Young and Old Meditation on Re-formation

Biblical Text: Matthew 11:12-19

Reformation Day has been a lot of things through the years. This sermon is a bit of a clip show (a new show that relies on past clips to carry some of the action). In this case I think there are certain sermons that can be preached from the various assigned texts for the day. And they slot into how the preacher or the age wants to think about Luther and the Reformation. Young and Old is a reference to young Luther – skinny, single, revolutionary, and old Luther – heavy, husband and father, re-former. Most of the potential texts, and the choice of Oct 31st itself, prefer young Luther – the great Romantic Hero. You can pick the firebrand of the angel with an eternal gospel from Revelation. You can go with the doctrinal sermon from Romans, the text Luther claimed as his evangelical breakthrough. Or you can be the liberation theologian and take John’s gospel and the “son setting you free.” Me, I like the Matthew 11 gospel reading. It doesn’t let you just choose Romantic Young Luther. You have to contemplate actually re-forming the thing you tear down. It is the experiential text of law and gospel. Not just the doctrine, but what it means to live it. And Luther lived it. He didn’t get lucky and die the great Romantic Hero. He had to be a re-former. This sermon walks through those “clips” and tries to claim something of the Reformation for us.

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Three Things…

There are two things I wanted to write about, three things that this column is for. If you were in our Wednesday morning bible study, you might get the joke about that opening. The two things….three things is the start of a Hebrew wisdom poetry form. You can see examples in Proverbs 6:16-19 and 30:15-16, 18-19. So that would be the first thing. That bible study meets at 10 AM weekly and you are invited. I’ve called it “Necessary Stories”, but what it has been to date is a tour of the Old Testament. The goal was to provide a foundation for personal reading. Both in terms of the stories that always hover in the background and some methods for understanding the variety of genres and books that are in the bible. Don’t worry about “being behind” because each session is meant to be a stand alone. But also, if you are worried, there will be a couple of good jumping in points. The last section of the OT tour which will start Nov 8^th will be on the Prophets. Then sometime after the New Year we will be starting the New Testament tour.

The second thing. If you are a visitor this Sunday, I’d like to welcome you. Mt. Zion is a Lutheran church. What is the Lutheran church? There are different answers, but I’m picking a historical one today. Historically there is a period of time called The Reformation. Roughly 1517 – when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to a Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany – to roughly 1563 – the end of the Council of Trent, is the time span called The Reformation. You can back it up before then and it unwinds all the way out until today, but 1517-1563 is the basic time. Coming into that time span you had The Old Western Church roughly defined by the Scriptures, the Apostles Creed and the Bishops. (There had already been a schism with the Eastern Church in 1054 simplistically over which Bishop was more important.) Over those years of the Reformation the various churches that we know today defined their particular doctrines. The Lutheran church in 1530 with the Augsburg Confession. The Anglican Church published their 39 Articles in 1563. The Reformed published the Heidelberg Catechism in 1563 summarizing various prior agreements. And the Roman Catholic in 1563 at the close of the Council of Trent. Alongside those Magisterial Reformation bodies – meaning that monarchs and rulers signed onto those documents – you had the Radical Reformation which is represented today by Amish, Mennonites and Pentecostal groupings. So, what is a Lutheran church? It is a church that kept the Scripture and Creeds as the appropriate norms of our life together, it also kept as much of church life as was in accord with those, while holding that Bishops are a valid man made way to govern ourselves but not the final authority. So how do we argue? Which we are human and sinful, so we argue. We argue over Scripture. The Reformation started with a phrase “Ad Fontes” – to the sources – and as a church body we are concerned with constantly renewing ourselves in those streams of living water.

