Sermon: Reformation500, Free Indeed! (Oct. 29, 2017)

Reformation Sunday (Ref. Series: Doctrine of Justification)

October 29, 2017

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 46; Galatians 2:16-21; John 8:31-36

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

            Five hundred years. I know this will reveal what a church nerd I have always been, but I’ve had this day on my radar since I was a kid. I remember thinking how old I would be when the 500^th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation came about! Turns out, fun fact, that Luther was exactly my current age when he posted his 95 theses on the church door.

Well now that it’s here… I don’t really know what to say. On the one hand, there is something to celebrate. Because 500 years ago, a young monk (and he was young!) said to the Church, “Hey listen, you’ve distorted the heart of Christian faith. You’ve got people believing they can buy their forgiveness, when really, that comes free from God!” What followed was a reformation of the Church as it was, resulting, hopefully, in a greater emphasis on God’s grace.

But that also brings up the dark underbelly of the Reformation, which is that this event spilt apart the Church. And that is nothing to celebrate. Division wasn’t Luther’s desire, nor was it Jesus’. Jesus prayed that we would all be one – and the Church now, 2000 years after Jesus’ death and 500 years after Luther’s bold act, looks nothing like one, united Church. Christians differ from each other even on the most basic tenets of faith, and that difference has led to bloodshed. In fact, Luther’s words did much to cause some of the pain the Church has experienced for the past half millennium. He also said awful things about Jews. Nazis used his words to justify their actions. He wasn’t always kind to other Christians, either. Lutherans today have worked hard to heal some of the very divisions and pains caused by our namesake.

And so, 500 years later, I find myself as prone to lament and even repent, as I am to celebrate. But I think that’s okay. After all, the first of those 95 theses states, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” I can lament and repent that my denominational heritage hurt people along the way. I can lament and repent that there is division in the church. I can lament and repent for what I have or haven’t done to heal that division. Lament and repentance are an important part of the life of faith.

Because of the complexity of this historical event in the Church’s life, the word we are supposed to be using is “commemorate.” A recognition, but not a celebration. That said, I do also want to recognize that there is something to celebrate today. And that is the realization and the articulation, by Luther and his colleagues, of the life-changing, spirit-filled, liberating theology known as the doctrine of justification: that we are saved by grace and not by works.

That’s a lot of fancy church words, so let’s break this down into more accessible words, drawing some inspiration from our Gospel reading today. Jesus is talking to a bunch of Jews, saying that the truth will set them free. “Free?” they respond. “But we don’t need to be freed. We’re not slaves. We were never slaves.” You might be inclined to feel the same about yourself. We’re American, after all, living in the land of the free. I don’t even have slavery in my family history. I know nothing of slavery. But if you know something about Jewish history, you’ll remember: they were very much slaves! Remember that whole bit in Egypt? How Moses had to ask the Pharaoh a bunch of times to let God’s people go? How Moses finally led the Israelites, God’s people, out of Egypt in dramatic fashion, through the Red Sea? Uh yeah, it’s sort of a big part of their history that they were slaves!

And while it may not be quite so obvious in our own histories, we were and are still very much slaves, too. We are enslaved to the love of money and all it can do for us, to building and maintaining our reputations, to our work, to our schedules – always trying to justify ourselves by saying our diligent attention to these things will increase the level of happiness for ourselves and our families… But in the end, it is just a never-ending race of trying to keep up, trying to succeed, trying to prove to ourselves, our neighbors, and to God, that we are enough.

And that’s really the driving motivation in all of our enslavements, isn’t it? We want to be enough: good enough, smart enough, attractive enough, faithful enough. And we try to prove to ourselves and the world that we have achieved “enough” by ensuring our kids have all the best opportunities, and we make a good salary, and contribute something worthwhile, and maybe that we have whatever the hot item is. We are slaves to the relentless desire to be enough.

But we are not doomed to spend our whole lives in this enslavement – we can be free. “The truth will set you free,” Jesus says. “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” Did you hear that good news? It is the Son, Jesus, who makes us free. Not the right number on the bathroom scale, not the higher salary, not your kid earning straight As, not getting that award, not even doing good deeds. Those things aren’t bad in and of themselves – really, they are good! – but while they may make us feel good in the moment, they will not set us free from that core fear of not being enough. Only the Son can do that. Only Jesus’ work on our behalf can do that. Only the promise we receive in baptism – that we are beloved children of God, whose sins and failures are always forgiven by a merciful God – can free us.

