Sermon, by Pastor Joel
Reformation Sunday
October 27, 2024
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36
The context of this sermon is
100% written by a human
Today is Reformation Sunday. And the message is freedom. God has designed us to want to be free and to live free. Spiritually free, so that we are no longer afraid of death and a vengeful God. Emotionally free, so that we are no longer road blocked by our childish ways and personal hang-ups. Economically free, so that we are no longer worried about our own portfolios and the state of the markets. Politically free, so that no political or cultural system is treating us like slaves,
Freedom. We all want it. For everyone.
Martin Luther did not have it. Martin Luther did not know the smell of freedom. The taste of freedom. The feel of freedom. Martin Luther was not a free man. In spite of the fact that he would become the leader of Protestantism with close to one billion members. In spite of the fact that Luther would become the bridge between the old way of thinking in the Middle Ages to the new ways of thinking in the Reformation and the Renaissance. In spite of the fact that recent history would determine that Luther was the third most influential person of the second thousand years of Western history. In spite of all of these grandiose claims about Luther: as a young man, he was not free.
Martin Luther was a slave to his childhood, a slave to the thought patterns of the Middle Ages, and a slave to the religious practices of the ruling Church at that time. Luther was a slave to his childhood when his father beat him so severely with a rod that his backside would bleed. It was common for Germanic fathers to do to their children at that time in history. Fathers would beat their children severely for any infraction, disobedience, or mistake.
Luther thought that God, his heavenly father, was like his earthly father. And like that earthly father, God would punish him severely for any infraction, disobedience, or mistake. His faith was fearful.
Luther was also a slave to the thought patterns of the Middle Ages which ruled the world for a thousand years. Luther thought that the world was flat, that the sun revolved around the earth, and that the trees and woods were filled with goblins, witches, and trolls.
And Luther was a slave to his mother church. Luther was instructed to say his prayer beads, bow to statues of the saints, and make pilgrimages to Rome in order to earn forgiveness and salvation. He was meant to believe in indulgences, and that buying them from the religious authorities would save loved ones from the fires of hell. He was told to celebrate that the money from these indulgences, from people who could ill-afford to pay them, was being used to build a monument to his fearsome God, the St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
Because of all of this -- his parents, the thought patterns of the Middle Ages, the religious practices of the time, his relationship to God -- Luther was not a free person.
Then, his transformation - his personal reformation - began. A seed had probably been growing in him for a while, waiting for the right conditions to germinate, but it truly started when he was a professor of the New Testament in a small German village called Wittenberg. Studying in a tower there, he became engrossed in the Bible, poring over it day and night. It was in his in-depth reading of the New Testament that this seed, this desire to be free, began to grow. Away from indoctrination of the larger church, his reading of the New Testament began to open his eyes.
Luther discovered that God was not punitive like his earthly father, but merciful and kind. He discovered that God was more powerful than the demons and devils that surrounded him and lived within him. He discovered that God’s love and mercy for him was entirely free, that he didn’t need to earn or buy God’s forgiveness.
As Luther saturated himself in the Word, he began to shed his chains, one by one. Luther became free to be the kind of human being that God wanted him to be, the kind that could bring freedom to others of his time.
What is freedom, anyway? Is it defined by action: the freedom to do our own thing, eat out at a restaurant, vote for the leader of our choice? Is it a sense of self, that we are unencumbered by our own thoughts, and able to make our choices? Is it a moral belief, that any righteous society must be free? Is it all of these things?
If Freedom means that we are to become the kind of human beings that God wants us to be, how do we get there? Well, if we are to follow the path of Luther, we must begin with the Bible. Sola Scriptura, Luther said. Scripture alone. I personally don’t buy that. We see that playing out in the United States, where women are now dying because a fundamentalist approach to scripture, and religious intransigence is denying them freedom of choice between them and their doctors. If we rely only on scripture, do we exist in the world, or have we buried ourselves so deeply in the Bible that we believe we are right and Godlike ourselves, with the power over others?
Instead, I am a proponent of Prima Scriptura, or Scripture first. Scripture informs the world, but also exists within it.
Let us look first at John 8:31, which has four parts: “If you continue in my word…you will truly be my disciples…the truth will make you free … and you will be free indeed.”
Part I: “If you continue in my Word.” At the heart of being a follower of Jesus is to continue to live in the Bible. That is where Martin Luther began to find his freedom: in his immersion in the Bible. Now I know most of you don’t spend your days thumbing through scripture. Some of you may even believe that it’s my job to do it for you. In some ways that is true. But ultimately, I cannot make you live free. Each of us must do that on our own. We don’t have the luxury of locking ourselves up in a castle for months on end to do it as Luther did, but we can sign up for a daily passage online, we can sign up for Bible study, we can read a verse before we eat or sleep or download a biblical podcast while we walk or drive to work. There are many ways to continue in God’s word. As Christians, we are supposed to be in the regular habit of daily eating and consuming the Word of God into our inner spiritual fiber.
Then, Part 2 of our reading from John says: “You are truly my disciples.” Jesus says that to be disciples, we continue to live in God’s word. The word, “disciple,” means pupil. We are pupils of Jesus. In confirmation, we discuss what a good pupil or student is. We talk about the three Ls of a good student: “listen, learn, and live out.” A good student listens carefully to the teacher. We all know when we listen carefully such as at a visit to the doctor’s office to hear about our prostate, our lungs, our breasts, our heart, the beat of an infant’s heart. Sometimes, when we visit a doctor’s office, we bring “another set of ears” with us (our partner or friend) so we can hear even more clearly.
It’s the same thing with the Word of God. We listen, learn, and live out what we know to be consistently true for Jesus. And we spend our entire lives going through this thought-action process. We do it as individuals and in community. And every time we do it right, we get a little closer to who it is that God wants us to become.
“You will know the truth,” says Part 3 of our reading from John. When we immerse ourselves in the Word, we will know the truth about many crucial values in life. We will know the truth about death, that we are not to fear it, that death is not the last word. We will know the truth about forgiveness, that the forgiveness of Christ is as essential as bread and water, sunshine and rain, for life in its fullness to exist. We will know the truth about suffering, that suffering can build character and community. We will know the truth about a loving God and our neighbor, and that our neighbor is all life on this planet. We will know the truth about wisdom - wisdom for loving our partner, wisdom for loving children, wisdom for daily life. We will know the truth about Christ, that Christ is the Heart and Mind and Spirit of God, God in human form.
And finally John says, “The truth will make you free.” When we know Christ, we will know what it means to be free…even when we are politically enslaved, even when we are broken and markets crash, even when we are hung up on our own selfishness, even when we are afraid of God and dying. Even when we are fully human and bound by wrongdoing, we will find freedom in faith.
This morning, we want to be free. We want to taste the flavors of freedom, smell the aromas of freedom, touch the feelings of freedom. Because we are made in God’s image, we want to be free. And because our relationship to God is defined by Grace, we can be.
Happy Reformation Sunday! Amen.
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