"The Truth That Sets Us Free"
John 8:31-36
This weekend a lot of people are
celebrating Halloween. But many Christians
are remembering another day—one that marks the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
Five hundred years ago, on October
31, 1517, Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and theology professor in the
university town of Wittenberg, published his Ninety-Five Theses by nailing them to the door of the Castle Church. In those days, the church door served as a community
bulletin board.
The 95 Theses were in the form of an invitation to debate about traditional
church doctrine and practice, that, in Luther’s mind, needed to be reexamined
and reformed. Luther was advocating for
reform within the Catholic church, but before it was over Luther would be excommunicated
from the church and branded an outlaw by the Holy Roman Emperor.
As John Buchanan describes it, “violence
ensued, wars were fought, martyrs on both sides were tortured and executed. Luther’s followers and their churches were
called ‘Lutherans’ in derision, but during the next century large portions of
northern Germany, France, the Netherlands, Hungary, all the way to the Italian
Alps and the Scottish Highlands, separated from Rome and organized themselves
into Reformed churches.”[1]
Five centuries later, as we commemorate Luther and the
Ninety-Five Theses, we are reminded that the Protestant Reformation was a
development that took place slowly, over time, and that it is an ongoing
process.
Reformation Sunday can be a time for giving thanks, but
also for remembering that God is always doing a new thing, though we don’t
always perceive it. God’s salvation story truly is God’s salvation story. Our
time in the church’s history-- like the time of Luther and Calvin and Knox-- is
a chapter in a story that we didn’t create and can’t control.
Five hundred years after the Protestant Reformation, we’re
living in a difficult and challenging time to be the church. Back in 2008, Phyllis Tickle started talking
about how the North American church was going through an every-500-years
“rummage sale.” She and some other church scholars have been telling us that,
when we look at the big picture, it’s something we could have predicted.
Tickle predicted that it will take around 100 years to
work through and to find a new normal as humans, as Christians, as people who
are re-learning how to love and recognize the image of God in one another. We’re in the “chaos” phase of this process of
“becoming,” and it’s going to take a while, so we need to learn to live
faithfully in the tension.[2]
I think this 500th anniversary of Luther’s Ninety-Five
Theses is a good time to listen, with new ears, to Jesus’ amazing announcement
to his followers: “You will know the truth
and the truth will make you free.”
These words should startle us as much as they did the
Jewish followers who heard Jesus say them the first time. Some of them were offended.
“We’re the descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do
you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free?’” I don’t think these people
suffered from amnesia. Recounting the saving act of God bringing the people out
of bondage in Egypt was one of the basic confessions of faith for the Jews. But
it seems they had come to trust more in “Abraham being their ancestor” than in
their history of slavery in Egypt and the Exodus and the liberating promises of
God. I wonder if we’re very different, when we forget the truth of God and
God’s promises.
As often happens in the gospel of John, Jesus makes a startling
statement and it leads to more questions. “What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made
free?’ For a moment, the people are shocked
enough to open up enough to hear a new thing.
On this 500th commemoration of the Reformation
and in the days to come, I hope that we’ll be shocked enough that God’s word
can burn through the fog of familiarity and become fresh good news to us.
The good news of the gospel is that God has done for us
in Christ what we cannot do for ourselves. We are “justified”—made right with
God—not by our own efforts to earn our salvation by keeping a lot of rules, but
by God’s free grace in coming to us.
Salvation is not a prize to be won or earned by our good works, but a
gracious gift for us to accept by faith.
The good news of the gospel is that we are valuable and
worthy because God our creator and redeemer says so. We are creatures made in the image of
God. We are children of God, persons for
whom Jesus Christ suffered, died, and was raised again, persons in whom the Spirit
of God is at work. Because of all of
this, we are somebody. That is the basis
of our dignity, our worth, our human rights, and our human
responsibilities.
Shirley Guthrie explains it so well when he writes, “We
don’t have to try to earn God’s love and acceptance, because we are already
loved and accepted by God—unconditionally.”[3]
On Reformation Sunday, we are reminded that we are
justified by God’s grace, through faith.
The
question of the day is: how shall we live,
in response to God’s gracious gift?
That’s where sanctification comes in. “Sanctification” is a theological
word for how we grow in the Christian life, as we are taught and led further
into the truth and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Sanctification is a life-long process, as we are
gradually freed from our fears and doubts and brokenness-- to love and serve
God and our neighbors as Christ does. As we grow in Christian faith, as we open
ourselves to be surprised and transformed by God’s word, we come to “know the
truth.”
One sign of growing in the Christian life is maturing in
love for and solidarity with all of God’s children-- especially with those who
are poor and marginalized.
In a blog post a few years ago,
church historian Diana Butler Bass writes: “It strikes me as interesting that
those who followed the teaching of the new reform movement did not come to be
known as ‘Reformists.’ Rather, the
moniker that stuck was ‘Protestant.’
Luther and his associates were protesters rather than reformers—they
stood up against the religious conventions of the day, arguing on behalf of
those suffering under religious, social, and economic oppression. These religious protesters accused
the church of their day of being too rich, too political, in thrall to kings
and princes, having sold its soul to the powerful. The original Protestants preached, taught, and
argued for freedom—spiritual, economic, and political—and for God’s justice to
be embodied in the church and the world.”
Diana goes on to say, “It is
time to put the protest back in Protestantism.”[4]
I agree with Diana when she
says that at the heart of Protestantism is the courage to challenge injustice
and to give voice to those who have no voice. Protestantism opened access for all people to
experience God’s grace and God’s bounty, not only spiritually-- but actually.
The early Protestants
believed that they were not only creating a new church-- but they were creating
a new world, one that would resemble more fully God’s desire for humanity.
The original Protestant impulse was to
resist powers of worldly dominion and domination, in favor of the power of
God’s spirit to transform human hearts and society. The early Protestants
were not content with the status quo. They felt a deep discomfort within. They
knew things were not right. And they set out to change the world.
We live in a time of great change
and anxiety, perplexity and possibility, in the church and in the world. In 2017, as the world groans under flame and
flood, as families are left shattered by sprays of bullets and the devastation
of war, in this time of pluralism and materialism and secularism, of brokenness
in human relationships, I believe God is working to do a new thing in our
time.
I believe we are living in a
time of new reformation and that God is working to create a new church, in and through
us. I believe that God wants to use us
as instruments of justice and reconciliation in the world.
So—on this Reformation Sunday—we can be thankful for the
Reformation of the 16th century and for the gospel truth that is
setting us free... and for this great adventure of growing in faith.
On this Reformation Sunday, and in the days to come, let
us be praying that we may respond to the challenges of our time with joy and
eagerness to carry out Christ’s mission.
“In
gratitude to God, empowered by the Spirit, may we strive to serve Christ in our
daily tasks, and to live holy and joyful lives.”[5]
Amen!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian
Church
Dearborn, Michigan
October 29, 2017
[1]
John M. Buchanan, “Values Worth Fighting For,” at his blog Hold to the Good. https://jmbpastor.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/values-worth-fighting-for/
[2] Britney Winn Lee, “Not Yet on Shore: An
American Church in Tension”/
[3]
Shirley Guthrie, Christian Doctrine,
Rev. Ed., p. 319.
[4]
Diana Butler Bass, “Putting the Protest Back in Protestantism.” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dianabutlerbass/2011/10/putting-the-protest-back-in-protestant/
[5]
“Brief Statement of Faith” of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 1991. https://www.presbyterianmission.org/what-we-believe/brief-statement-of-faith/
No comments:
Post a Comment