I like how Lutheran pastor Emily Scott put it. She says, “I am only interested in a conversation about the Reformation insofar as it is centered on the liberation of God’s people. The life-giving theology Luther and his colleagues articulated has rescued me from a life depending only on myself.” To me, this really is life-giving

news! How much pressure we put on ourselves, believing that we can pull ourselves out of our own darkness! I am pretty smart and capable, and often I am able to fix my own problems, but the most pressing ones, and especially the rat race of trying to prove to myself and the world that I am enough, never seems to have an end, at least not as long as I’m in it alone. I always seem to resort to comparing my own success or failure with someone else’s, and it turns out, there is never any joy in comparison. It always results in my feeling like I could be more or better, like I’m not enough. But the good news of the Reformation is that there is an end to that race, and that end is Jesus Christ. Through Christ, God says, “You are already enough.” It doesn’t depend on you or your goodness. It depends on God and God’s goodness.

That is the end of the rat race – but it is the beginning of a life of faith. Pastor Scott goes on: “If we are to remember the Reformation, let it stir us to see the suffering of God’s people in our midst,” and reach out to them with love. This, you see, is also the heritage of the Reformation. Once we hear that good news that we are free from sin, free from the temptation to compare ourselves to others, free from the constant effort to prove ourselves to everyone, we also realize that we are freed for a purpose. We are freed for serving others. We are freed for speaking up on behalf of those held captive by oppressive power structures. We are freed for giving our time, talents, and treasures to those who lack what they need. We are, in short, freed for loving our neighbors and seeking their well-being as fervently as we love and seek our own.

For Luther, you see, and the theology he described, neighbor-love was an implied response to the good news that we are saved by grace and not by works. When we hear that good news, he says, when we really hear it with our whole being, we are compelled to love and serve our neighbor in whatever way is possible – not because it’s a nice thing to do, or to get a gold star in our crown, or so others will look to us and say, “Wow, they are great!” or even to get into heaven or to be saved. We serve others because it is what springs out of the good news that we are loved and forgiven and embraced by God, who loves us and says we are enough just the way we are. We don’t serve others to be loved and saved. We serve others because we already are loved and saved. This truth, sisters and brothers, will set you free.

On this 500^th anniversary of the Reformation, you may, like me, feel a mix of emotions. Sadness that the Church is still working toward unity, but gratitude for the work that has already been done. Lament for the ways people of faith have been nasty to one another, often using our own Martin Luther’s words as fuel, and hope in seeing that many are working hard to mend the brokenness. Despair that this world still has so much pain and fear, but immense joy that Christ continually promises to be with us in the pain, and bring us toward new life. There is room in our faith for all those feelings. As we commemorate the Reformation, may we let it be a reformation of our hearts, knowing that lament leads to repentance, and repentance leads to hope, and hope leads to joy in the promise of a new life of freedom.

Let us pray… Reforming God, by your Son you have freed us from the shackles of sin and doubt and promised us that we are beloved, and we are enough. Continue to reform our hearts, that we would see the needs of our neighbor, and reach out to them with your love and grace. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen

Sermon: Finding God in the last place you look (Oct 22, 2017)

Pentecost 20A (Reformation Series – Theology of the Cross)

“Finding God in the Last Place You’d Look”

October 22, 2017

Exodus 33:12-33 (RCL); Psalm 99 (RCL); 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:2; Mark 15:33-39

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

            I knew to expect, at some point in my children’s young life, that phase where everything you say is followed by, “Why?” I didn’t expect it so soon as age 2. “Where’s daddy?” At work. “Why?” So he can make money and help people. “Why?” Because he wants to be a contributing member of society. “Why?” Uuuugghhh… I’m already exhausted!

            And yet, I’m grateful, because every day my toddler teaches me something about human nature. With these exchanges, she teaches me that this question, “Why?” is so deeply ingrained and pressing that it nags us just as soon as we start to develop reason and language. Of course as adults, the question most meaningfully makes its appearance in times of suffering: “Why did she die so

young?” “Why has he suffered so long?” “Why would God let this happen?” It’s a question I often get asked as a pastor, usually asked with sad, questioning, sometimes even angry or desperate eyes. Unfortunately, I’m no more privy to the mind of God than anyone else, and so my answer is usually a pathetic, “I don’t know.”

