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Reformation Sunday
October 25, 2020
Jeremiah 31:31-34
INTRODUCTION
Happy Reformation Day! This is one of the few days of the church year where we get the exact same lineup of texts assigned every single year (the other being Christmas Eve). And each is chosen with its particular connection to Reformation Day, the day we remember Martin Luther first posting his 95 Theses on the door of the church, 95 ways he felt the Church needed to change, which started more than the conversation he intended it to: it started a revolution.
So let’s look at these texts: first, we’ll hear from Jeremiah, in this lovely text that assures us that our sins will be forgotten by God. So much of Luther’s initial complaint was about the issue of indulgences, and the expectation that people must pay money or do certain things in order to be saved, but here Jeremiah says that God is forgiving, and “remembers our sin no more.” Psalm 46 is the text on which Martin Luther based his epic hymn text, A Mighty Fortress. The hymn is decidedly a paraphrase, but see if you can find some of the similar imagery as you hear the Psalm in a moment, and as we sing the hymn later.
The Romans reading is what finally smacked Luther over the head about the true Gospel of Jesus Christ: that a person is justified, or saved, not by works (such as buying indulgences, or even good deeds) but by faith alone. And finally in John, Jesus promises that the truth of this gospel message is indeed what sets us free from our enslavement to sin, and allows us to live freely in love.
As you listen, hear the abundance of good news in these texts! Reformation is a day when we really devote ourselves to celebrating the essence of the gospel: that we are saved by Christ’s acts, not our own, that we live in grace, that we are free from death. Hear this life-giving message for you this day! Let’s listen.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
The second wave of a deadly illness is sweeping through the land, killing hundreds of thousands, even millions of people.
New technology is revolutionizing communication, making the spread of information with large numbers of people easier and more accessible.
And the ways the Church has operated for hundreds of years are being turned on their head, challenged, even completely changed.
No, I’m not talking about 2020. I’m talking about the Reformation in the 16th century. The parallels are eerie this Reformation Day, as it feels like we are enduring our own sort of reformation right now. Instead of the bubonic plague, we have Covid-19. Instead of the printing press disseminating information at dramatically increased levels, we have all manner of social media. Instead of changes in the Church such as worshiping in the vernacular and making communion more accessible to the laity, we are worshiping online and getting creative about how we can make communion once again accessible to the laity.
As a result, this year I’ve found I have more empathy for the emotional burden of the Reformation of the 1500s. Though now we deck out in festive red and sing triumphant songs on this day each year, we are also all too aware, perhaps this year more than any previous year, that reformation is really, really hard, often quite painful, and frankly, exhausting. It requires losing things we had counted on, and learning a lot of new things, and new ways of doing things. And change, even in our personal lives, often comes with as much (or more) grief as it does excitement, but on a national or even global level, an entire reformation changing the very functioning of society, all the more! So when the ground is shifting beneath us on a daily basis… where can we find something solid?
I love these words from Jeremiah, about how God’s law and promises will be written on our hearts – right where we cannot forget them. And when I’m searching for that solid ground we so badly crave during so much reformation, I find I return to those things that God has written on my heart, those things I know deep in my being. I remember some nights when Grace was a baby, and sleep just wouldn’t come. I’d rock her and sing all the songs I knew, and often the songs that came to mind were the ones we sing in the liturgy – the songs and texts written on my heart from a very early age. I’d sing her Kyries and Lamb of Gods and parts of evening prayer. I sang her the Lord’s Prayer. As I sang them, she would calm down, because I would calm down – returning to our solid ground has that effect on us. I sang these songs as a child, they are the ones that came to mind without even trying when I was calming a fussy baby, and these will be the last songs I am singing someday in a nursing home (or maybe that Grace will be singing to me)! They are the promises of God that ground me in shifting sand, that comfort me in uncertainty, that sustain me in exhaustion – they are the promises that are written on my heart.
“I will put my law within them,” God says to Israel, “and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” What has God written on your heart? What has God written that no pandemic, or economic crisis, or election, or social unrest can take away? What is your solid foundation during times of reformation?
Most essentially, is what Jeremiah just said: “and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Isn’t this a remarkable promise? Jeremiah is speaking to a rebellious people who have really blown it a number of times. And yet, God still says, “I know times are tough right now and the future looks grim. I know things haven’t been perfect, but know this: I have not given up on you, nor will I. I am not going anywhere.” To me, this is perhaps the promise written most deeply on my heart, a promise we all received in baptism: that God will never ever let us go. That whatever earthly foundations may shake, God remains trustworthy and true. In short, God has got this.
With that promise securely etched on our hearts, we can start to find some more. One that is helpful to me right now is from Romans. “There is no distinction,” Paul writes, “for all have fallen short of the glory of God.” Now, that alone may or may not bring you much comfort, but it actually does me because it is a reality check. When anxiety is high, patience is low, and rage is increasingly a norm, it helps me to remember: everyone messes up. Even me. Even you. We are in the same boat. “We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves,” to quote those words of the liturgy that have been etched on my heart since before I could talk. Such a recognition moves us from a place of self-righteousness to a place of empathy, if we’ll let it!
But the foundational good news comes in the next part: “they are now justified by his grace as gift, through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ.” I know Paul’s writing can be hard to follow at times, so let me make this clear: even though we can all be real jerks sometimes, and frequently fall short of what God had hoped for us, God still makes things right, forgives our sins, longs to be in relationship with us, promises us salvation, and does all of this not because we have earned it or deserve it, but because Christ has. Furthermore, that goes for you, for your neighbor with the wrong yard signs, for that troll on social media, for your crazy uncle – we have all fallen short of the glory of God, every last one of us, and Jesus has brought all of us back into relationship with God, even so.
Those are a couple of things that are written on my heart, a couple of truths that hold me steady when the world around me is changing, sometimes in ways I like and sometimes in ways that terrify me. When hoards of devils fill the land and threaten to devour us, we can stand unmoved in our God’s promise we belong to Him, and He to us, and nothing can change that. When we are ashamed at how we have acted or not acted, or said something we know was hurtful, or just get too big for our britches, we know that God’s grace is big enough to hold us still, that we are still beloved and forgiven. Furthermore, we know that this is not because of us, but because of Christ, so there is nothing we can do to change it. Christ is made our sure foundation.
When we know these truths, we can hold them against the deluge of false information and phony promises the world offers us. With these truths written on our hearts, we are freed from the fears, anxieties, and rage that would try to drag us under, or would shake our foundations. We are freed, even as the world changes all around us, to stand strong and firm in the knowledge that God has got all of this under control.
Let us pray… Steadfast God, the world is changing and reforming all around us, and
it is unsettling. Help us to trust the truths you have written on our hearts,
and to find our foundation in you. In the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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