Reformation Sunday October 25, 2009 “Series B”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Dear Heavenly Father, you are the Creator of the universe, the very author and giver of life here on earth. We owe you our humble obedience, thankfulness and praise. Yet we have failed to live as you desire, and to acknowledge your sovereign lordship over all that exists. Still, in your great love for us, you sent your Son to live among us, to reveal your grace and truth, and to atone for our sins. Through the power of your Holy Spirit, strengthen us in faith, humble us in spirit, and enable us to accept your gift of salvation with thankful hearts. This we ask in Christ’s holy name. Amen.
Several weeks before rally day, Joanne called to share with me her plan of having our students paint the tables they use in their Sunday school rooms as a rally day activity. Since our tables are nearly 45 years old and showing signs of wear, I thought this would be a great idea. Then she told me that she would like to have my class paint their table as well, and that I needed to come up with some verse of Scripture and some symbols that I would like my students to paint on the table.
I must admit, that at first, I wasn’t expecting that assignment. I thought we were just going to give the tables a fresh coat of enamel, but Joanne had the great idea of having the kids personalize their table with their own mark. Since I teach our confirmation students, I felt it would be good if we had some basic symbols of the Christian faith, such as symbols of the sacraments, the trinity, the gift of God’s Spirit, and of course, a symbol for Christ and the cross. And for the Scripture verse, I originally thought of a portion of this morning’s lesson from Romans. After all, this is the text that led Luther and other leaders of the Reformation, to confront the church about abuses, and to call her back to embrace the Scriptures as the basis of faith.
But I later changed my mind. I thought that with all the symbols that would appear on the table, the verse would make everything look too busy. More than this, I wanted to condense this lesson from Paul’s Letter to the Romans into something that would be easier for them to remember for the rest of their lives. And so I condensed this lesson into the three catchword phrases that came to define the Reformation. These three phrases are simply, “Grace alone.” “Faith alone.” “Scripture alone.”
So let’s look at our second lesson, from the perspective of these three phrases. For it is my hope that if I can bring my kids to embrace what these three phrases truly mean, they will be able to grow in faith, and defend their faith in the years to come.
First, is the phase, “Grace alone.” To understand this phrase, we have to come to terms with Paul’s assessment that in the first covenant that God made with Israel, which was based on obeying the Ten Commandments for human life, we fall short. In fact, Paul actually tells us in the verses that precede our lesson for this morning that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, even the Gentiles.
In addition, Paul believes that the law now serves a second function. Rather than providing guidance, the commandments now serve to make us aware of our failure to live as God intends. In Paul’s words, “For no human being will be justified in God’s sight, by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.”
This idea that we are O.K. with God, if we have never committed adultery, or if we have never stolen anything, or if we have basically lived the good life, is a lie. Even Jesus pointed this out in his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel, when he talked about looking at a woman (or man) with lust, or failing to help the poor, to be a sin. We just don’t seem to get it. We all are in need of redemption!
Paul puts it on the line. In the eyes of God, we do not live up to his dream of what life would be like on this planet, according to his plan of creation. And the responsibility for our failure to live as God created us to live, is not according to a design failure in God’s plan for creation, but an inability for us to embrace God’s sovereign will, to curb our lustful desires, and to uplift the life of others.
But as verse 23 and 24 says: “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; [we] are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Now as I have taught my kids, the term justified is a word that means guilty, but pardoned. In the eyes of God, we are all guilty, we are all sinners. But because of the faithfulness of Jesus the Christ, God forgives us, he pardons us from the just punishment that we deserve.
This is the gift of God’s grace! It is the gift of God’s love. As every parent knows, to forgive a child of having disobeyed you is always a gift of love. A disobedient child can do nothing to earn our forgiveness, or force us to love them, in spite of the wrongs they have committed against us. To forgive a misdeed, or to pardon a sin, is a gift of love that comes from heart. Thus, we are redeemed by the gift of God’s grace, and God’s grace alone.
Secondly, we receive this gift of God’s grace, through faith and faith alone. As Dr. Mark Wegener points out in his commentary on our second lesson, “Archie Bunker once defined faith as ‘believing stuff nobody in their right mind would believe in,’ a kind of religious suspension of rational intelligence. We need to be sure that our people do not get the idea that we are justified because we believe or hold fast to a set of approved doctrines. We are saved through faith, not by faith.” End Quote.
In other words, it is not my faith or belief that saves me or redeems me. It is God’s gift of grace, and grace alone that redeems me. Jesus
has already revealed God’s forgiving grace, when he was nailed to the cross and gave his life to redeem me from my sins. For those of us who live on this side of our Lord’s death and resurrection, we can only admit that there is nothing that we can do to earn or merit the gift of grace. The gift of God’s redeeming grace has already been given.
No, we are not saved by our faith, but through our faith. As I have often said, the word faith means to trust in the promise of God to redeem us from our sin, to pardon us from the guilt of our sins, as a result of what has been revealed to us through Jesus the Christ. In other words, the only thing that is left up to us, is to trust in the promise that God made to us in our baptism, that we are an heir of his redeemed kingdom.
Again, as Dr. Wegener points out in his commentary, as an example of the meaning of being redeemed through faith, he quotes a unique statement of Martin Luther. “The last words Luther ever penned were on his deathbed, two days before he died on February 18, 1546. ‘Wir Sind bettler,’ he wrote in German, and then in Latin, ‘hoc est verum.’ These words, translated into English say, ‘We are beggars, this is true.’ The phrase expressed his experience of holding out his hand like a beggar to accept the gift that is God’s grace.” End quote.
Luther knew the guilt of his sinfulness before God. Luther knew that God freely offers the gift of his redeeming grace through Christ, and he knew the humbleness of reaching out his hand, like trusting in a parent to lead him through the gate of death to be in the presence of our risen Lord, as he had promised. In fact, if my memory serves me correctly, on the day of his death, Luther was asked if he trusted in the gift of God’s grace, as he had taught. As the story goes, his yes, was the loudest word spoken by him that day.
Finally, we come to the phrase, Scripture alone. How is it that Luther and the other reformers of the church during the Reformation, come to confront the abuses of the church? It was not because of their inner conscience, as if they intuitively knew that the selling of indulgences was wrong. Rather, it was because these religious leaders allowed their own consciences to be governed by the canonized Word of God, recorded in the Scriptures.
Now I do not believe, as did Luther, that the Bible can be taken as literal truth. In fact, I rather like Luther’s description of the Bible “as the cradle that holds the Word of God.” And I believe it was the Incarnate Word of God in Jesus the Christ that gave us the example of understanding the Scriptures as a living dynamic for our lives.
However, I believe as Lutherans, we need to hold to the idea that there are certain threads or concepts that run throughout the Scriptures that continue to direct our lives. And I believe that these threads, these motifs, are intended to direct our lives of faith and trust. Unfortunately, I also believe that E.L.C.A. at its last national assembly, turned its back on this basic and fundamental aspect of not only Lutheran, but also Christian Biblical Theology. As a result, I believe the Reformation of the church continues from age to age. And it is my hope that we here at St. John’s, come to embrace this third catchphrase of the Reformation. In fact, even according to our constitution, Scripture alone is the highest ruling authority in the life of the church. May it prove to be so.
Amen.
