It’s astonishing how often one particular idea shows up in American popular culture — how central it is to our stories and art. This idea shows up everywhere. It’s the name of a band, the title of the theme song for Rocky II, and the subject of our best stories, poems, and books, including Hugo’s
Les Miserables, Tolkein’s
The Lord of the Rings, Rowlings’ Harry Potter series, and any film by Steven Spielburg or Clint Eastwood. It was often the theme of the “Little Rascals / Spanky and Our Gang” stories, and Shakespeare's comedies. When it is achieved we weep for joy, when it is lost we weep in despair.
It’s what is longed for in Remy Zero’s brilliant and haunting lyrics in the title sequence for the Smallville series:
Somebody save me
Let your waters break right through
Somebody save me
I don't care how you do it
Just save, save
Come on
I've been waiting for you It’s what none of us want to be beyond. It is the recovery, deliverance, or restoration of the lost, broken, or corrupted: redemption.
Redemption is what the Church at its best is all about, and at its worse often forgets and neglects.
The search for redemption is at the heart of the best of all human thought, effort and endeavor. At one end, we hope to redeem ourselves. At the other end, we hope to redeem the world.
Efforts and causes to save an endangered species, habitat, an ecosystem, or justice are all attempts to redeem something precious to those who care about them. Efforts and causes to save a diminishing art form or culture, to save those ravaged by plague, war, genocide, or oppression, to restore a neighborhood or an inner city, to restore the Gulf Coast, or to build affordable housing, all are attempts to restore, save, rescue, and redeem. Religion, which seeks our own personal transformation, permeates, augments, flows from and centers all other redemptive efforts.
Optimism, rather than pessimism, is the foundation for the ubiquitous human search for redemption. Our search for personal, communal, and global transformation, all reveal our belief that things can be better than they are, and that the effort is worth it. To focus on redemption is both honest about current conditions, yet wonderfully hopeful about what can be, with God’s help, if we commit ourselves to the search to redeem ourselves, our church, our world'
The Lord be with you.
