Reformation Sunday (Year A) – 500th Anniversary October 29, 2017
John 8:31-36 Romans 3:19-28 Stuttgart Liturgical Service
This sermon has a little bit of something for everyone… a little history, a little biblical interpretation, a little application, and a discipleship challenge… yeah! I’ll try not to make your head spin too much…
I hated Western Civilization history class when I was in school. What did that have to do with me? It wasn’t until I was in seminary that I got why all of this history stuff matters. And I think it will surprise you, as it did me, that my church history books are just as important as my bible commentaries when it comes to preaching and teaching in the church. (Good church history resource – www.christianhistoryinstitute.org)
This month I’ve been listening to a daily podcast called, “Here We Stand.”[i] It chronicles the lives of 31 people who were instrumental in the Protestant Reformation, a movement which started two centuries before Martin Luther’s proclamations. Have you ever heard of these fine folks - Peter Waldo (13th C), John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, or Girolamo Savonrola (14 C)? Each of them expressed some of the same concerns as published in Luther’s 95 Theses, decades before him. These four have something in common. Each of them was excommunicated from the Catholic Church, and three of the four were martyred, killed by the church for heresy, with the hope that their followers would get back in line, accepting Catholic doctrine as correct and infallible. In the end, it didn’t work.
It’s very clear that Martin Luther, while still a rebel, stands on the shoulders of preachers and theologians who preceded him. This protest reformation of Christianity began because good, faithful people, saw how far the Church had strayed from the teachings of Jesus. They saw the value of reading scripture themselves instead of relying on a priest for interpretation. Before Luther, John Wycliffe in England and Jan Hus in the current Czech Republic translated the scripture into their vernacular languages and paid the price with their lives. It turns out that an educated laity was a threat to the Church. Luther never intended to start a new branch of Christianity. He just wanted the one that he was a part of to be about faith and relationship with Christ and not mired in following the rules.
There were a few of things that Luther had going for him that those who came before him did not. (See “Why Luther?” by Gene Veith[ii])
1) Right time, right place… The pace of the world was rapidly changing during the 16th century. The University in Wittenberg had begun teaching the new Renaissance curriculum alongside the classics, and other theologians were great influences on Luther, among them Philip Melanchthon, who is buried across the aisle from Luther in the Schloss Church. The political climate was also in flux. Luther’s patron, Frederick the Wise, Duke of Saxony, protected Luther from the reach of the Catholic proceedings, which sought to removed Luther permanently as a voice for change within the Church and society.
2) The printing press… Guttenberg’s press made quick distribution of information possible. Best known for printing the first German bibles, he was also the largest printer of indulgences (the church’s version of “get out of purgatory at great cost to your loved ones”) which Luther railed against in his writings and sermons. In reality, Luther may or may not have posted them on the church door. But he did send them in a letter to his bishop, and by January 2018 had them printed and distributed to anyone who would take them. It wasn’t Facebook, but pretty momentous for the time.
3) He was a great writer, scholar, teacher, and preacher. It was his gift. It was his calling. But he didn’t let it go to his head. He also believed that every believer was called to a vocation. Becoming a priest brought great honor to a family. But Luther taught that everyone was called to serve God in some way, and all are honorable.
God’s callings are mostly quite ordinary—everyday relationships in the family, workplace, church, and community—in which Christians live out their faith in love and service to their neighbors. But God sometimes works in extraordinary ways as well, and when He does, He works by means of vocation; that is, through human instruments.[iii]
In a sense, Luther was releasing people to their live out an authentic faith, not just follow a set of rules designed to steer people to the heavenly gates. And no matter what Protestant tradition that any of us come from, we are a product of Luther’s work and the ones who came before and after.
Luther wrote volumes on doctrines described in the scripture. He is best known for his writings on salvation by faith alone – His Preface to the Letter to the Romans influenced many, including my own John Wesley. But he also wrote about the role faith has in the lives of Christian believers. It was not enough to confess and believe. Genuine faith is evidenced in everyday living.
In the reading from John, Jesus addresses the age-old (and contemporary) problem of what it means to be free… in the language of faith - of what it means to be saved. Is freedom or salvation about the religion of following the rules? That’s certainly where Jesus and the Pharisees came into conflict, over and over again.
I think it’s what often trips us up, too. Luther asks: Is faith about orthodoxy – right doctrine – or is it about orthopraxy – right living?[iv] Is it about checking off all the right boxes or how we treat our neighbors? Is it about saying we are Christian or living so that people know it without our speaking a word?
“The truth will make you free…” Where does this freedom come from? Is it bestowed on us by the institution or is it a gift from God? Jesus spent a lot of time breaking the rules – for all the right reasons… to help people… to teach lessons. And in the end, it got him killed.