            But really – how can we know? If we knew the mind of God, would that really be God anymore? We are desperate to understand how life works, why God acts the way God does, why things happen the way they do, but the fact is: as soon as you claim to understand God’s ways, you have eaten of the tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden, and put yourself on the same plain as God.

            Martin Luther describes this temptation as a “theology of glory.” A theology of glory tries to rationalize God – for example, by saying in the face of untimely death, “God wanted another angel in heaven.” A theology of glory says that we can determine who will go to heaven and who won’t, based on their good or evil deeds. A theology of glory assumes that we can do something to earn our own salvation – for example, that we need to choose Jesus, and make him our personal Lord and Savior, or that we need to do good so that God will love and accept us, or so that we will be saved.

All of these ways of trying to understand God and faith are so tempting – I think all of us here have fallen into at least one of them at some point. They are tempting because they make sense to us, and we like to understand things. That is why churches that preach the prosperity gospel – the understanding that God gives good things to those who are true believers – are so popular: that way of thinking makes sense for our culture. If you do well, you gain much. Problems can be reasoned through. Everything can be understood if you are smart and rational enough.

Luther pushed against this, instead describing what he called a “theology of the cross.” A theology of the cross points to a God who acts in a way that doesn’t make a lick of sense to our human minds: a God who would choose to reveal his love and character most profoundly through a beaten, humiliated, broken man on a cross. And so, Luther says, if we want to see God, that is the place we must look: we must look for God in suffering, because if there is one concrete thing we know

Peter Paul Ruben's Crucifixion via Wikimedia Commons

about God, it is that in suffering, God is made known to us.

And suffering? Well that’s something we know something about, isn’t it? Just look around the world. In Puerto Rico, 95% are still without power and people are drinking toxic water. California looks like a war zone, and people’s lives have been consumed by fire. Victims of mass shootings – those who witnessed it and survived, and those whose dear family and friends did not survive – are still weeping. Threats of nuclear war. The largest refugee crisis since World War II. Millions of women speaking up about their experiences of sexual harassment and assault. And this is not to mention our individual journeys – this week alone I have sat with and heard from victims of mental illness, victims of cancer and other illnesses, people desperate to leave the suffering of this world – and these are only the things I have heard about.

But here’s the good news about the theology of the cross: we can’t understand why any of these things happen, but we can know, because ours is a God who is made known in suffering, that God is in each of these places. God does not cause suffering – freewill and human sin and brokenness do that – but God goes to where there is suffering. It’s hard to believe, hard to wrap our heads and our hearts around, but it is the promise of the cross: that God will be present in the last place a rational person would ever look for God: in the midst of suffering, oppression, violence, and even death.

I like to think of it this way: There has been quite a lot of hubbub about what is happening in the NFL with players kneeling during the National Anthem. I read a piece about this written by a political conservative who is also a Christian that hit the nail on the head. He said, basically, that whether or not you agree with this gesture as a way to draw attention to police brutality against people of color (which was its original intent), the Christ-like way to respond is not to dismiss it, disparage it, or call people names. What Christ would do is kneel beside those expressing their pain, and say, “Talk to me about why you are kneeling.” He would go into the suffering, not condemn it. Not necessarily agree with the expression of it, but acknowledge it, and be with people in it.

I love this image of Jesus coming to us when we are on our knees – in prayer, in exhaustion, in despair – and kneeling beside us. As I have thought about the ways I have suffered in my life, it was never helpful to me to think things like, “Someone else has it worse than you, Johanna, so get over it.” I know that is a common coping mechanism for people, but for me, that only disregarded the real pain I was feeling. What is helpful to me is that image of Jesus kneeling beside me and saying, “I know, Johanna. It hurts. It isn’t fair. I have felt your pain, and I know how much it hurts. Let’s have a good cry together, and then, if you’re feeling up to it, I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

A theology of glory tries to make human sense of everything. That’s what Paul was talking about in his letter to the Corinthians. But reason doesn’t heal emotional pain. A theology of the cross puts Jesus down in the dark hole with you, where he acknowledges your pain, and holds your hand, and then shows you that there is life after death.

