Sermon for October 30

Reformation Day

10/30/22 St. John’s

John 8:31-36

 

When my kids were little we used to go to their music recitals and they were kind of big deals. Rented hall, all the parents and the teachers, kids dressed up, people taking pictures and videos. Pretty exciting, and I could see how it could be pretty anxiety provoking for the kids, not to mention the parents. We all hoped our kids would do well.

 

One thing I noticed pretty early on was that the kids who had fund, did a lot better than the ones who seemed to be very anxious about making mistakes. What really was delightful was that the kids were enjoying themselves. If they knew that however they did, their families and their teachers would be proud of them and love them and praise them. They had been set free in a way.

 

Today in Lutheran churches around the world, we are celebrating Reformation Sunday, a day when we are reminded that we too are set free, we are all set free to enjoy the life that God has given us, and to enjoy creation, and to enjoy being a part of the coming of the reign of God. And that it’s ok to make mistakes. That only God is perfect and that is enough  because God is a heavenly parent who forgives us our mistakes and loves and accepts us as who we are. That’s a truth, the gospel truth, and as Jesus says in today’s gospel reading, the truth will set us free.

 

On All Hallows Eve of 1517, 505 years ago tomorrow, Martin Luther, the monk, priest, professor was upset about the selling of indulgences: tickets to get into heaven for people’s dead loved ones. Time off from purgatory. That’s how the church was raising money to build cathedrals. They sold these poor frightened souls these worthless bits of paper.

 

So Luther took a hammer and nailed onto the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg a paper on which were written his theses. Theological points he wanted to make and have discussed.  Things like, “Why can’t the pope pay for his own buildings?” His main point was of course, that the bible says that we can’t earn our way into heaven and we certainly can’t buy our way into heaven. Luther had read Paul’s letter to the Romans, as we did today, “…we hold that a person is justified (saved) by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.”

 

Well, when people read these arguments they were very excited and the excitement spread all through Europe. The pope though reacted very negatively  and after five years of bitter, acrimonious and nasty arguing, in 1521 Luther was summoned by the Holy Roman Emperor who was trying to work with the pope, to a place called Worms in Germany and Luther was put on trial for heresy. Emperor Charles V himself was there, and the pope representatives; Luther defended himself. The trial went on for months and they wanted him to take back everything he’s written and said in those five years but he said no: “Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me.”

 

God help him indeed – he was declared a heretic and ordered arrested but he escaped under the protection of his local prince to Wartburg Castle. He spent a couple of years in hiding and he used that time to translate the bible from the original languages of Greek and Hebrew into German.

 

Back in Wittenberg, where this whole thing started, while Luther was safe in Wartburg Castle, all H-E double hockey sticks had broken out. People had lost their bearings, they didn’t know what to believe anymore .Some overzealous followers got a little too enthusiastic and were turning the place upside down: setting fire to churches, breaking up sacred statuary saying they were false images, tearing down paintings. . Luther’s writing partner and Philip Melanchthon was left holding the bag with all the upheaval that Luther’s challenge to the church had caused. And it was pretty chaotic by all reports. And people were asking Melanchthon what to do about the sacraments? Luther criticized the clergy and celibacy. Well, in the Protestant churches could clergy marry? What about preaching if you weren’t going to be threatening people with hell, what was there to say?

 

Melanchthon was getting very nervous and  he was terrified of making a mistake. Like a kid at his first recital. People’s salvation seemed to be at stake. So he wrote to Luther, many times, with many questions, and Luther, from his garret high up in Wartburg, wrote him back. We have some of those letters and one of them is just a fragment of one that has no title, no greeting, no ending, but it’s a very famous fragment, at least among Luther scholars.

 

Clearly Melanchthon had been asking about the celibacy of the priesthood. He talks about Holy Communion, yes, you should commune with both bread and wine, no the priest doesn’t need to have private communion all by himself, we aren’t doing that any more.

 

Anyway it’s clear from the letter that he wants to encourage Melanchthon, he wants to calm him down so finally ends the letter with these words.

“If you are a preacher of Grace, then preach a true, not fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly. For he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here we have to sin. This life in not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says, we look for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. . . . Pray boldly-you too are a mighty sinner.”

 

We don’t have Melanchthon’s response but it must have calmed him down because he held on, and the reforms took hold.

 

You know, Luther was a musician – played the flute, the lute, sang, wrote music.  Maybe he just enjoyed playing music and that helped to learn out to enjoy following Jesus.

 

I hope this day reminds us that we are going to make lots of mistakes serving God.. We are all sinners justified by God’s grace as a gift so we might as well sin boldly and go out and take some chances in our efforts to serve Christ. In Christ we have been set free  –  and as we know, if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.