Reformation Sunday – October 27, 2024

John 8:31-36

Reformation Sunday…a day in the liturgical year where we celebrate the protestant reformation…and there is indeed…a lot to celebrate.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Yet…what do the texts assigned for today talk about? Sin.

What we get on Reformation Day is a lot of talk about sin and law.
All sin and fall short of the glory of God and all who sin are slaves to sin and that through the law comes knowledge of sin. Sin…sin…sin.
The people who decide what the readings are for things like…Reformation Sunday…
Did not get the memo that what we are really celebrating is our own awesomeness…
And how much cleverer we modern Christians are than those who came before us who naively believed in things like sin and Law.

Plus…in an age of self-care and therapy and high self-esteem…

And especially in so-called progressive Christianity…sin is not such a popular topic.
As a matter of fact…in the Lutheran church planting business these days…
There is a trend toward eliminating the confession and absolution at the beginning of our liturgies. Why?
Because it is a downer and people do not want to hear they are sinners.

But Martin Luther had a way of talking about sin that makes a whole lot of sense.

He reminds us that sin is bigger than simple immorality.
Sin…according to Luther…is being curved in on self without a thought for God or the neighbor.
In that case…sin is missing the mark…
And it is all the ways we put ourselves in the place of God.
Sin is the fact that my ideals and values are never enough to make me always do what I should.
The “shoulds” in our lives are the things that make us see how far off the mark we are.

No matter what we think the “shoulds” are:

Personal morality and family values and niceness and conservative political convictions…
Or inclusivity and recycling and eating local and progressive political convictions…
There is always…no matter how hard we try…a gap between our ideal self and our actual self.

And…only we know…just how short we fall from the glory of God.

And in those moments…
When we are beating ourselves up or trying to deny it…
Or making promises of self-improvement…
In those solitary moments we know.
It looks like a social worker who does not actually look into the eyes of the homeless man he passes every day on the street corner.
We all know what the law can do to us.
How cruel the distance between our ideal self and our actual self can feel.
And that feeling of not ever really hitting the mark.
And that feeling…is the feeling of the Law convicting us.

Martin Luther knew what it felt like for the Law to convict him…accuse him…and leave him with nowhere to rest.

And if you want to know what really sparked the Protestant Reformation it is this.
Feeling this way…Luther read that passage we just heard from Romans:
Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…they are now justified by his grace as a gift.

And he believed it to be true…

And because he believed that God’s grace is a gift…
He no longer accepted what the church had for so long taught:
That we are really saved by the works of the Law.
The medieval church had pawned off Law as Gospel and Luther dared to know the difference.
And then he became a preacher of Grace and that changed everything.

But here’s the thing: pawning off Law as Gospel is not a medieval thing.

So…in celebration of Reformation Sunday…I offer you a way to spot the difference between Law and Gospel:

You can tell the Law because it is always an if-then proposition.
If you follow all the rules in the Bible God then will love you and you will be happy.
If you lose 20 pounds then you will be worthy to be loved.
If you live a perfectly righteous Green eco lifestyle then you will be worthy of taking up space in the planet.
If you never have a racist or sexist or homophobic thought then you will be worthy of calling other people out on their racism and sexism and homophobia.
The Law is always conditional and it is never anything anyone can do perfectly.
Under the Law there are only two options: pride and despair.
When fulfilling the “shoulds” we are either prideful about our ability to follow the rules compared to others.
Or we despair at our inability to perfectly do anything.
Either way…is bondage.

The Gospel is different…the Gospel is a because because because because proposition.

Because God is our creator and because we rebel against the idea of being created beings and insist on trying to be God for ourselves…

And because God will not play by our rules and because in the fullness of time when God had had quite enough of all of that…
God became human in Jesus Christ to show us who God really is.
And because when God came to God’s own and we received him not…
And because God would not be deterred…
God went so far as to hang from the cross we built and did not even lift a finger to condemn…
But said forgive them they know not what they are doing.
And because Jesus Christ defeated even death and the grave and rose on the third day…
And because we all sin and fall short and are forever turned in on ourselves and forget that we belong to God…
And because God loves God’s creation…
God refuses for our sin and brokenness and inability to always do the right things to be the last word…
Because God came to save and not to judge and therefore…
Therefore…we are saved by grace as a gift and not by the works of the law…
And this truth will set us free like no self-help plan or healthy living or social justice work “shoulds” can ever do.

This….is why we will never get rid of the confession and absolution in the liturgy.

It is Law that puts us in the position of hearing Gospel.
It is a moment when truth is spoken…without apology and without hesitation.
And for the only time all week…it will crush us…it will break us…and then put us back together.
It re-forms us…it is re-formation.
And this is most certainly true.