Reformation

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt - a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, said the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, said the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved, and though the mountains shake in the depths of the sea; though its waters rage and foam, and though the mountains tremble with its tumult. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be shaken; God shall help it at the break of day. The nations rage, and the kingdoms shale; God speaks, and the earth melts away. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold. Come now, regard the works of the LORD, what desolations God has brought upon the earth; behold the one who makes war to cease in all the world; who breaks the bow, and shatters the spear, and burns the shields with fire. “Be still, then, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth.” The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For “no human being will be justified in his sight” by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.

Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you remain in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants ofAbraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, “You will be made free”?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the household; the son remains there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

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What would your life look like without the law? Without any rules about how you ‘should’ behave, nobody telling you what was ‘proper’ or ‘acceptable,’ for your age or gender or social class? What would life be like without the pressure of legalism or the shame of pietism?

See, religion has earned the reputation of being all about the law. Who has what rights to sit where, to be comfortable and welcome where, and how do we know who’s ‘acceptable’? Whose church is this? Whose pew? Whose organ? Who decides what happens to the money, to the building, to the liturgy? Seriously. And that’s not even getting to the question of who deserves to be buried in the church graveyard. Law after law after rule after assumption after judgment… 

Then again, what about traffic laws? Dietary recommendations? Are we really so unaware of ourselves and our surroundings that we need the threat of punishment for making decisions on the daily? People can be both better and worse than we give them credit for, but the compassion that rises out of freedom, the passion of the Holy Spirit toward leading us all to freedom, surpasses all the legalism and pietism that we impose on ourselves and on each other.

Since it's Reformation Day weekend, we recall as Lutherans the movement of God that led Luther to question and counter the legalism of the church in his day. Threats of Hell and Purgatory bombarded the people, and only the priests had the education, the authority, and resources to be able to say anything about how people ought to be living according to their view on God’s will. But science was not being trusted by people of faith, and poverty and sickness tore at communities, while the institutional church decided a good road to take would be to overtax the poor so they could build big impressive buildings. The Law was abused in service of greed, and the needs of God’s living, suffering, people were ignored. Luther had internalized all of that guilt and law from his youth and young adulthood, and so believed more in the terror and damnation of God than in the grace or mercy or even the righteous passionate love of God. He put on the monk’s robes as insurance against his fear of judgment, because apparently it promised salvation to make such a sacrifice, but it did not soothe his anxiety. In fact, Luther lived in constant fear of never being good enough for God’s forgiveness and love, until he saw the abuse poured out on the poor who struggled to stay alive while being pressed to give their livelihoods to the church as a way to purchase salvation, and he in his distress came to this reading from Romans which put all of humanity into the same boat. All have fallen short, therefore all must be justified freely as a gift, because none can earn righteousness, he found.

This was huge. This took the crushing abuse of the Law and turned it into fertilizer for the garden of grace. And not only was it a stunning revelation of hope for Luther, but since the printing press had just been invented, it was possible for any who had even the slightest sliver of literacy to read his arguments against the church’s abuses and in favor of honoring a more merciful and forgiving God. Then of course those who had grown tired of those power games had their own diversity of responses to this growing reformation, some turning to revolution and revolt and even to violence once they knew the chains they had been carrying were false. Can we blame them? Of course not! All those years of fear and anger and pain getting pent up, hidden away under the rules that had to be followed for salvation, and suddenly the floodgates were open and the barrier between people and God, in the form of priests at the time who were not exactly righteous themselves, that dividing wall had to come down again, and it stirred more than a few people to action.

We’ve always been building up walls even when God tears them down, time after time. We make it so hard to feel loved, and accepted, and validated, when our laws prescribe how we ought to feel and act and think if we want to be ‘good Christians,’ or even good people worthy of salvation. But the truth of Jesus remains with us, and we remain in that truth of the Gospel through our fellowship and study and through the challenges of daily living with other people who are different than we are. The Spirit of God blows through the world in ways we cannot always anticipate, surprising us with love and forgiveness in unexpected places and people, while also confronting us in places of comfort so that our hearts may be open to growth and new life, over and over again.

When the truth sets us free, then, free from the law and from the threats of punishment, it means we can remove our masks of always being ‘good’ or ‘nice’ or ‘righteous,’ and be honest with ourselves and each other about the things that frighten us, because they have no real power over our eternal souls. When the truth sets us free, it frees us from all kinds of chains and laws and walls that we put up to set ‘us’ apart from ‘them.’ Because in Christ there are no dividing walls anymore, not even between parts of our own selves that we like and those parts of which we are embarrassed. The marriage contract between us and our God is not written on paper for debate and academic discourse, but on our hearts, where we know how we would like to be loved and where we must remember how much more God loves us than we can even perceive or make sense of most days. Brothers and sisters, we live in this complicated mess of freedom and captivity, experiencing the back and forth between good days and bad days, but our ultimate reality is the relationship between God and the world which is a promise of faithfulness and resurrection. The ultimate reality is that there are new beginnings, that the law is not the thing which defines us or contains us. This is God’s free gift to us. To each and every one of us. And it is setting the entire cosmos free.