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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
A few taps on the touch-screen, a few clicks of a computer-mouse, a few pin-pushes into cork—those are ways that you or I might post theses for a debate on a bulletin board today, but 495 years ago Martin Luther posted his theses for a debate about the power and efficacy of indulgences with a few hammer‑blows on a door. Neither the use of the church door as a bulletin board, nor the proposing of theses for debate in an academic community, was in and of itself unusual. What was unusual was the content of Luther’s theses, in which he applied the truth of the Gospel, that salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, to what was by that time the long-standing practice of essentially selling the forgiveness of sins. Luther wanted to restore the truth of the Gospel to its proper place in the Roman Catholic Church and to bring that church’s practices in line with the Gospel, but instead what ensued was a still ongoing figurative and sometimes‑literal war, with Luther and his fellow reformers battling ultimately against both the Roman Catholics on the one hand and the more‑radical reformers on the other. The Reformation Day festival transferred to this evening recalls Luther’s hammer blows and the Reformation they are usually said to have begun. We thank God for His using people such as Luther to restore the truth of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments according to that Gospel, and we pray that we would abide (or remain) in the truth of the Gospel and so truly be Jesus’s disciples and thus free indeed.
The appointed readings for the Reformation Day festival might have surprised and even intrigued you as you heard them a few moments ago, especially as the readings represent changes from the other lectionary series that most of us are likely to have known from our Synod’s two preceding hymnals. The First Reading from Revelation 14 apparently came to be used because the preacher at Luther’s funeral service in Wittenberg said the angel “with an eternal gospel” in the Reading was “without doubt” none other than Luther. The Epistle Reading from Romans 3 features prominently the Bible’s teaching of justification (or righteousness, salvation, or forgiveness) by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and the Gospel Reading from John 8 speaks of the freedom that the truth of the Gospel assures. We focus primarily on that Gospel Reading, and we do so under the theme, “Set Free by the Son through His Word of Truth”.
In the verses before the Gospel Reading, the divinely‑inspired St. John uniquely reports a conversation in the Jerusalem Temple Courts between Jesus and some Pharisees, about such things as Who Jesus was and how they could know. St. John tells us that as Jesus was speaking with those Pharisees, many Jews believed in Him. Then, in the Gospel Reading itself, St. John tells us of the conversation that followed between Jesus and those Jews who had come to believe in Him, or to believe in Him at least to some extent. To them and to us, Jesus says, “If you abide in My Word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The main point in what Jesus says about truly being His disciple is “abiding” (or remaining) in Jesus’s Word, but the Jews who had believed in Him went off on the part of Jesus’s statement about the truth setting them free. They said they were Abraham’s children, and they introduced the topic of slavery, saying they had never been enslaved to anyone.
To be sure, originally God did not intend for anyone to be enslaved, much less His chosen people. Yet, from the beginning God also told Abram that his descendants would be both enslaved in a land that was not theirs and afflicted there for 400 years, and they were, in Egypt. Then there were also exiles to Assyria and Babylonia and rule by the Persians and the Greeks. Even in Jesus’s day, if the Jews who had believed in Jesus had honestly considered their own lives, they really would have had to admit that under the Romans they were hardly free. Of course, Jesus was not talking about political or civil freedom or personal liberty, but Jesus was talking about spiritual freedom. He clarifies that for them and for us, saying, “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.”
After their and our first parents’ fall into sin, they, you, and I, not only commit sin and so are slaves to sin, but also, by nature, we are entirely corrupted and dead as far as any good is concerned. Apart from God, our so‑called “free will” is able to do only “that which is displeasing and contrary to God”. That sad reality is a part of God’s Word of Truth, and the Lutheran reformers believed, taught, and confessed that truth against both their Roman Catholic opponents on the one hand, the more‑radical reformers on the other, and even some who appeared to be within their own ranks. If you and I honestly consider our own lives, we can see just how evil we are by nature. Apart from God, we live under the falsehood that we are our own gods, we suppress God’s truth, we try to rule ourselves, and we even conceal such attempts from ourselves. We may make a practice of sinning, remain in a continuing state of sin, and be unable to stop, like an addict. For our sins and for our sinful natures, we deserve nothing but death now and for eternity. Yet, as with the Jews who had believed in Him, Jesus says, “If you abide in My Word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” He called them, as He calls us, to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin, and to want to do better. When we so repent, then we are “Set Free by the Son through His Word of Truth”.
