Still Under Construction

Matthew 23:1-13

October 29, 2017

William G. Carter

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

Down in Chinchilla, there is a tunnel under a railroad track that has been closed for repairs. Repairs on the one lane tunnel have been going on since late spring. Since it’s normally a busy road, this has been a point of contention for those of us who are inconvenienced by the construction.

Commuter traffic is a pain in the neck. For those who live at the bottom of Shady Lane Road, it’s almost ten minutes to drive an alternate route to get on the highway. If there were a fire on the wrong side of the tunnel, the Chinchilla fire trucks would have to drive five miles in the wrong direction to get to a spot normally a tenth of a mile away.

As you can expect, a number of people are not happy about the project or its delay. One neighbor, not known for her restraint, has taken to phoning the borough office every day to say, “When is that tunnel going to get fixed?” They recognize her voice when she calls, and give her the same reply: “Still under construction.”

Still under construction. After a month of thinking together about the Protestant Reformation that began 500 years ago this Tuesday, the same can be said about the church: still under construction.

Maybe that’s because nothing ever happens quickly in the Christian church. In 1984, a film maker named Philip Groning contacted the monastery of Grand Chartreuse, a remote Christian community high in the French Alps. He said, “I would like to bring a camera and shoot a documentary about your monastery.” They said, “We will get back to you on that.” Sixteen years later, the abbot wrote a letter and said, “Okay, we are ready for you.” They weren’t in a hurry.

Maybe you’ve heard the joke, applicable to all kinds of Christians, but I’ll pick on us. How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?  Answer: “Change?!”

Nobody likes change, especially religious types. Even if they desire change, they don’t like it when it comes. Simply witness the words of Jesus from the 23^rd chapter of Matthew. Back in chapter 5, he said, “I haven’t come to abolish our religion of the Torah and the prophets. I have come to fill them up, to make them full of life.” Yet as we heard this morning, Jesus criticizes the practice of the religious leaders of his own day.

Among all the hats he wore was the hat of the reformer. He watched the Pharisees who interpreted the words of Moses and declared, “They don’t practice what they preach.” He pointed a prophetic finger at the Bible scholars of his day and said, “Their teaching will tie you up in knots and put enormous burdens on your shoulders.”

These people love to sit at the Mayor’s prayer breakfast and preen around like well-dressed roosters. They wear their finery as if to say, “Look at me, look at me.” They give big donations in order to be noticed. They clear their throats disapprovingly if you don’t call them by the right titles. And if somebody is in dire need, they won’t lift a finger to help.

That’s what he says in the text we heard a minute ago. I stopped the reading there, before he gets downright caustic. Chapter 23 is a clear-eyed and fierce denunciation of the religion of Jesus’ time. And it’s no wonder that the religious leaders conspired to get rid of Jesus and put him on the cross. That’s how reformers are often regarded.

After Pope Leo threw Martin Luther out of the Roman Church, the reformer was riding through the woods when some soldiers on horseback suddenly surrounded him. It turns they had been sent by Frederick, the prince of Saxony, to whisk away Luther and hide him in a castle where the Pope’s people would not find him. Luther’s life was in jeopardy for standing up to the abuses and excesses of the church of his day. Needless to say, Brother Martin thought a lot about the cross of Jesus.

Change is difficult. Reform comes at a cost. Try to make a constructive difference in the world, and there is always a push back. We know this; some of us know this all too well.

And it’s particularly true in the Christian community. The Gospel invites us to become more and more like Christ. Most of the time, we regard that with admiration: we can become more loving like Jesus, more compassionate, more outspoken about injustice and abuse, more gracious and merciful – more like Christ! What we don’t want, much less expect, is that becoming like Christ may mean that we may end up suffering like him, too.

Like the grandfather who took his granddaughter to an art museum one day. He had the time available, since he had just been fired from his job for blowing the whistle on some financial monkey business in the company. The management thanked him for speaking up, and after the hubbub died down, they gave him the pink slip for speaking up.

