Back in the year 1505, a young man was traveling along a dusty road. It was July and the day was hot and humid. In the distance, a line of cumulus clouds billowed higher and higher before bursting, unleashing torrents of rain. Before the young man could reach cover, an electrical current made contact between earth and cloud, and when the explosive clap of thunder was over, the young man was laying helpless on the ground. Struggling to get up, he cried out to the patron saint of miners, of which his father was one, “St. Anne….HELP me! I will become a monk!” And true to his word, the young Martin Luther altered the direction of his life that day, leaving behind his goal of becoming a lawyer, and entering a monastery to seek peace with God. And that change of direction set off a chain of events that would one day lead to what is known as the Protestant Reformation.
Today, the last Sunday in October, is observed in many churches as Reformation Sunday. It commemorates a later time in Martin Luther’s life – October 31st, 1517 to be exact – when he nailed his famous 95-theses to the door of the Castle Church in the university town of Wittenberg, Germany. The church doors served as the local bulletin board, and Luther hung his paper there to stir debate about how the church needed to change. Little did he know the furor that would result.
Someone once asked, “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?” The answer is “Only one, but the lightbulb has to really WANT to change!”
And, as with lightbulbs, change in the Christian Church does not come easily, as Martin Luther discovered.
Now I want to caution you today. It used to be that Reformation Sunday was an occasion for Protestants to climb into their pulpits to talk trash about Catholics. But over the course of the years, we Protestants have discovered that we’ve got plenty of trash of our own. Not only that, but great ecumenical strides have been made to heal the wounds caused by the Reformation. In fact, representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation a number of years ago signed an agreement acknowledging a common belief in justification by faith alone, thus resolving the central issue in the rift between Catholic and Protestant Christians. And so Reformation Sunday now becomes an opportunity for all Christians to examine themselves and see where and how we need to change. If Martin Luther were alive today, what theses would he nail to the door of our church, and the whole Christian church of the late twentieth-century?
I’m not sure I know how Luther would speak to today’s situation. But I do have some questions of my own.
Why is it that, here in the Bible belt, where people go to church, hang commandments in courthouses, and call for the return of prayer to school, we have teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, drug addiction, and spousal abuse rates as high as among those who don’t go to church, who oppose posting the ten commandments, and who don’t want prayer in schools?
Why is it that you can go into some American Christian churches today and never even hear the name “Jesus” mentioned? Sermons are replete with the thoughts of sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists about addressing the needs of modern human beings, but, in some places, ideas like personal faith in God are hardly even expressed.
Why is it that so much modern church music is focused on “me-and-Jesus” and so unfocused on Jesus and the hurt and the poor?
Why is it that about 99 percent of our conversations in the church seem to be about taking care of ourselves and our buildings?
Why is it that supposedly Christian young people can beat a person like Matthew Shepherd to death?
Why is it that the Christian Church today seems so comfortable with success and so uncomfortable with sinners?
These are some of the questions I find myself asking, and that I hear many of you asking these days. And I note that all of them have to do with what seems to be a diminishing of a sense of grace in the church.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus tells us to be very careful about graceless-ness. The synagogue of his day looked an awful lot like some of our churches today. It was full of folks who appeared wonderfully righteous and successful on the outside. They knew how to quote the Bible. They appeared to live by its precepts. They were successful in life, and their worship services were overflowing with people. They were the conscience of society and quick to point out the flaws of sinners. They were envied by everyone for “telling it like it is!”
But one problem. For all they thought they knew about righteousness, they knew nothing about grace! So Jesus says, “Don’t be like them. For they lay heavy burdens upon other people, but are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.”
Graceless-ness.
One of the important gifts Martin Luther recovered for the Christian church is an idea described as justification by faith. In its simplest form, this means that salvation comes to human beings not because of any rule we follow, not because of any deed we do, not because we belong to the right church or even the right religion. Salvation comes to people simply because God loves us. And God’s love for us is so great that he has provided everything we need to be saved. In other words, salvation is a free gift that Jesus revealed and gave his life for. And this beautiful, life-changing salvation can become real for you not by spending the rest of your life trying to make yourself good enough, but by simply placing your faith in what Jesus has done. By every day trusting his love, his forgiveness, and his grace toward you and toward others.
Salvation is by faith in what Jesus has done for us and others.
Like Jesus and Martin Luther, we live in an increasingly graceless time. A period when the Church itself, and many Christians, seem to be losing faith in the God of grace. How quick we are to divide people into the good and the bad, the successful and the unsuccessful, the righteous and the unrighteous, this political party and that political party. Why, when you back up for a moment and listen to the voice of the modern Church, and the voices of modern Christians, you hear lots of pronouncements about how others ought to be. We sound an awful lot like those religionists Jesus described in his day by saying, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of people; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.”