For us, the contrast Jesus makes between the status in the house of “the slave” and that of “the son” may seem a little foreign. To help a little, you might think of an employee of an individually‑owned company, who has a job but no ownership of the operation. When the owner dies, the ownership of the company goes—not to the employee, but—to the heir or heirs, (usually, but not always) a child or children of the owner. Likewise, in Jesus’s day, slaves usually had no inheritance and could expect to continue to be slaves of the heir, unless the heir, (in the case of what Jesus said) the son, set them free. If the Son set them free, they were free indeed.
Jesus is the Son of God and the Son of Man. He is the Son Who sets free all who remain in His word of truth and so believe in Him. As Jesus had told the Pharisees before today’s Gospel Reading, they needed to believe that He was Who He claimed to be, true God in human flesh, in order for them not to die in their sins. Jesus said that He would be lifted up, and He was, on the cross, in order to save them and us from our sins. After three days, Jesus’s resurrection from the dead showed that God the Father accepted His sacrifice on their and our behalf. The good news of Jesus’s death and resurrection for us is revealed through His Gospel, the Word of Truth. More than only true facts, the Gospel is the very power of God unto salvation (or justification, righteousness, or forgiveness) to everyone who believes. Through that Word of Truth in all of its forms, Jesus sets us free from our slavery to sin, and makes us sons and daughters, heirs with Him, so that we can remain in the house, His Kingdom, forever.
When it comes to all those forms of the Word of Truth, we might think first of Holy Baptism. For, at the Baptismal Font, the Word of Truth with water makes us God’s children. There, the Spirit of Truth gives us the Spirit of adoption by Whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”, so we are no longer slaves but sons. There, God forgives our sins, delivers us from death and the devil, and gives us eternal salvation. There, through His Word of Truth with water, the Son sets us and our wills free. We who are set free in Holy Baptism privately confess the sins that trouble us most and seek individual Holy Absolution, the Word of Truth from the pastor as from God Himself. Those so absolved do not doubt but firmly believe that by such absolution their “sins are forgiven before God in heaven.” Those who are instructed, examined, and absolved then come forward to partake of Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the family meal. There, under bread and wine with the Word of Truth, the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, the very body and blood put forward by God as a propitiation (an atonement) for our sins, is given for us Christians to eat and to drink, and so to receive forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion—genuine Lutherans have always administered these Sacraments according to the Gospel, against the errors of the Roman Catholics on the one hand and the more-radical reformers on the other. In all these forms of the “Word of Truth” we are “Set Free by the Son”.
Especially with an election underway, we have been hearing a lot about freedoms in our country. Our church body has even come out with a special education and awareness campaign that seems to be more concerned about freedom of religion in our society than the freedom our religion has to offer society. As free as people in this country ever were, one individual’s freedoms have always usually stopped where they interfere with the individual freedoms of another. In a similar way, though we are “Set Free by the Son through His Word of Truth”, we are not free to do as we want, but we are to serve one another in love. St. Paul goes so far as to write, by divine‑inspiration, that, having been set free from sin, we are now slaves of righteousness. For his part, Luther in his 1520 writing The Freedom of a Christian reconciled the otherwise contradictory propositions that “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none” and that “A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” So, we abide in Jesus’s Word of Truth and are truly His disciples, bearing much fruit as branches of the vine.
Of course, in all things, our experience as believers is that we are slaves of both righteousness and sin, for, as God’s Word and Luther’s teaching so clearly state, we who believe are at the same time saints and sinners. So, we live each day in the forgiveness of sins, with both sorrow over our sins and faith that God continues to forgive our sin, whatever it might be, for Jesus’s sake. In Him, we are truly free, regardless of how the law terrifies us, we do not despair. We do not despair as individuals, or as a church. We are “Set Free by the Son through His Word of Truth”. As we as individuals and as a church remain in that Word of Truth, the truth of the Gospel restored to prominence by a process begun 495 years ago tomorrow, we will remain in the house, His Kingdom, forever. Until that eternity with God, the glory that is ours is hidden under the cross. There is a temptation to look at earthly glory; such earthly glory might tempt us not to remain in that Word of Truth, but only by His Word of Truth are we free indeed. Not all of the Jews of the Gospel Reading who had believed in Him did remain in that Word of Truth. God grant that we always do!
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +