October 31, 2021 – Reformation Day
Hope Lutheran Church
Rev. Mary Erickson
John 8:31-36
Made Free
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Once a year we highlight this obscure event that took place in the year 1517 in a minor city in Germany. The monk Martin Luther nailed a treatise he had written – in Latin, no less – to the wooden door of a church in Wittenberg. How did this trivial moment emerge to be so significant? How did it become a turning point in the history of Christianity?
It wasn’t Luther’s actions. It was the message he wrote. He perfectly described the loving and liberating actions of Jesus our Lord. Luther had come to understand that we had been fully embraced by the love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord. And nothing, absolutely nothing, could ever, ever alter that reality. He knew that divine love had completely accepted and claimed him.
This awareness brought Luther a sense of joyous liberation. Gone was the incessant guilt! Gone was the pestering sense that he would never be good enough for God’s perfect judgment. The fear of damnation had evaporated. In that blessed moment of understanding, God went from being an angry judge to a gracious and loving creator.
The Lutheran Reformation gave voice to the notion of divine grace. You might ask: what is grace? Grace is something that’s freely given. It’s not something you have to earn. On the contrary, grace is undeserved. When we speak of God’s grace, we mean that we don’t have to earn God’s acceptance of us. God accepts and loves us without any actions on our part.
This is what we celebrate on Reformation Day. We celebrate the gift of God’s grace. To be fully accepted and loved in all aspects of your being: that is liberating!
This is so unlike the rest of the world! In so many venues of our life, we’re expected to measure up. We have to earn admiration, we have to perform up to standards, we have to look right and act right.
We end up feeling like we’re standing beside one of those signs you see at an amusement park: “You must be this high to go on this ride.” The world tells us we have to measure up. We have to reach their standards. But the problem is, we fear we won’t measure up. And when we do achieve some measure of success, it feels like someone moved the end zone further away.
We’re bombarded by expectations on all sides. We feel pressure to have all the answers, to perform capably, to be the perfect parent. We’re met by expectations of body shape, hair, what neighborhood we live in, what we do for a living.
Children aren’t exempt from these pressures. And youth feel them double strength. Peer pressure is a harsh and relentless task master. Maneuvering down the hallway between classes can feel more like running through a gauntlet of criticism and jeers. There is testing and grades and report cards. Will you make the grade?
Minorities, foreigners, people of color, queer people, they all have an even more daunting hurdle to achieve. Can they, will they be accepted? In every environment they enter, they live under the unknown pressure, the fear, will I be accepted? Will I be shunned, will I be scorned, will I be physically hurt?
My sisters and brothers, it just never ends. We all feel it. If you’re human, you have known the pressure to measure up.
So imagine, imagine a reality where you have been fully accepted JUST AS YOU ARE! You don’t have to perform. You don’t have to measure up, you don’t have to become something you aren’t and that you can never be, because you have ALREADY been acknowledged and received.
Even with all of your shortcomings and wayward blunders, in spite of your oddities and eccentricities, despite all of your failures and destructive habits, you have been fully embraced and loved and accepted.
This is the grace we’ve received through Jesus Christ our Lord. And none of the reaching began with us. Grace has come to us, free and undeserved.
At the root, God is love. All of God’s actions derive from that love. God is the prime mover. God acted first.
• God created the world and all that is – out of love.
• God sent Christ into the world, to take on our flesh and our reality and our suffering and fears – out of love.
• Jesus’ actions and declarations in his ministry, they all point out the way of God’s love.
• And in his reconciling death and resurrection, Jesus broke down every barrier built by our limited, error-filled, sin-corrupted selves and reunited us with the eternal and endless love of God.
All of this stems from God’s actions, God’s love. And so as Jesus said in our reading from John, “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” Notice who is making whom free. The liberating action doesn’t come from us. It comes from Christ Jesus our Lord. He has acted and he has set you free.
That grace and freedom came to each one of us in our baptismal waters. On that day, we were baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. On that day and in that moment, the love of God reached down and claimed us forever.
And ever since that great day for each one of us, we’ve walked wet from that bath of grace. We’ve stepped forward, one step at a time, one day at a time, growing in the appreciation of that endless supply of divine love. This is our firm foundation, our anchor of stability in a world that judges and criticizes and beats us down. But this wet version of you, this you within the covenant of grace, THIS is the real you. Let this be your grounding, and don’t ever let anyone else tell you differently. You are a child of God, fully loved, fully accepted, fully free.
We’ve walked wet from that font of grace. And with every step, we grow in the awareness of the great ocean of God’s endless mercies. Today we have nine young people who are taking a small walk back to that font. They’re affirming the faith of their baptism. It’s been my delight to have walked with them on a special journey during these past three years. I’ve enjoyed our regular Wednesdays together – well, all except for those horrible Zoom sessions last year. But I miss the opportunity to connect with you every week for our special time. So we’ll have to find other venues to connect – Sunday morning worship, or FIRE activities or service projects.
If you learned only one thing through our three years of confirmation studies, I hope it was this: if the Son makes you free, you will be free, indeed!