I read a story this week about a seminary professor who was trying to explain basic Christian theology to a bunch of first year seminary students, who seemed less than interested in what he was saying. Exasperated, he finally just drew THIS [hold up large, downward arrow] on the board and said, “This is Christian theology in a nutshell. If you understand this, you know all you need to know,” and he walked out of the room, leaving the students in a tizzy. The next day he explained further, now to a captive audience. The main gist of Christian theology, he said, is this: that God comes down. Every time. God comes down to us. God comes down to us, even and especially when we are suffering. God comes down to kneel beside us when we are broken and at the end of our rope, to feel our pain with us, then to offer his hand and draw us into God’s preferred future – a future of love, connection, and abundant life.

It doesn’t make a lick of sense that God, the Creator of the universe, would do such a thing. No one would think to look for God among the hurting – among the sick, the poor, the oppressed, the forgotten, among women whose bodies and spirits are broken by the abuse they have experienced, among bullied children in a school yard, among communities who can’t “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” because they never had boots to begin with. No God that makes sense would be found in those broken places. And yet, ours is. Ours is there, loving us, and beckoning us into a new and fuller life.

Let us pray… Suffering God, you went to great lengths to show us that you know our pain and feel it with us. Thank you. Thank you for coming down to us, down into our suffering, and loving us there, even as you draw us out and into new life. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Sprit. Amen.

Sermon: Forgiveness will change your life (Oct. 15, 2017)

Pentecost 19A – Reformation Series, “Forgiveness Will Change Your Life”

October 15, 2017

Texts: Exodus 32:1-14 (RCL); Psalm 51:1-12; John 20:19-23; 2 Corinthians 5:14-21

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

            Forgiveness will change your life. That is the lofty claim of today’s Reformation theme. But to really grasp how true that was for Luther, we need first to have a sense of what his reality was as compared to our own. So to start today, here is a little history lesson:

Death was literally at the doorstep for those living in 16^th century Europe. The plague, the “black death,” was breaking out all over and seemed to strike down indiscriminately, taking down otherwise healthy people in a matter of days. In an effort to make sense of this devastation, some wondered if God might be punishing people for their sin, that the cause of death was a God of wrath, who instead of mercy, brought death upon a sinful and unrepentant people.

            The Church capitalized on this rampant fear. In response to people’s fear of their own sin, and the wrath it seemed to bring, the Church offered ample opportunity to confess, including long lists of possible sins one could have committed. Of course, only priests had the authority to forgive those sins, and so the Church had a monopoly on power over people’s peace of mind. As the Church continued to try to assuage people’s guilt from the burden of their sin, it developed a system known as indulgences: that is, people could in essence buy some of Christ’s abundant merit in order to shorten the time they would have to spend in purgatory, a state that was a sort of halfway-between-heaven-and-hell. In fact, people could not only buy their own way out of purgatory, but also, for a hefty price, their deceased loved ones who were presumably already suffering in this in-between state. This sale of indulgences, of course, was what inspired Luther to enter the conversation with his posting of the 95 theses, in which he called out the Church’s abuse.

            But his calling out that abuse didn’t come until after he had lived several years in this devastating state of depression and agony over his sins. Even after

Luther took the vow to become a monk, he was overcome by his sin, spending hours in confession every day. In fact, the confessor would dread Luther’s arrival; for up to six hours a day, he would listen to Brother Martin list every single thing he had ever done wrong. Although Luther had hoped the cloistered life would offer a haven from the crushing reality of his sin, it offered him no relief. It was not until that same confessor, Johann von Staupitz, urged Luther toward a more academic vocation, and in particular one in biblical studies, that Luther was able finally to grasp that God was not a God of wrath, but a God of immense grace – that indeed, ours is a God of forgiveness.

            It is difficult to grasp just how life-changing the news of forgiveness was for Luther without understanding his place in life. He grew up in a home where he experienced more discipline than love, and deeply disappointed his parents by becoming a monk and priest rather than a lawyer as had been planned. He lived life constantly under the burden of sin and the threat of death, both physical and spiritual. And so to suddenly grasp in scripture that this burden, this captivity of sin was not Christ’s hope for us indeed changed his life… and the lives of so many others living in a time when sin and death were in their faces every single day, a time when people carried the weight of their sin like a yoke, and the most compelling relief came from the purchase of Christ’s merits from the institutional Church – who then used that money for less than Christ-like purposes.

