the way of thinking and this is the authentic conversion. The change of the head is anything but easy, impossible for people. It is not possible to change the people’s heads, you know, don’t you?

Let’s think about the people we know from our environment, people from our family … we think that ‘the other’ will never change his mind. And myself can I change my mind? Can I change the way I think? Can I get converted? Yes. History teaches us that conversion is possible. There are people who have truly changed their mentality. Something has happened to them that has transformed them. The history of salvation, according to Luke, is carried out thanks to the mercy of God who intervenes in people’s lives by changing their mentality. Mercy is therapy. And medicinal cure, is not simply a palliative, that is, a cloak that covers, hides what is distorted.

Mercy is therapeutic. It aims to cure. The goal is precisely the transformation of the sinner into a saint. In chapter 15, the evangelist Luke collects three parables that we know precisely as the parables of mercy. The lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son are parables that show the work of God in action to save humanity, and the work of mercy exemplified by the fact that Jesus goes to lunch with sinners.

This is how the evangelist frames the three parables: “The tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to him, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” The negative aspect that bothers them is that eating with sinners means sharing their mentality, putting oneself on their level. To go to their house and eat together with that kind of people is a shame. Jesus, on the other hand, believes that it is a pedagogical and medicinal way. He does not go to adapt himself to them, he does not go to approve them, but to offer them the possibility to change. He goes to look for sinners. We must never forget that the search for the sinner is not for the sinner to remain a sinner. God’s mercy does not approve of sin, but it does not allow the sinner to remain as he or she is. He goes to look for him or her to bring him or her home.

“What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’” God is the shepherd who goes in search of that sheep that has been lost. Just one; 1 percent; 99% are okay and don’t need salvation and is just one percent a sinner? A percentage that does not add up. 99 percent are righteous and do not need salvation, and only one percent are sinners? The percentage does not fit. It is not base on our schemes… according to our experience. It is true that the “99” probably refers to the angelic reality and the only ‘one’ lost sheep is humanity. ‘One’ representing all. Adam is the lost sheep, that is, humanity itself. God leaves the angels in their own safe world to get dirty and bloody in the corrupt world of man. And carry humanity on his shoulders by taking up the cross and leading man through the resurrection to the heights of God.

“Or what woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it?” Luke likes to always present female figures alongside the male ones. Thus, to the insistent friend, he associated the insistent widow with the shepherd who seeks the sheep. He gave the example of the woman who seeks the coin; an image in the masculine world and an image in the feminine world to say the same thing. The woman who searches for the lost coin is the wisdom of God that enters history to save that coin; Adam who received the footprint of God bears the image and likeness of God, but lost it on earth, in the dust, under something. It needs to be recovered. This is conversion as an action of God who seeks the sinner to make him change.

The third parable that of the lost son is broader and presents not simply a lost son and nine others who stay at home, but two sons, one older and one younger. One stays at home and the other prefers to leave. Between the two sons, there is the father. It is precisely the relationship between the father and the two types of son that Jesus wants to present as a model of mercy.

The youngest son leaves home to have an independent life for himself and fails. He is reduced to poverty, forced to tend pigs. For an Israelite, this is the worst possible situation. He has certainly gone abroad, has eaten up his fortune, and has reduced himself to a beastly life. Because he is hungry, he decides to return. It is not such a positive model; we don’t use it easily as an example of conversion, even catechistically to introduce the theme of conversion to children “I shall get up and go to my father.” … The reason why the son decides to return home is hunger, an empty stomach; and he thinks that ‘many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat, and here I’m starving. So I will go back and tell him: treat me like a servant, but feed me.’

The goal is to eat; the son is willing to be a servant in exchange for food. When he returns home, the father does not let him say the whole sentence he had thought. He welcomes him with a heart of mercy. The evangelist Luke says that the father saw him from afar and he felt his insides move. It is a strange verb, in Greek it is ‘esplancknice,’ is the verb that indicates deep visceral love, typically maternal and the same verb that characterizes the attitude of the Samaritan who helps the man who has run into thieves; it is the attitude of Jesus who meets the widow at the funeral of his only son; it is the mercy of God that moves towards man.

The merciful father goes out and receives him, embraces him, reintegrates him in the dignity of a son. As symbolic elements, he makes him put on the dress (thus literally says that the Greek text) is the dress of primitive dignity, it is the sanctity of the first origin and welcomes him to eat at the table of the sons. The older son, who has remained at home, is a figure of the religiously observant person, while the younger represents perhaps the pagan peoples, or the rebellious people who do not listen to the Lord and who turn away from him.