Jesus said, “Don’t be like them”
And so we are called to a modern reformation. A re-forming of the grace-filled church!
I think if I were to try to describe for you what Christian faith looks like, I’d say faith is daily trusting in the love of God revealed in Jesus. It’s a trust that no sin is too great for God to forgive. No weakness is too strong for God to overcome. No lack of character is too great for God to re-shape. No injury is too deep for God to heal. No division is too wide for God to bridge. And to live as though that’s all true!
Imagine bringing that kind of faith to your own growth as a person, and to your relationships with others and the world! How life would change – for you – and them!
Faith is the active, passionate conviction that Jesus was telling the truth when he said God loves the world and is able to save it. And it is a passionate exhausting of itself, extending that love to others by lifting their burdens in Jesus’ name!
You know, the most successful church I’ve had the pleasure to visit recently is the little Canadian Anglican Church that sits in the shadow of the giant retailer Eatons in downtown Toronto. When we visited a service there in July, there were only about a dozen of us in the crowd. We sat in the chancel, in two rows of chairs facing each other, and we all participated in the service. Some read the Scripture passages for the day. Others participated in the sermon, which was an open discussion about the Bible texts. When we all gathered at the altar for Communion, several of us giggled as we noticed that the priest was wearing shorts under his robe. There were other services at the church that day, but I suspect they were as sparsely attended and as liturgically unspectacular as the one we shared.
It was evident that this church was once a regal place, attended by some of Toronto’s best families. The church’s clientele these days seem to be the poor, the mentally ill, the alternative lifestyle people, some drug addicts, and the homeless people who sleep in the doorways of the buildings in the neighborhood. The night before we attended the service, a joyful group of Hispanics was using the sanctuary for a birthday party – complete with loud music, dancing, and refreshments which they invited us to share. The pews were all pushed to the side so the party could go on.
Over and over again, the big department store has tried to buy out this unpretentious little church, offering grand financial incentives that would surely let it relocate in a more desirable area. But the church has steadfastly refused.
As I think about this little church, it occurs to me how different they are than many so-called successful churches. Why, many successful churches would never in a million years let their sparkling buildings be used for a birthday party for people who live in the inner city – let alone on a Saturday night before church on Sunday. They would never stand for their pews being pushed out of the way so people could dance and children could whirl around in circles, scuffing the floor. They would never turn down the economic opportunity to improve their location and reach a better cut of people. They might preach sermons about helping people who bear burdens, and make pronouncements about caring for the mentally ill. They might lay claim to schemes for ending homelessness, and declare their Biblical position on gays, drug addicts and the poor.
But who among them would even so much as lift a finger to ease the burden of that scraggily bunch of misfits who live there in the shadow of Eatons?
How proud the God of grace must be of this little church in Toronto that seems to be unsuccessful at just about everything except pouring out grace, and helping people bear the burdens they carry. What faith they have in Jesus!
The faith of Jesus is faith that accepts the love of God as a free gift, and then exhausts itself extending that love to others by lifting their burdens in Jesus’ name!
Shortly after the days of Apartheid, a middle-aged, prosperous, white South African woman found herself sitting next to a black man on a flight out of Johannesburg. She called the flight attendant over to complain. “You’ve sat me next to a kafir,” she said. “I can’t possibly sit next to this disgusting human. Find me another seat!”
The attendant went off to see if there might still be an open seat on the very full flight. Meanwhile, the woman glared at the black man. Both economy and club sections of the flight were full, the attendant said when she returned, but there was one seat available up in first class. The woman looked around with a smug, self-satisfied grin.
Then the flight attendant said, “It is most extraordinary to make this kind of upgrade, and I have had to get special permission from the captain. But, given the circumstances, the captain felt that it was outrageous that someone should be forced to sit next to such an awful person.”
And with that, the attendant turned to the black man and said, “Sir, if you’d like to get your things, your seat in first class is ready!”
And that’s what faith looks like! Sharing the grace you’ve received with others. Treating the poor, the dispossessed, the lost, the broken, the rejected, the outcasts not like losers, but like first-class passengers. For that’s exactly what God’s love and Christ’s Cross have made them!
Do you have faith in the saving work of Jesus?
Will you place your trust in him?
Begin this week to look at others through the filter of grace. Begin this week to let grace shape the way you relate to the world, to your family, and to yourself
For when you do, your life will change, your views will shift, your values will be turned topsy-turvy, and your relationships will become much more inclusive and interesting!
And the modern church will begin to be re-formed into the image of its good and gracious God!
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