Reformation comes when certainties about who is in and out of the Kingdom of God are in conflict with Jesus’ call to love and serve. Reformation (defined as “the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory”[v]) begins when we realize that life in the world and life in the Kingdom are not the same thing. Reformation comes when we gather our courage and step out in faith that God speaks truth to us all, often replacing certainty of the known, the comfortable, for trusting God in middle of the unfamiliar.
Life in Christ is not just about understanding Christian doctrine, it’s also about living out Jesus’ teachings. Through his study of Romans, Luther reminds us that faith is only truly fulfilled through discipleship.
That’s why Luther’s insistence that people be able to read the Bible for themselves is important even to us. And yet, let’s be honest, are we faithful about picking up the bible and reading it for ourselves? I’d say that many of us, including me, are not. I’ll admit that in the weeks when I am preparing to teach or preach, I am immersed the Word. But many days, I am content to reflect on a verse or two as contained in a small devotional, willing to check that box as “done.”
Here’s a challenge for you. The New Testament book of Mark was the first gospel written and is only about 660 verses. It can easily be read from beginning to end in much less time than watching a college football game. If you’re not up for reading it all in one day, ready it over a week, noting the details that emerge as the story progresses. And if you’re really intrigued, go on and read the gospels of Matthew and Luke – they are a little longer, but not too much. Notice the ways they reflect the book of Mark and the ways that they are different. See which themes run consistently throughout these three books, and see if you can figure out what themes are different. Get a good study bible and the possibilities are endless.
And that’s how it starts. Immersing ourselves in the biblical narrative continues to be the best encouragement for living out faith every day. That’s what discipleship is all about. Does reading the parables of the lost coin and sheep and son change the way we see those lost around us or help us without own depression and anxiety? Does going to church on Sunday make a difference in how we treat people the rest of the week? Yes, but maybe not the first or second or tenth times we read them, but they do have the power to work their ways into our souls and hearts in ways that will change us forever.
In the passage from Romans, we see Paul connect the idea of faith with justice or righteousness.[vi] Writing to a Church that was becoming increasingly multi-chromatic, he wanted to make sure that everyone understood that law has its place, but relationship with God and with one another turns all of our previous notions about faith and freedom upside down. For Paul’s church, that meant Jews and Gentiles gathered in the name of Jesus to share meals and ministry – they became a new family called Church. In our world, it means climbing over the same tall barriers of gender, race and nationality, trusting that God has called us and will be with us in the midst of our brave new lives.
The biggest challenge we face today is how to be reforming without fracturing into a million splinter churches. It feels like such a fine line to find the truth that sets us free without breaking apart all the ties that bind us together. Too often, we choose between one or the other… truth or unity. No solution to that yet, well, because total trust in God is just hard. Try as we might, we love power and want to be the gatekeepers of truth. Watch or read the news and we’re reminded that it’s a sickness over the whole world right now.
Jesus, Paul and Martin Luther all remind us that there is a solution: that the “we” is stronger than the “me.” It’s the hardest work that any of us will ever do - to acknowledge and then overcome the differences between us, allowing the differences between us to be our strength instead of our downfall. And we will be unsuccessful until we put our trust in God to heal the wounds between us.
People often ask me why a liturgical worship service means so much to me. After all, we are worshiping each Sunday in a tradition that goes back over 1000 years. They ask, “Don’t you get tired of praying the same prayers, and knowing exactly what’s going to come next?” Time and again I am able to say that those are exactly the things that make the experience so worshipful. I am constantly amazed at how a verse in a well-known hymn will speak to me in a way that it never has before, and that while I may have preached on or heard these same texts many times in the past, this week they are made new again by all of the life that has been lived by me and other in the between time.
Reformation doesn’t necessarily mean dumping out everything old from the Church in an effort to take on new things all the time. Reformation means being willing to be re-formed… made new… and trusting that God freedom and righteousness are the gifts on the journey. David Lose, Lutheran pastor and former president of Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia sums it up this way:
Perhaps the best way to celebrate the Reformation is not to celebrate it at all, but rather to repeat it. To remember both halves of Paul’s mighty words, first the difficult truth that “all have sinned and fallen short” in order to hear the blessed news that “all are now justified by God’s grace as a gift.” For here, indeed, is a truth that sets you free. And it is a truth that still has the capacity to change lives, the church, and indeed the whole world. [vii]
May God send us into the world to be a Reformation people. Amen.
Peace, Deb
[i] Podcast – Here We Stand - https://www.desiringgod.org/here-we-stand
[iii] Veith - ibid
[iv] Samuel Cruz, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3451
[v] Dictionary.com http://www.dictionary.com/browse/reform
[vi] Jane Patterson, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3448
[vii] David Lose, http://www.davidlose.net/2017/10/reformation-sunday-the-truth-about-the-truth/
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