            Yes, we can see why Luther saw forgiveness as such good, even life-changing news. But is this news as good and life-changing for us today? In 2017 we are in a really different time of history. Sure, some are still consumed by their sin, maybe even some in this room today. But by and large, most of us fancy ourselves to be pretty good people. And if we slip up somewhere, we are pretty good at noticing and fixing it in the future, right? In this age of optimism and self-help, we are not as keen to dwell in the darkness of our sin, nor to seek external help, even from the Church. Our relationship with God is between us and God, and God is good, and Jesus is our friend, not our judge. The Church has for many become a place not to receive relief from the weight of sin, but rather, to see people we love and learn and teach our children good values and come together to do good in the world. We give money not in order to be forgiven or to get in good with God, but because we are grateful for the work of our Church and want to support it. These are not inherently bad things, but they are different from what Luther was dealing with. So, what does the forgiveness of sins, this essential Reformation teaching, really have to offer us today?

            Well first of all, we are not so sinless as we might like to imagine! As we talked about last week with the Law and Gospel teaching, using Luther’s explanations of the 10 Commandments we can begin to see that keeping the Commandments is not just about keeping laws, but about fulfilling them. It’s not just, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” but it is also standing up for those who are oppressed, speaking out against abuse, lifting up the downtrodden. It’s not just going to church on Sunday and calling yourself a Christian, it’s about looking at your priorities and practices and making sure that your Lord and God really is Jesus – not your family, not your bank account, not your safety, not your reputation, not your privacy, not your comfort. When we start to look at it this way, we see that we really do have quite a lot of things for which we need God’s forgiveness! And while there are lots of places where you can see people you love and learn good morals and do good in the world, the truth your will find in the Church – that God does forgive our sins – is extraordinary. Indeed, it is life changing.

            For the second thing forgiveness of sins can offer us, we can look at our Gospel lesson today, in which Jesus gives to his disciples his peace, and the power to forgive others. There is certainly peace in being forgiven, in having Jesus take from our shoulders the weight and burden of our sins (and yes, there are many!), and telling us, “I love you! You are mine!” But there is also peace in the ability to forgive others. Holding onto grudges does not bring life. Holding onto anger does not bring life. The gift of God’s forgiveness of us means also that, as it says in the Lord’s Prayer, God forgives us “as we forgive those who sin against us.” In other words, God’s gift of forgiveness of our sins makes it possible for us to forgive others, and find the life-changing peace that this brings to our hearts.

            The third real gift of forgiveness is what we see in our text from Corinthians: that God has given us the ministry of reconciliation, and that we are to be reconciled to God. Reconciliation is not the same as forgiveness; it is, sort of,

the next step, the possible and often hopeful outcome of forgiveness. Forgiveness is erasing the past, letting it go, moving beyond it. Reconciliation is a restoration of the relationship. Now, sometimes reconciliation is not possible – in the case of abuse, for example, restoring a relationship is not a healthy path.

But with the exception of extreme situations, it is pretty clear here that reconciliation, the restoration of relationships, is a part of God’s hope for us – both with one another and with God. And that is difficult, but such important and life-giving work. Why is it so difficult? Because reconciliation is not just waiting for the other person to admit they were wrong. It requires also looking deep in our own hearts, to see what it is that we might have contributed to the brokenness – and to work on that. As Luther writes, “Judge yourself, speak about yourself, see what you are, search your own heart, and you will soon forget the faults of your neighbor. You will have both hands full with your own faults, yes, more than full!” Such searching of our own hearts requires humility, vulnerability, and a lot of deep breaths. It requires us to put our self-righteousness aside (how quick we are to point the finger and believe we are not to blame!). And it requires a whole lot of prayer – for when we pray for another, especially one who has hurt us, it might not change them but it may very well change you. And that is the business of forgiveness, and of Christ: it is to change, to transform, to create anew our hearts and our lives.

It’s difficult, heart- and time-consuming work. But it is by this work that we are reconciled to God. It is by this work that we ultimately receive the true joy and peace of forgiveness. It is by this work that we can hear the life-changing revelation of a guilt and sin-riddled Martin Luther, and discover that forgiveness, and the reconciliation that follows, does indeed change our life.

Let us pray… Restoring God, you have given us the ministry of reconciliation. Make us humble enough to seek understanding, to find forgiveness, to achieve reconciliation, and then make us grateful for the way that this gift changes our lives. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.