The older brother embodies well the religious tradition of Israel, the devout person, who has been practicing since his youth, but with a servile mentality. When he hears that his brother has returned, he is not at all happy. When he hears that his father has welcomed him, he is indignant and does not want to enter the house. The brother who has remained at home is, in fact, outside the house and does not want to come in to eat. He does not want to come in and eat with that other… and the father who comes out to meet him as well.

There are actually two lost sons. They are lost in different ways. Both are out of the house. The father comes out to invite them both in. The eldest son protests saying: “All these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders, yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.” The verb ‘to serve’ returns. That man did not have two sons but two servants. The defect of both, although differently, is servility, not sonship. ‘Treat me as a servant, but feed me.’ ‘I serve you and you haven’t fed me.’ At the center of the parable is the servile idea of eating, of filling one’s belly, of having something for oneself. It is the instinctive image of selfishness, of the human attitude centered on one’s own needs. The father says this beautiful expression to his eldest son: “Son, you are always with me.”

It is the center of the parable; it is the revelation of our dignity as sons and daughters: to always be with the Lord. This is the meaning of our life; this is eternal life and the fullness of our existence. Conversion is not so much the fact that the son returns home to eat, but the change of mentality. The rebel must learn to trust his father, to stay with him, and not use him for food. He who stays at home must change his mind, must enter into the father’s style and learn to have a welcoming, available attitude that appreciates being more than having. The conversion is for both.

The model is the merciful father. Conversion is possible. Luke features several episodes of people converted. An admirable model is Zacchaeus. In chapter 19, the evangelist Luke introduces this character who is a boss of the organized crime of Jericho, not simply a tax collector, but a leader of tax collectors, and therefore, an organizer of these businesses of collecting taxes for the Romans.

While Jesus crosses the city of Jericho, the last stage before going up to Jerusalem, this Zacchaeus is curious to see him because he has heard about Jesus. If he had other feelings in his heart, the evangelist does not say. He presents him as small in stature and cunning. Without showing himself and yet wants to see Jesus, he climbs a sycamore tree. It is a plant with a large stem with branches that extend widely downward so that it is easy to climb and go over the head of the crowd to see from above, hidden by foliage. He never imagined that Jesus would notice him and that he would ask him in person.

When he got to that sycamore tree, Jesus stops and turns to that infamous and barely seen man. He calls him by name: “Today I must stay at your house.” “Today” – Luke likes this adverb of time; he uses it frequently in some important episodes: “Today the Savior was born for you” … “Today these words (which Jesus read in the synagogue of Nazareth) have been fulfilled in your hearing.” “Today we have seen wonderful things,” say those who have witnessed the pardon of the paralytic. The thief crucified with Jesus hears: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” In the episode of Zacchaeus this adverb appears twice: “Today I have to stay at your house” and he received him full of joy. He came down quickly and went out of his way to greet him. Jesus entered the house of what we could call gangsters, not to approve but to change them. The encounter with the mercy of Jesus changes the head of Zacchaeus who says to the Lord: “Half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.” This is a conversion, a change of mentality, even in the use of money.

Another theme much loved by the evangelist Luke: he returns what he has taken dishonestly and then uses his possessions as charity. Is it possible for a criminal of such magnitude to change? It is a true miracle. People murmur against Jesus… “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.” It seems that Jesus is conspiring with criminals. In reality, it is the path of God’s mercy that goes down and soils itself with this sinful humanity, but precisely to purify it, to take it away from the mud, to raise it. The mercy of Jesus breaks through into the heart of Zacchaeus, a sinner. Like him, he changes his life. “Today, salvation has come to this house.”

Here, conversion is identified with salvation. God’s mercy saves the sinner because it transforms him, changes his head. Here’s the ‘metanoia’ – the mindset change that is God’s grace welcomed by sinful man. God’s mercy makes the wicked righteous. Zacchaeus is an example. A change of head is possible; the mercy of God is a therapy that works. And in my head, does it work? If it doesn’t work, the mercy offered to me is useless. To be useful I must allow myself to change. This is the ‘metanoia’, the conversion that is asked of me and that I want to make possible. Thanks to the mercy of God.