The Truth
Text: John 8:31-36
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Every year we set apart a day on the church calendar to celebrate Reformation Sunday. Today is that day. It’s always the last Sunday in October because it was on October 31st that Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, and began what we now call the reformation. That was 507 years ago. If you saw my stole this morning you might have noticed that it commemorates the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and features Luther’s rose, in addition to matching the color of the paraments we have on the altar, lectern, and pulpit today. That stand taken by Luther 507 years ago was pivotal for the church we now call our own. But what does the reformation mean to us today? Why do we still celebrate it?
It’s good, I think, to revisit this question, of why to celebrate an event that took place so long ago. It’s been said that the church must always be reformed – ecclesia semper reformanda est. If that’s true, then we need to know how the church needs to be reformed. And to know that we need to know something about why it needed to be reformed in the first place.
So, that’s what we’ll focus on today: Why was the reformation needed then, and why does it still matter now? In a way, the reason is actually very simple: The church had gotten away from the basic message of the gospel. The good news of God’s saving love in Jesus sometimes doesn’t seem like enough, so the church can be tempted to add to that message. In simplest terms, that’s why the Reformation was needed in Luther’s day, and why it still matters now. Because
THE SAVING TRUTH OF THE GOSPEL IS THE CORE OF OUR FAITH.
I think we could all probably admit that the world today is in a bit of a mess. We could spend countless hours and days wondering how it might be able to be fixed. What will set our world on the right path? What will save us from the mess that we’re in? What gives us hope? In what (or in whom) should we place our faith?
If you asked all those questions out loud and solicited opinions, you’d hear a lot of competing answers. I’m sure you have your own answer to those questions, but before we get to the answer at the heart of this day, let me offer a few others that are given in our world, for a way out of this mess.
Some might look to science. Science seems like a reasonable place to put our hope. Whether it’s in chemists who bring us new medicines and the promise of better health, or economists who offer the promise of financial security, we often put our hope in science. A good number of the popular shows we watch are set in a future where scientific progress has eradicated many of the problems we face. We all hope for a world where these problems are fixed, and often we hope that scientific progress will do that.
But we can’t “progress” our way out of this mess. Science is not our savior. Science can do many good things. It’s important. It matters. But it cannot save us.
So, how about politics? That’s another place we turn to find answers to the problems we face in our world today. It’s often what our world believes will fix the mess we are in. Or one side will fix it and the other will mess it up even more. I can’t really keep track any longer at this point. All of our news media seem to be fueled by this belief, that politics is either the problem or the solution.
And this isn’t a new issue. An excerpt from a Reformation Day sermon in the 1980’s addressed just this issue. The preacher said, “Politics has become the new shape of religion in the world. In Luther’s day people somehow poured their religious energies and loyalties into their churches. Then came the religious wars, the Enlightenment and the resulting secularization of the modern states. What happened was that vast numbers of people transferred their religious hopes and commitments from the church to secular politics. Politics became their religion … The political party has taken the place of the church.”
Those words aren’t any less true now than they were 40 years ago. Perhaps even more true. We have transferred our religious hopes and commitments from the church to secular politics. But politics cannot save us. Like science, it’s important. And we should all be informed, and vote, and stay involved. But politics cannot save us.
So, what about religion? Religion is, of course, another place we turn to find answers. And we might think that religion is what this day points us to. But it’s really not. Reformation Sunday is a day when we’re reminded that even religion won’t save us.
Martin Luther famously turned to religion to find answers in his life, and failed to find them there. He disappointed his father by turning away from politics, from the law. He entered a monastery. He devoted his life to finding hope and meaning in religion. But even in religion, Martin Luther didn’t find what he was looking for. It’s not religion, Luther learned, that saves us. It’s not religion that helps us when we are down. It’s not religion that can forgive our sins and trespasses. Religion didn’t create us and isn’t what frees us from sin or despair. Religion is not what justifies us. And it’s not what saves us. And in those ways, it’s no different than science or politics.
When I say that the Reformation and our celebration of it today isn’t about religion, I don’t mean that it’s not about God. Today is about the gospel. Which is all about God and His grace shown to us through the love of his son, Jesus. It’s Jesus who saves us, not religion. It’s Jesus who offers us our true hope. It’s Jesus who we can trust. It’s God’s own son, who freely took on our humanity in order to show us how to live, and then to die on a cross to save us, to free us from all that binds us. That’s what the gospel is really all about. And that’s what today is all about. It’s about remembering that our hope is not in any of the things of this world. It’s not in politics, or in science, or even in religion.
Our hope is in the gospel. Our hope is in Jesus, the Savior of our world, the only one who can save us. And the reformation is really all about the church being called back from all these other false hopes to this one, true hope. Our world is always tempted to turn to false hopes. And the church is always tempted to follow the world in that futile chase. So, the church is in constant need of being reformed, of being called back to the gospel.
In that same Reformation Day sermon I referenced earlier, the preacher says this, “[The gospel] has everything to do with the things of this world. It keeps the things from becoming the gods of this world. It keeps them in their place. It keeps the things of the world from becoming the hope of our salvation. It keeps the world worldly, it keeps history, science, religion and business and politics from becoming absolute, totalitarian, and the objects of human trust.”
The gospel, in other words, keeps our focus on the one thing that can save us, and that is always Jesus. The Reformation was really about nothing more than bringing the church back to the gospel. It was about reminding the church that when we stay close to Jesus and his message, we’re always on the right track, no matter how messy things might look. And when Jesus is not at the center of our mission, we’re on the wrong track, no matter how good things might look.
Jesus urges us in today’s gospel reading to continue in his word, to stay on the right track, to remember the truth that sets us free. When Martin Luther embraced this truth, it changed his life. And his life changed the world. It just goes to show that church, with the Gospel at it’s core, can change the world. I believe that. We change the world by helping people see how God can change their lives. We change the world by holding fast to the truth of the gospel.
Someone said to me not long ago that our younger generations are coming to the church because they see how messed up the world is. They recognize that something is wrong, and the world doesn’t offer adequate solutions to the mess we’re in. But the church offers something different. Something real. Something strong. That’s the Gospel. That’s the truth Jesus was talking about. “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” And that truth is that God’s grace is shown through the love of Jesus. That’s what will fix the mess we are in. That’s what will change us. That’s what will change the world, like nothing else can. And it starts with us, the church, sharing our faith, defending our hope, and loving our neighbor.
Martin Luther once said that the gospel means that God doesn’t need our good works; but our neighbor does. Our neighbor needs our good works. Our neighbor needs our love. Our neighbor needs to see in us the hope that comes from the gospel. Our world needs to see people like you and me, who refuse to despair or to give up hope, who know where to turn, and who have hearts full of love. Our world needs people who believe that the reformation still matters, because the gospel still matters, because Jesus still matters.
So let us be changed by Jesus, be re-formed by him. And then let us live in such a way that our world sees through us the fullness of the good news that’s at the heart of this day: That God so loved the world, and so loves us, that he gave us grace, and truth, and hope, and salvation through his only son, Jesus. Thanks be to God. Amen.
The peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
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