Third thing. That historical answer and the doctrinal formulations often seem dry. Why should we care about something so far away? Surely there is nothing meaningful for us today? But in an age of chaos and confusion, those simple doctrinal formulations contain a lot of wisdom. What is the foundation? Augsburg Confession 1 (AC1): God. Proverbs would say “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom (9:10).” Without God we are just lost in foolishness. What is the problem with the world? AC2, we are sinful beings. Which makes us deny God. What is the solution? AC3, we can’t get to God, so God sent His son Jesus to us. How does that help us? AC4, by faith Christ justifies us. You have been forgiven by the work of Christ. How do we know this? AC5, to obtain this faith the ministry of the Gospel was instituted. That Gospel is proclaimed every Sunday and whenever 2 or 3 are gathered in Jesus’ name. The map continues. But if you are lost, and much of our world today is lost, here is a map, and food and drink for the journey. You are invited to journey with us.

The Law and the Gospel

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Biblical Text: Romans 3:19-28 (John 8:31-36)

This is my attempt at a Reformation Day sermon that tries to bring that 500 year old crisis into our day. The core insight of the Reformation is understanding that the Word of God comes to us as a Word of Law and a Word of Gospel. (Gospel has become a churchy word. It simply means good news, but even that feels like a euphemism. I would simply use promise. The Gospel is the promise of God revealed in Jesus Christ.) And I think it might take a bit, but the animating phrase, the phrase that makes it fall into place for me is “do the work.” That’s the modern “woke” phrase and it is so close to the Reformation era phrase “do what you can” or what Luther started with in the 95 theses, “do penance.” The Law demands from us. The law of God is good and wise, human laws less so, but the fact of the Word of the Law is that it always condemns. And our primary strategy is to try and minimize the law. Unleash our internal lawyers to make affirmative cases. Yes, we did it, but it doesn’t matter, because…

The work is never done, except in the cross. That is the gospel. This sermon attempts to make us feel the weight of the law, and to open that bottle of 200 proof grace that Luther stumbled accross.

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A Reformation of the Heart

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Biblical Text: Romans 3:19-28, John 8:31-36

What exactly is Reformation Day? It has been a lot of things. This sermon mentions a couple of them. But almost of of the alternates are corruptions of what it really was. Which is a recovery of the Apostle Paul. Which is a new birth of freedom in hearing the law and the gospel. It is not just the gospel, although that is the happy best part. It is also the law. The Reformation recovered that 200 proof cask of grace that Paul preached. Christ died for sinners and God’s righteousness is given to you as a gift. You have been made a member of God’s house by God’s choice. And that free gift also frees us to see the law for what it is. It is not a method of saving ourselves. But it is also no longer our writ of condemnation. Yes, we are sinners. But the righteousness of God does not come by the law, but by grace through faith. So we can accept the law as God’s good gift to us for our good. Reformation Day is about the law and the gospel, and how they Reform our hard hearts into hearts of flesh.

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Free Indeed

Biblical Text: John 8:31-36
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It was a full service. Reformation Day, A Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Lots of Red. We did something a little different, the choir got the showpiece – “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”. That is a treat left in the recording. I went with reformation Baptismal hymns for the day. LSB 596, All Christians Who Have Been Baptized, is left in the recording.

Reformation Day is primarily about justification. That is the fancy term for what Christ did for us. The bible speaks of this work in many different language domains: New Life (like baptism), sacrifice (the lamb), legal (advocate) and some others that the sermon starts with. The domain of John 8, our text, is deliverance. The Son has made us free. We are often tempted to judge this freedom lightly, or to trade it away for next to nothing. This sermon attempts in the context of Reformation Day to proclaim the magnitude of the freedom on offer.

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The Specific Gospel

Biblical Text: Matt 11:12-19 (Matt 11:1-19)
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It is Reformation Day. The Lectionary gives us an alternative gospel text and I tend to take it. There are a bunch of reasons. The sermon puts forward a couple of reason. But the deepest reason is simply I like it. And I like it because it captures a gritty and real moment. Jesus, John the Baptist, the crowds and a confrontation of a sort. What did you think the Kingdom was? What are you going to do now?

