Reformation Sunday B October 25, 2015
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
Jeremiah 31: 31-34 + Romans 3: 19-28 + Psalm 46 + John 8: 31-36
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God who creates us, Jesus who saves us and the Holy Spirit who calls us to reformation. Amen.
I thought we’d start this morning with a little trivia question. Get this right, and you can have an extra helping of dessert at lunch today!
Multiple choice question: Which of the following quotes is from Jesus:
- The truth will set you free but first it will hurt your feelings
- You shall know the truth and the truth will make you mad.
- If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.
Ok, fine. That was too easy. After all, we just read this from the Gospel of John, so of course the answer is C. Extra dessert for everyone!
(You see the lengths I will go to for extra dessert?)
In John’s Gospel reading this morning, Jesus is talking to his own people, for we remember that Jesus was a Jew. He tells them something that is essential to their faith formation, and they miss the point entirely, instead they argue with him over details. What Jesus says to them is “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” And the people, rather than hearing this as a word of hope, begin to angrily respond that they are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves to anyone.
Apparently they’ve forgotten about all of those years in Egypt.
You see, a long time had passed – generations even. And being slaves, being without their freedom, was a long ago memory.
Today, as we celebrate Reformation Sunday in the life of the Protestant church, we are reminded of the stories of our beginnings as Lutherans. For some of us, this is a familiar story. For some, the nuances and details are new. For others it is brand new altogether. We remember that Martin Luther, who was a priest in the holy Roman church, the only church at the time, never started out to leave his church to start another. It was just that there were things, 95 of them to be exact, about his beloved church that he thought needed to be talked about by the community and repaired. We remember specifically the practice of the people paying the church for an “indulgence” for their deceased loved ones or for themselves. An indulgence was money that would guarantee less time in purgatory for those folks after they had died. Luther knew that this was a questionable practice at best and he just wanted the church he served to correct the practices that were unethical and move forward, following Jesus. That was the only way for them to be disciples. Luther knew it and those listening to Jesus in the Gospel reading today knew it too.
What Luther intended to be a simple conversation on All Saints Day turned into his excommunication from the church, being chased around Germany by the king, and eventually birthed the Protestant church, and our own denomination.
Knowing this story and handing it down from generation to generation is a huge piece of our identity as Lutherans. As one of our Confirmation students said last year, after watching the movie “Luther” “I didn’t know I belonged to a church that was started by a rebel!!”
The same is true, in some ways, of understanding the stories of this place and how it came to be. Some of us remember and some of us have heard, that this congregation began, not as a church, but as a Sunday School for children. It was determined that a priority was for the stories of the faith to be passed along to the children of what was then a fairly sparsely populated area of North Seattle. The congregation as a worshiping, serving body came after the Sunday School. In many respects the children led the way. And for this congregation, providing for the well being of children was formative in our mission.
Since that time, over sixty years ago, we have walked in the footsteps of those who first opened that Sunday School and this congregation, we’ve walked in Martin Luther’s reforming footsteps, and in fact, in the footsteps of those who asked Jesus “What do you mean by saying, you will be made free?”
Jesus talks to those early followers about being slaves to sin. Luther called it bondage of the will. This idea that we are bound up…held captive….by that which separates us from God.
Sin. We as Lutherans lean so heavily into grace, as we should, that we forget why we need it. Paul writes in Romans 3, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All. None of us are exempt, or as Paul puts it, there is no distinction. We are often quick to turn the idea of sin into some moral code. Sin equals drinking or drugs or theft or murder or adultery or fill in the blank. The early church even identified seven “deadly” sins. But the reality is that we are most often ready to identify the perceived sin in the other than we are to see the log in our own eye…the sin in our own lives. Sin is whatever separates from God. And we are the only two who know what that means in our lives.
But the gift of this Reformation day and all days is grace. Paul writes “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Can I get an Amen? That was a very un-Lutheran question, but it calls for one!
And this is where freedom comes in. Because of the grace we have in Jesus Christ, we are no longer bound by our sin. We can act and serve and worship and love freely in spite of sin and because of grace. We do not need to be afraid of what is ahead because the worst thing has already been absolved by the greatest gift.
Beloved in Christ, this is not cheap grace. This grace comes with the call on our lives to share it and live it out. It means that we forgive ourselves and others, that we reach out in love and in servant-hood. It means that in wide and wonderful freedom we share and steward the gifts God has given to us.
Today and for the next two weeks we will consider acting in ways, that frankly, I believe are the next chapter in the story of this congregation. We will imagine what it might mean to steward the land placed in our care back when we were just a new congregation, birthed to tell the story of God to children. We will tell the story in a new way that will provide homes, safe shelters, for the children of God who so desperately need them. With all that I am, I believe that this is how the freed people of God respond to this need that exists literally outside of our doors. And with my whole heart and my whole understanding of how God works in the world – and that is through God’s people- I believe that we are here in this time and this place for this reason.
I know that there are many fearful places in this process, but I can’t imagine that any one of them could be more fearful than not knowing where I or my family will sleep at night. Or being a student and fearing that my friends will find out that the reason I do my homework at the library is because I don’t have a home to go to when the bell rings.
Luther, in that great hymn of the church we sang this morning, offers us this assurance about the worst that could happen. “Were they to take our house…goods, honor, child, or spouse….though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day. The kingdom’s ours forever.”
Beloved community – freed people of God in Jesus Christ…God is doing a wondrous thing in this place. God has done it and continues to do it. And God will do it in spite of us and our decisions and fears. But we are called for this time, to work as the hands and feet of God, as the voice of Christ, and with hearts filled with the Spirit. Because we are free, and because we are forgiven, and because we are named God’s beloved, we move forward without fear. Because if the Son makes us free, we are free indeed.
Thanks be to God. Amen.