John 8:31–36

Sermon

To mark and celebrate Reformation Sunday is a very Lutheran thing to do. On Oct 31st, 1517 Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the sale of Indulgences for publication.  Nearly 500 years later we celebrate that day as being in some way the birth of our particular version of Christianity. However, the Reformation is not seen as a celebratory event by all across the Body of Christ, our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters see the Reformation as a time of great turmoil and upheaval, and in the end it was the cause of a great division within the Church. The Western Church was split into thousands of branches, sects and denominations, and this is painful to the Body of Christ that desires to be One.

But the thing that WE as Lutherans celebrate today is not so much Martin Luther, or Lutheranism. What we celebrate, as we should celebrate each day, is God’s loving grace. We celebrate and proclaim that God is loving and merciful and that the radical gift of grace is radical in the fact that it is given for all, however undeserved. And perhaps it is this two sided nature of celebration that makes it so Lutheran. As sinners and saints, as justified sinners, we recognize the two-part nature of Reformation Day, we recognize the gift of the Gospel, and we pray for healing and unity, where pain and division has been caused.

When Martin Luther posted his 95 theses, he was reacting to great abuses by the Church. The people of Luther’s day lived in great fear of death and hell. The Church proclaimed that the punishment for sin was time in purgatory, years and years of cleansing by torture after you died. The Pope promised early release from purgatory by the sale of indulgences, by the sale of simple pieces of paper issued by the Church. The money earned by indulgences was used to fund the building of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and the opulent lifestyle of many Cardinals, Bishops and priests, not to mention more than a few popes. Martin Luther could not understand why the Pope would sell salvation if he could give it away for free. But Luther had another problem, he was so obsessed by his own sin that he could not believe that a just and righteous God could find any room for forgiveness for anyone such as Luther. Luther desperately wanted to see God as merciful and in his search for mercy turned to the bible, particularly to apostle Paul.

Before being called by Christ on the Road to Damascus, Paul was a Pharisee. He was part of the religious system of the day that was not too different from Luther’s. In the Judaism of Paul’s day, keeping the law was paramount. Keeping the law was how one stayed in good standing with God. Like the Church of Rome during the Reformation, the temple of Jerusalem found ways to charge people for their forgiveness. People had to pay for sacrifices in order to be declared forgiven. As a Pharisee Paul he was in fact a persecutor of Christians, he enforced their keeping of the law. But when Christ appeared on the Road to Damascus, everything changed for Paul, he gained a new understand of what it meant to be righteous before God.

(Pause)

Millie sat in the doctor’s office. She was stunned, she couldn’t speak. She had just been diagnosed with cancer. The doctor began to outline different treatment options, but Millie didn’t retain any of it, only the last words that the doctor spoke. As Millie was getting up to leave the Doctor said,

“If you stay positive and upbeat, we can beat this diagnosis”.

Over the next few weeks the showing of support was overwhelming. For Millie, she received cards and letters from old forgotten friends, she was constantly be phoned by neighbors and family, and her close friends were almost always at her side. But Millie was troubled the support was receiving. Most of the people who were trying so hard to be supportive would say things like,

“Stay Positive, be happy” “You will come out from this stronger” “This is actually a chance to learn and grow” “This is a blessing, this a good thing to happen to you” “God has a special plan for you, this a test to teach you how to have more faith”.

As Millie heard these statements over and over she came to believe them less and less. How could cancer be something to be positive about, to be happy about? How could it be a chance to grow? It didn’t feel like a blessing, and it certainly didn’t feel like something that God would give to her, why would God test her in such a terrible way? Millie needed different answers to these questions than what she was getting.

Finally after all this so called support, Millie decided to confide in her best friend Lana. She confessed to Lana that she often didn’t feel very positive about her cancer. That she was very afraid at times, and at others very angry that it was her who had gotten sick. Millie didn’t think that this cancer was blessing, but instead a curse. Millie had hoped that Lana might understand, but instead Millie received a lecture. Lana told Millie that if she didn’t have a good attitude that she wouldn’t get better!

Millie left in tears. She hurried to her car and drove away. And as the tears kept coming she could barely see the road in front of her. Eventually she pulled over, and as she wiped her eyes she realized that she was sitting in front of a church. In front of the church there was a sign. Millie read it and it said,

“We all sin and we all fall short. But God’s hands are big enough to catch us.” Romans 3:23-24.

Millie breathed in hard because for the first time since she was diagnosed, something or someone had told her that she didn’t have to do it all on her own.

(Pause)

When Martin Luther read Paul’s Letter to Romans, he made the same discovery that Millie did. In fact, Paul, Luther and Millie all got to the same place, they came to realize that it is God who found them. Whether we are telling each other that we have to keep the law, or that we have to pay to be saved, or that we need to have enough faith and  to think positively, to God these things do not matter. As Paul writes in Romans, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. For God its not about what we do, its not about humanity working its own way into God’s love or making our own way into heaven. Because for God no one is good enough, and yet everyone is welcome, everyone is given grace.

God’s freely given love is just as radical today, as it was in Paul’s day and as it was in Luther’s. Our radical God has entered into the world in Christ, to show us what God’s love looks like. God shows us from the cross, and shows us in the empty tomb. And it is by this cross and empty tomb that we see that God will not abandon creation, creation which has turned away.

For certain, we all fall short, we cannot measure up because we are imperfect beings that a perfect God should not even look at, let alone forgive. And yet, God loves us anyways, God loves us even when we cannot believe or accept it. But God’s love for us finds us where are. God’s love finds us falling short, and God’s love carries us into the Life of God.

Today we celebrate Reformation Sunday. But Reformation Sunday is not about celebrating Lutherans, or Martin Luther. But it is about celebrating a radical God, who radically gives grace, mercy and love to His creation, even though we do not deserve it. And on Reformation Sunday and everyday it is this God of whom we preach, it is this God about  whom we shout in the streets, in our homes, in our workplaces, to our neighbours. We preach and shout because of a righteous God who makes us righteous. We preach and shout today because we have all fallen short and we have all been caught in God’s mighty hand.

Amen.