Individuals of every age might have to answer “who do you say that I am,” but not every age gets confronted with a dramatic prophetic call. That is what John the Baptist was. That is what Luther was. Whose works and wisdom do you trust? Your own, or God’s? What this sermon is, is my pathetic attempt at proclaiming what a new Luther or a new Baptist would be saying to this generation. “To what shall I compare this generation?” My simple answer is that we lose that gospel because we dismiss its specific nature. We dismiss the specific law of the people of God defined in the Decalogue. And we glide over the body of Christ, the form of the gospel. We believe that god loves us, but we do so in a generic way such that the god who loves us is not Jesus Christ, at least not the one of scriptures, but one that looks more like ourselves. A recovery of the gospel today would be about its specific-ness and peculiarity – Jesus Christ, friend of sinners. It would be a recognition of the body in Word and Sacrament in our midst.

Worship note: I left in a little more music than normal. I left in stanza one of our opening hymn, Salvation Unto Us has Come (LSB 555). Our choir sounded great this morning in liturgical duty. I didn’t leave their Introit, but you can hear them in the gradual (between the First lesson and the epistle), and in the verse with the Alleluia before the gospel. A Mighty Fortress is Our God, LSB 657, was our closing hymn. We tend to sing the Bach arrangement, but most of the LCMS uses a LSB 656. A Mighty Fortress ends up being “the reformation hymn” but if you asked pastors they would probably give you Salvation Unto Us has Come. It captures the teaching of the Reformation clearly. A Mighty Fortress is a great hymn, but its popularity stems not so much from its teaching but from a later political-theological rallying cry.

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Most in Need of Reform

Biblical Text: Matthew 11:12-19
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Reformation Day has had a number of modes of celebration through the years. This sermon mentions some of them, but maybe surprising for a Lutheran preacher, I’ve just never had much connection with the day. I guess part of that is my general distaste for the common forms of hagiography. If Luther is a hero (and he is) he can only be a hero in one form. Likewise, if he is a heretic who destroyed the church (and he did destroy a form of it), he can only be damned. Neither of those flavors ever appealed to me. We humans are way to complex for that. And it doesn’t give a good report on Luther’s key insight. In this life we are sinners and saints simultaneously.

Jesus uses a great visual image against “this generation” in the text. It was a generation that didn’t dance to the flute or sing to the dirge. Beyond that when the good law was proclaimed it said “he has a demon”; when the joyous gospel revealed it said “a glutton and a drunkard”. It danced to the dirge and sang to the flute, without recognizing the truth in either. For quite a while I’ve been feeling the same thing about Reformation Day.

But this year something happened that made it click. Stripping away the saint-stories and focusing on the story – A group of people confessing, remaining faithful, calling to the face the powerful and refusing to recant. It is a common story in the church. The only place I know of that celebrates those killed for being conventionally stupid. It is so much easier to recognize which side your bread is buttered on. The reformers did and they didn’t. Like Paul speaking to the Apostles wondering if his preaching had been in vain (Galatians 2:2) and confronting Peter to his face. Like the OT prophets sent to the Kings of Israel and Judah. Institutions go off track and sometimes need to be called on it. Separating the schismatics from the prophets isn’t always easy. And there is usually a little of both intermixed, but wisdom is justified by her deeds.

There is one more stripping away though. Institutions are fine and necessary. But as the hymn the choir sings in the recording tells us, God does not dwell in temples made with hands. He dwells in living stones. What is always most in need of reform is not the church or the collective or the other, but our hearts. Hearts that are no longer desiring only the clean story, but that desire God’s story – grace alone, faith alone and Christ alone.

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Reformation Day – Hero or Human?

Biblical Texts: Rev 14:6-7, Romans 3:19-28, John 8:31-36
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Reformation Day to me is always a tough day to preach. For all my formative years and if any of the examples that I sampled this week are representative, the general approach to Reformation Day is full on Triumphalism and spiking of the football. And it is not that I can’t or won’t defend my side. I think Luther in particular and the reformers in general were right on a lot more than they were wrong. But if there is one thing that the gospel doesn’t really accept it is heroes. We have heroes of the faith, usually called saints, but ask why they are saints. Many of them are martyrs with a subset dying gruesomely. The next batch are those dedicated to outcasts – like the priests in leper colonies or Mother Teresa among the untouchables. There are the scholars and teachers and theologians. They often avoided the deaths, but the exchange seems to be that the society around them was passing away (c/r Augustine). Usually the equivalent of the Chinese toast, “may you live in interesting times”. What gets you on the list of the Saints is not usually someone confused with “winning”. The more we make a Hero out of Luther or the Reformers, the less they actually have to instruct us. The more we make them great men and women, the less we allow them to influence us.

Not an argument to tear them down or deconstruct them or even psycho-analyze them (although I suppose I do a little of that). The argument is to see them in context – fully human. When we do that, it is not bringing them down to our level, because according to the law we are already all on the same level – in deep trouble. But when we allow them to human, we are set free. We can admit the flaws (repent) and accept the grace. Both for them, and for us; both for their impossible circumstances, and for ours. We can hope to mend what was broken instead of building monuments. One of Luther’s most famous lines for theologians is: “A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.” It is the harder road, but you don’t get real glory without walking through Calvary.

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Reformation Day – Why We Observe It

I wish I could say I made those cookies, but I stole the picture from instagram. Now there is a hard-core Lutheran.

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Baby Linley mentioned in the sermon is the grand-daughter of my A/V support, so the podcast version might be a little later. There is something deeply fitting about having a baptism on Reformation Day. Baptism is of course shared by the entire church, but each tradition chooses to emphasize a different understanding. And that actually gets to the core of this sermon. I hoped to present a uniquely Lutheran understanding of the Gospel. And to truly do that you need to consider baptism.

Objectively in baptism God has made you part of the family. Its His baptism. Its his word and promise and work. Through his work you belong. Subjectively it comes by faith. It’s true, but you need to make it your own. You have to believe it. And then you become it. As Luther says about baptism in the catechism, “the old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned…and the new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God”. We daily live out our baptism. We are daily becoming more like Christ. A Lutheran understanding of the gospel is a meditation on baptism.

For me the fullness of the gospel is best expressed by the Lutheran understanding. Everything else either adds something (Jesus and ______) or subtracts something (Sacraments just signs or just spiritual). That is why Reformation Day gets its observation. It is a yearly call to live our Christian Freedom bestowed in baptism. A call not to be conformed to the world, but to be transformed by Christ.

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The Puzzle of Reformation Day

Scripture Text: John 8:31-36
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Traditions tend to pile up. There is nothing inherently wrong with traditions. Most traditions are in fact healthy and good. But they tend to pile up. Just think about Christmas. How many things are there that you “have” to do? Does the holiday just stop if you miss baking the sugar cookies or you don’t get the lights hung? Have you ever said the holiday has been ruined because we didn’t get to do X (fill in with your X)?

Churches are like dumping grounds of traditions. Churches hold on to traditions long after the last people who knew what they were about have been carried out the door. To make matters worse, they often add theological reasons for a tradition. Here is an example. You probably have a US flag at the front of your sanctuary. Why is it there? Are the Kingdom of God and the United States equivalent things? What would happen if it wasn’t there one day? My guess is that someone would make an argument – put it back, Jesus and Paul both said something along the lines of Caesar is the appointed authority, that flag is our recognition of that authority, so put it back. A theological fig leaf for a tradition. Not that the tradition is bad, just that it is a human tradition.

But traditions can pile up to toxic levels. To levels where the core of what we are about as Christians becomes obscured. The original creed was Jesus is Lord. If you listen to the stirring reformation hymns – especially A Mighty Fortress – that is what you will hear. The reformation was about stripping out some toxic levels of tradition and reminding people that our salvation is found only in Jesus, that Jesus is Lord. Our lives should be shaped by that very direct statement. At all times and in all places, a people willing to live like Jesus is Lord do revolutionary and remarkable things. And the best part of that is that if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. You will be part of the house forever. That is what this very personal Lord has done for you.

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