Reformation Sunday, 2022
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church
Lakeland, FL
October 30, 2022
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-35
Grace to you and peace from God and from our Lord and Savior Jesus, the Christ. Would you please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Legend has it that 505 years ago on October 31st, Martin Luther made a FaceBook post that went viral. And it was shared and reposted hundreds of times and soon he had more followers than he could ever imagine. Luther’s ideas were not revolutionary. They had been spoken before by others in the Christian Church. In fact, in 1415, Jan Hus, a Czech theologian, was in prison and was awaiting execution for heresy. He was burned at the stake. It is said that his last words were: “You are going to burn a goose (hus in Czech), but in one hundred years you will have a swan which you can neither roast nor boil.” Huss, whose name means “goose,” was a forerunner to the Reformation. And so it is that a swan became a symbol of Dr. Luther and also of the Reformation itself.
The time was not yet right, but the early 1500’s was a perfect time, Political leaders were in flux, the intertwining of the Church with the secular leaders was unmistakable, there was a social shift from a centralized government to more localized focus, urban areas were growing, local leaders had more influence and then there was this new technology that made it easier for news to get out more quickly and accurately – Facebook! I mean, the printing press. A perfect storm, if you will, a storm by which the Church was significantly re-formed for all time and a time that marked the beginning of a reformation that continues today. A time of the Church persistently pushing forward into new areas and new ministries in spite of the understandable pull to get back to the way things always had been before. The Church moving forward because of the leading of the Holy Spirit – the guiding of the Holy Spirit, the inspiring of the Holy Spirit. The Church was being re-formed.
And Brother Martin’s life was being reformed as well. His post on the doors of the church at Wittenberg brought him more fame than he ever wanted and it brought him more notoriety than he ever wanted and it brought him more problems and controversies than he ever thought he would see in his lifetime – a life that his father thought he would live as a lawyer and that he thought he would live as an Augustinian monk. Every single thing changed.
Jeremiah spoke of change in his words to a people in deep despair, a people in exile hundreds of miles from home, a people looking for hope. The Lord said, “Behold the days are coming when I will make a new covenant with Judah and with Israel. It won’t be like the one I made with their fathers when I brought them out of Egypt – a covenant written on tablets of stone – a covenant that they broke. No. THIS covenant will be written on their hearts, they will know it through and through all of their being. I will be their God and they shall be my people. Yes, the days are coming.”
Deep despair and in need of hope. That is today also, isn’t it? People in Southwest Florida whose homes have been destroyed and all that was familiar washed away. People who are facing an exile of their own. People who are being touched with the hands and feet of hope. People who are receiving basic necessities of life from the gifts and the hands of others who are carrying the blessed covenant in their hearts.
And at the same time that these works of help and health and healing of broken lives are taking place, we are also faced with an ugliness that nearly defies understanding. Of course, we are aware of the healing that is occurring in a hospital room in San Francisco as doctors and nurses and attendants and technicians are caring for a man and his family whose life was struck by a hammer of hate and evil.
We are a people in exile and despair as our political discourse continues to sink to lower and lower levels. Now, when I say “political” I am not referring to parties. I am referring to its original meaning: the set of activities that are associated with groups making decisions. How we function as a society. Whose interests we protect. How we communicate with each other and talk about each other. Can things get any lower? I hesitate to even ask that question.
What I know is this – the love and compassion that prompts us to care for those who have so little is the same love and compassion that can change the way of things in our public life and discourse. And, my friends, we as Christians bear at least some responsibility for bringing this about. Because the love of God in Christ Jesus is imprinted on our hearts. Because we are marked with the cross of Christ – forever.
A few years ago, I was at a demonstration in a city in Tennessee, a city that made many and specific strides to heal division that had arisen around the mosque that had been built there and the people who gathered and worshiped there. The demonstration had been organized by a Lutheran Church in cooperation with the mosque.
Word had been received that local racist groups would be coming to disrupt this time and to confront the peaceful demonstrators. We were a bit on edge, to be honest. And then a most amazing thing happened as I was shivering 40 degree temperatures. A sweet little girl came to me and asked me if I wanted a button to pin on my coat. “Why, yes, I would indeed!” She handed me a button that had the word “love” printed on it in a variety of colors. The children had colored these and then made them into buttons and then distributed them – a sign of commitment and a sign of hope. A result of the love of God planted into the hearts of those children and their parents. Covenant love.
Love poured out in the waters of our baptisms when God hugged us with an everlasting embrace. Love that brings us to the Holy Table to feast on bread and wine, on Jesus himself. Love that marks us as Christians – in the early church, Tertullian one of the church fathers, noted that it was said of us, “Look at these Christians, how they love one another.” Love made possible by the very grace of God. Grace. Our namesake. Grace. Our center. Grace, received and welcomed by faith and that faith too is a gift of God.
You see, God is the prime actor in the church – God baptizes, God feeds, God welcomes, God preaches and teaches, God touches and serves – and by the grace of God, God uses us as part of God’s plan. And God used the restlessness of Dr. Luther to challenge the church leaders about certain abuses that were occurring, abuses that focused more on human effort than on God’s grace. Abuses that taught that there were certain things that we had to do to earn our eternal life or could do to help out those who had died before us. We call that “work’s righteousness.” It is not true.
In our Gospel reading today, Jesus said some pretty amazing things – continue in my word and teachings and you will know the truth, because I am the truth, and the truth will make you free. And SINCE I make you free, you will be free indeed.
As long as I am focused on what I must do, I am enslaved to my self. When I live in the reality that there is NOTHING I can do to create a right relationship with God because Jesus has done it all – that is when we are free. Free to respond to God’s call on our individual lives and our life together, free to be the church and touch those within our reach with the love and care of Jesus, free to see Jesus in each other.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