So he takes his granddaughter to the art museum. They come around the corner of the corridor, only to see a large and fairly accurate depiction of Jesus on the cross. It was pretty graphic, and both of them gasped. The young girl said, “Grandpa, what does this mean?” And without any filter, Grandpa blurted out, “No good deed goes unpunished.”   

So you want to change the world and make it a better place? It’s not going to happen without a struggle. And it’s particularly true of the Christian Church, the people called together by Christ, the people called to become like Christ – we are still under construction.

In fact, you’ve heard about the 95 Theses that Martin Luther posted on the door of the Wittenberg Church that prompted the Reformation. Here is the very first item on the list: “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.” That is, our entire Christian journey is one of returning to God again and again. We’re never done with that. We never finish returning to God until we finally, once and for all, fall into the arms of God.

In a way, that is liberating good news. It frees us from the tyranny of perfectionism. Just let it go. Give up the myth of your own self-improvement, and keep moving toward God. Start over every day, if you must, because our lives depend solely on the mercy of God. Repent, repent, keep repenting, and be joyful about it for Christ’s sake.

And it’s a reminder to the church, too, that we can never rest on our laurels or stay stuck on the “way it used to be.” The Presbyterians love to speak a slogan that might go back as far as St. Augustine: Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda! That was the bumper sticker on the back of Augustine’s mule. It means “the church reformed, and always being reformed.” It’s the conviction that the church must continually re-examine itself to pursue the purity of what it believes and what it practices.[1]

John Calvin talked this way in Switzerland, in the generation after Martin Luther. He declared the Protestant Reformation was not about change or innovation, so much as a return to what the church was meant to be, long before it became big business.

And in the Roman church, the same phrase was used by Hans Kung and others at the time of the Vatican II council of the 1960’s. God is still at work in the corporate body of believers, increasingly their love, deepening their commitment, pushing them into the world as salt and light.

The emphasis on God is essential. The full phrase goes like this: “The church reformed, and always being reformed by the Word and Spirit of God.” It is God who is working on us, still forgiving our mistakes, still correcting our distortions of truth, still cleansing us of sin, and making us a sign of what God wants for all people everywhere.

So as a lifelong Protestant, I’ve been thinking about what that might mean for you and me, in our own day. Here are a few thoughts and observations:

The first comes from Fred and Char Lyon, who report on a conversation that their daughter in law had with the Vatican not long ago. Perhaps you remember that the Rev. Jan Edmiston, married to their son Fred, is currently serving as the co-moderator of our national denomination of Presbyterians. As a national leader, she was given seven minutes to speak with the representatives of the Roman church. Makes me wonder: if you had seven minutes to say whatever you could, what would you say?

Fred and Char report that Jan talked about leadership, specifically the leadership of women alongside men. Can you imagine a church where people are not disqualified to be leaders because of their gender? After all, if you are going to baptize everybody, you have to receive the God-given gifts that they will bring.

Just because the apostle Paul wrote a couple of corrective sentences to a few undisciplined Christian women in ancient Corinth does not mean that his words should be universalized to stifle all female leadership in all churches in all times, especially since it is the same apostle Paul who says in that same Corinthian letter, “Now women, when you prophesy (that is, when you preach), here are a few guidelines.”

Now, I’m not sure what the representatives of the Roman church said in response to Jan. I imagine they said, “We’ll get back to you on that.” Change doesn’t come quickly.

But here’s the second thing, O beloved church of Protestants: let’s stop beating up on the Catholics. The time is over for that. If you had an ornery priest earlier in your religious life, I know others who had an ornery Presbyterian pastor. We can’t universalize and dismiss a major part of our Christian family just because of some bad experiences in the distant past. At its heart, the Roman Catholic faith is a Christ-centered faith, with deep spiritual tradition and rich liturgy.

I had lunch last Thursday at the rectory of Our Lady of the Snows. My buddy Msr. Quinn was buying. As I warned a few of you, I knocked on his door and said, “Joe, it’s the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation. I have come to your door with all of my complaints.” He raised a suspicious eyebrow and said, “How many do you have?”

I said, “Only one.” What is it? “That it has taken five hundred years for all of us work together for Jesus.”

Then I told him about my friend David Lamotte, folk singer and son of a Presbyterian minister. David, a Christian, has just formed a band with a Jew and a Muslim. When I said, “Tell me more,” David replied, “We’re not insisting on singing in unity; rather, we’re singing in harmony.” I like that.

Finally, a third thought, from Friday’s Washington Post. Stanley Hauerwas, retired ethics professor at Duke (and classmate of Phil Muntzel and doctoral advisor of Charlie Pinches), wrote an opinion piece where he declared the Reformation is essentially over. The Protestants won.

Hauerwas notes, “Most of the reforms Protestants wanted Catholics to make have been made. Indulgences are no longer sold, for instance.” Now there are other distortions to be addressed. One of them, he says, “is denominationalism in which each Protestant church tries to be just different enough from other Protestant churches to attract an increasingly diminishing market share.” I agree with him: “It’s a dismaying circumstance.”

And yet, he says, “I remain a Protestant because I have the conviction that the ongoing change that the church needs means some of us must be Protestant to keep Catholics honest about their claim to the title of the one true Catholic church.”

“The Reformation may be coming to an end,” he says, “but reform in the church is never-ending, requiring some to stand outside looking in.”[2]

It all seems to suggest that every Christian church needs to nail a sign on their doors: “Still Under Construction.”

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] See the helpful article by Dr. Anna Case-Winters, “Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda: Our Misused Motto,” Presbyterian Survey, May 2004.   https://www.presbyterianmission.org/what-we-believe/ecclesia-reformata/  

[2] Stanley Hauerwas, “The Reformation is over. Protestants won. So why are we still here?” The Washington Post, 27 October 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-reformation-is-over-protestants-won-so-why-are-we-still-here/2017/10/26/71a2ad02-b831-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html?utm_term=.425096d7602c . 

By Faith Alone

John 3:16-21

Romans 4:16-25

October 22, 2017

William G. Carter

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”) —in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So numerous shall your descendants be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.”

Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

If we’re going to celebrate the Protestant Reformation, sooner or later we have to talk about faith. That’s where the revolution occurred.

Sooner or later, the Christians will rediscover their Bible; they always have the Bible, and it’s there that Christians discover that “God so loved the world that he sent Jesus to save it.” That’s the heart of the Christian Gospel.

Sooner or later, the Christians will be reawakened to the reality of God’s grace. God saves us because God loves us. We don’t have to earn the love. We don’t have to bargain for it. We don’t have to prove that we are worthy of it. God is in favor of us; that’s the grace.

And sooner or later, we have the invitation to faith. Faith is the way we access the grace. Faith is how we confirm that God is all about the salvage operation that is called “salvation.” So today, let’s talk about faith, particularly the faith that is sufficient to save us.

Now, no sooner do we bring this up, then somebody will say, “You know, I don’t know if I have enough faith.” And that’s a legitimate concern.

Stand outside the hospital room, having heard that your loved one’s disease is incurable, it’s hard to imagine that you will ever have enough faith.

Watch the news, see the possibility of widespread disease after a hurricane in Puerto Rico, and you doubt that things are going to go well for those people.

Sometimes life is too hard, for us or for somebody else, and some gentle soul will say, “But the Bible says, ‘God will never give you more than you can handle.’” And you doubt that is true. Actually, I think God can give us more than we can handle, and that oft-quoted verse from 1 Corinthians 10 is taken out of context. It’s about temptation, not trouble. Sometimes there’s an overwhelming amount of trouble, and we’re not sure we have enough faith.

Here is where old Martin Luther can be helpful. When life gave him a lot of trouble (and we’re talking about a man who had to run for his life), here’s what Luther would do. He would stop in his tracks, pound his chest, and declare defiantly, “But I’m baptized!”

You see, baptism for him was not a once-done, now forgotten ritual. It wasn’t a social event with smiles and photographs. Baptism was a statement of his identity. “I am baptized. I belong to God. That’s who I am! So don’t you forget it, God!” That’s how he coped with trouble.

For him, first of all, faith has to do with our identity as the beloved children of God. You didn’t choose God, God chose you. You got a complaint with God? Take it up with your heavenly parent!

But what if I doubt that God is there? Or what if I think there’s a God somewhere, but he doesn’t seem to be as good as everybody says he is?

Again, here is Luther’s answer: listen to the Gospel. Listen to it! Listen to the news that you are never forgotten, that the God who claims you in baptism is the God who hears your cry, the same God who is committed to your well-being, the God who sends Jesus Christ to rescue you. Listen to that, and trust it. That’s faith.

Faith is not something you are born with. Faith is not something you get. Faith is not something you store up. Faith is something that God gives you when you hear the Good News. Listen to how much God loves you, and when the Spirit of God comes into our hearts and minds, that’s faith. That’s all faith is: simple trust, as a gift of God, as a response to Gospel.

The news is so good – that you are saved by God’s grace – that all you have to “do” is trust it. This trust is the essence of faith.

Now this was revolutionary. The medieval church had added so many layers of obligation that the average Christian believer was never going to win its approval. In declaring that God is holy, the church of Luther’s day emphasized the great distance between the holy God and all the regular old slobs of the human race. There was nothing a person could do to bridge that gap.

Some thought, “If I act like a good person, that could help.” But nobody could ever be that good. If any of us are ever going to make it into God’s heavenly presence, all our sins and imperfections must be purged away. This purging, long a popular belief, was twisted into a notion called “purgatory,” kind of an overtime period after we die when every sinner is punished for a very long time until they are ready for heaven. And the power of the medieval papacy reinforced it.

But then Luther started reading the Bible, really reading it. He gets to the 4^th chapter of Romans where Paul reflects on the faith of Father Abraham: he believed the promises of God, and “it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” The reckoning is God’s reckoning. God sees that Abraham trusts him, and that is sufficient.

It was like a lightning bolt in Luther’s soul. You mean we don’t have beat ourselves up or wear ourselves out? No! You mean we don’t move from a hard life of suffering to an afterlife of more suffering, simply because we are creatures. No! You mean that the church and its hierarchy has no say over whether or not God will accept me, love me, or save me? No!

Faith in this good news is all you need. It’s all anybody needs.

This was revolutionary! What about all those rituals that the priests are putting us through? Not necessary. What about the requirements laid upon me so that I can prove that we are acceptable to the church. Totally invented by humans, not by God. Do you mean I don’t have to fulfill the rituals and rules, in order to be approved by the priest in order to be approved by God? No. All we need is faith, the kind of faith that trusts that God loves the world enough to send Jesus.

It’s no wonder, then, that Luther loved to celebrate Christmas, if only because Christmas is all about God’s gift. In a Christmas Day sermon in 1530, he stood up and talked about the shepherds. They are the lowly ones, the ones outside of the structures of religion, the simple ones who are taking care of their flock and unable to atone for their sins. Suddenly the angels appear to them to say, “I bring you good news of a great joy, for to you is born this day the Savior.” Luther says:

Who, then, are those to whom this joyful news is to be proclaimed?  Those who are faint-hearted and feel the burden of their sins, like the shepherds, to whom the angels proclaim the message, letting the great lords in Jerusalem, who do not accept it, go on sleeping.

… Nothing else should be preached except that this child is the Savior and far better than heaven and earth.  Him, therefore, we should acknowledge and accept; confess him as our Savior in every need, call upon him, and never doubt that he will save us from all misfortune.[1]

“For this reason,” says the apostle Paul, “it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace.” Indeed, it does depend on faith, trusting in God to bear us in all circumstances, to save us from our own destructive impulses, and ultimately to carry us home. We have to hang on and trust, no matter what.

Dick Armstrong, one of my teachers, described faith as a roller coaster ride. In fact, he put it in a poem:

Faith is a roller-coaster ride for clergy, clerks, and clowns.

The best disciples, old and new, have had their ups and downs.

The psalmist and the prophet had their moments of despair,

And even Jesus on the cross had doubts that God was there.

When faith is riding on the ridge, it shows in word and deed,

For mountains move is faith is but a grain of mustard seed.

It’s not that we make miracles by willing to believe.

Faith’s not a work, but God’s free gift, that we by grace receive.

That thought should keep us humble, when we’re feeling strong and tall.

The higher up the heights we climb, the farther we can fall!

For just as winter follows fall, and nighttime follows day,

We do not always sail the crest nor on the summit stay.

But sometimes plummet down the steps wth such breathtaking speed,

That roller-coaster riders should this warning hear and heed.

Yet when the coast car is at the bottom of the slope,

The peaks of faith loom large and give new impetus to home.

Then we recall those moments when our faith in God was sure.

Confirmed by Truth, sustained by Love, we find we can endure

The ups and downs of faith. Indeed we then can say,

Without the lows there’d be no highs, without the night, no day.

The ride is always risky, even scary, I’ll agree.

But if we stay inside the car of faith, we’re safe. You see,

The roller-coaster Maker is the One who takes the toll.

The car won’t ever leave the track if God is in control.

So re: roller-coaster ride, I’ll take my own advice,

And hang on tight until the end, no matter what the price.

For when the ride is over, and the ups and downs are through,

I pray I’ll be with God – and all the other riders, too![2]

Hang on, friends. Don’t let go of the God who has already taken hold of you.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Martin Luther, “Sermon on the Afternoon of Christmas Day,” December 25, 1530. Online at http://mail.mcm.edu/~eppleyd/Luther2.html

[2] Richard Stoll Armstrong, The Pastor as Evangelist (Louisville: Westminster Press, 1984) pp. 74-75

By Grace Alone

Ephesians 2:1-10

October 15, 2017

William G. Carter

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Not so long ago, in November 1999, something extraordinary happened. The Lutherans and the Roman Catholics made up. I don’t know if there were formal apologies, or if there were official confessions of sin, but I do know that the two parties agreed on a matter that once splintered the church.

They made this statement: “By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping us and calling us to do good works.”[1] It only took 482 years to agree on this and make it official, and only seven more years for the World Methodist Conference to agree. Nothing happens quickly in the church, but when it does, it’s pretty big.

“By grace alone…” In 1517, those were fighting words. At that point, Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk teaching at the University of Wittenberg. He had been raised in the church, the one church, and the church had warned him that he was never going to be good enough to get into heaven. Not directly at least, and not without thousands of years in purgatory to first burn away his sins.

This was the prevailing message of the medieval church – that you’re not good enough – and the Roman church had used that message to its own benefit. If the Christians aren’t good enough, than they need to go to church more. If the Christians aren’t good enough, than they need to work harder, repent more deeply, give more generously, and obey whatever the medieval church tells them to do and believe.

Brother Luther was a sensitive soul and took the message to heart. In the monastery, he exceeded all the others with his piety and zeal. He would spend as much as six hours a day in confession, scraping away the defenses in his soul, to tell his confessor what a terrible person he was. He was a monk in a severe monastery – and he was spending all that time confessing his sins. Makes you wonder what he actually did in his spare time, or at least what he imagined he was doing.

Spiritually speaking, there was no way. He was stuck. Life was hard, purgatory was going to be harder, and heaven was only a dim gleam, to be accessed only by confessing all his sins all the time. It was all pretty grim. Sometimes he would finish a marathon session of telling the priest his sins, doing the penance, and then returning a few minutes later to start all over again because he had remembered a few more.

As I mentioned last week, he was nudged out of his self-mortification when the monastery sent him into the classroom. As he began to teach the Bible, he made many powerful discoveries. (This is how it is when we teach the Bible, you know: the teacher learns a lot!) And one of the central discoveries was this: the Christian church tends to add a lot more layers of complexity to the simple grace of God. Sometimes we have to scrape away the extra stuff – the demands, the obligations, the requirements – to simply hear anew that God comes to rescue us in Christ, that God comes to save us from our worst impulses and darkest inclinations.

Our text from the second chapter of Ephesians is one of the most succinct descriptions of this saving activity of grace. We were lost, but then God found us, blind until Christ turned on the lights and gave us the gift of sight. We have been rescued, not because we are worthy, but because the Rescuer loves us.

This is how the letter to the Ephesians describes what has happened. Sin was taking the life out of us until God came and interrupted the destruction. We were following the passions of our five senses, captive to our own desires and addictions, and then God comes and retrieves us.

As Ephesians will go on to say, we were divided among ourselves – Jew against Gentile, sister against brother, neighbor against neighbor – the only thing we could agree upon was turning away from God – and then Christ came, and took all the warring factions upon himself. Now Christ is our peace.

The effects of the rescue are threefold: God made us alive together with Christ, raised us up with Christ, and seated us with him in the heavenly places. With, with, with – salvation is a restoration of union. Whatever the previous estrangement, whatever the hidden or obvious separation from Christ, now all has been restored. The hard labor has been done by God.

It’s pure gift, a gift that comes from God’s kindness[2]. In every sense, it is a gift of being raised from the dead, which is why one scholar calls this section of Ephesians, “Salvation by Resurrection” (Markus Barth).

But in October 1517, these were debatable words. Martin Luther had been teaching the Bible at the Wittenberg, and the teaching experience had clarified his vision. He saw how much the church had added to the simple gift of God’s grace.

Chief among the additions was the selling of indulgences, as championed by a Dominican named Johannes Tetzel. Tetzel made his way around Germany, declaring that he had certificates of forgiveness for sale. The practice was sanctioned by Rome, and had become a considerable fund-raising scheme.

From Tetzel and his ilk, you could purchase these certificates that announced that God would shave some time off your millennium in purgatory, or that your deceased loved ones wouldn’t have to spend so long in afterlife torment. Conceivably, if you planned to take part in some licentious activity on Saturday night, you could get a certificate on Friday to declare you were forgiven in advance. All for a price, of course.

Luther was furious at the practice. He had seen some of the corruption of the church, a corruption which is part of every organization that has people in it. He knew first hand that there are power plays, that every leader is tempted by the power of their office. So he nailed 95 complaints to the door of the university church, in an attempt to correct what he saw as an abuse of power and a distortion of the Gospel.

The Gospel is clear: “by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”

So let’s talk about grace a little bit. What’s so amazing about grace?

In a recent book, Eugene Peterson asked, “What is it? What does it consist of?” He noted, “Grace is an insubstantial, invisible reality that permeates all that we are, think, speak, and do. But we are not used to this. We are not used to living by invisibles.” Then he found a metaphor: it’s like swimming in water.

If you look at water, if you pass your hand through water, you can see it’s not going to hold anybody up. But swimmers know if they relax on the water, it will prove to be miraculously buoyant. And if they make a succession of little strokes in the water, they will begin to make some progress. It can’t be hurried. You have to trust the water. It only makes sense if you get into the water, rather than remain fearful on the bank of the river.

Grace is not what we do; it’s what we participate in. As he notes, “But we cannot participate apart from a willed passivity, entering into and giving ourselves up to what is previous to us, the presence and action of God in Christ that is other than us. Such passivity does not come easy to us. It must be acquired.”

He goes on:

In fifty years of being a pastor, my most difficult assignment continues to be the task of developing a sense among the people I serve of the soul-transforming implications of grace – a comprehensive, foundational reorientation from living anxiously by my wits and muscle to living effortlessly in the world of God’s active presence. The prevailing North American culture (not much different from the Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Greek, and Roman cultures in which our biblical ancestors lives) is, to all intents and purposes, a context of persistent denial of grace.[3]

It is grace that saves us, the grace of God that declares acceptable what is otherwise unacceptable. “This is not your own doing,” says Ephesians. “It is the work of God,” the hard work of Christ bearing all sin on the cross, the hard work of raising to life what was dead, the hard work of winning over God’s beloved children who think that if only they work harder and obsess a bit more, they will earn the love of God.

Grace says, “Give it up. You are already loved and forgiven.”

So Martin Luther shares his own story, and writes:

Although I lived a blameless life as a monk, I felt that I was a sinner with an uneasy conscience before God. I also could not believe that I had pleased him with my works. Far from loving that righteous God who actually loathed him. I was a good monk, and kept my order so strictly that if ever a monk could get to heaven by monastic discipline, I was that monk. All my companions in the monastery would confirm this. And yet my conscience would not give me certainty, but I always doubted and said, ‘You didn’t do that right. You weren’t contrite enough. You left that out of your confession.”[4]

It was only when he heard the Gospel anew, “by grace you have been saved,” that he knew the one thing greater than our goodness is the goodness of God, the God who accomplishes what we cannot, the God who rescues us from our addiction to self-destruction, the God who declares, “You are mine; I have bought you at a price.”

Before he died a couple of years ago my dad was a high achievement individual. You might imagine my surprise one night when he told me on the phone that he had started meeting with a spiritual director. It was astonishing for an engineer for whom everything was quantifiable to begin exploring the mysteries of divine love. But I suppose that work is waiting for all of us to undertake, sooner or later.

So every Thursday night, when Mom went to church choir practice, Dad met with a retired Presbyterian minister named Vince. Vince had been a high achievement person too. For many years, he served with distinction as the pastor of a nearby church full of IBM engineers, and it was a good fit.

But he had some bumps too. A hidden bout with alcoholism prompted him to retire early and move to a small cottage on the edge of my hometown. He had gone to rehab, gone to AA, and gotten his life together. One day, in a chance conversation with my Dad, he enquired if Dad would like to get together and talk about spiritual matters. So they did.

At the time my dad had gotten quite involved with the local Presbyterian leadership and was elected to serve as the moderator of his Presbytery. He took along all his concerns and questions for those spiritual conversations. He would say, “Vince, what about this? Or what about that?” Vince would listen, pause, and smile. And then Vince would say, “Glenn, it's all about grace. It's only about grace.”

I'm sure my Dad pushed back; in fact I am certain of it. And he would say, “Yeah, Vince, but what about this matter? And what about this other matter?” He would fuss a bit. Again Vince would wait him out, smile, and say, “Glenn, it's all about grace. It's only about grace.” And Vince kept repeating his hard-won statements to the point that my Dad began to repeat them for himself. And I can't tell you how grateful I am for that lesson.

So let me remind us of the words that started a Reformation in the church, words that Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and all the rest of the Christians can affirm: “By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping us and calling us to do good works.”

It’s all about grace. It’s only about grace.

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[1] “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” November 1999

[2] Romans 2:4, 11:22; Titus 3:4

[3] Eugene H. Peterson, Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2010)  pp. 94-96

[4] Quoted in Karen Armstrong, A History of God (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974) 276.

By Scripture Alone

Hebrews 4:12-13

October 8, 2017

Reformation Series

Rev. William Carter

This month marks 500 years since Martin Luther sparked a spiritual revolution that we call the Reformation. It began on October 31, 1517, as he posted 95 theses on a church door and invited an academic debate. Neither he nor the Roman church had any idea what that basic act set in motion.

We are going to revisit Luther’s work in sermons and adult classes this month. In the sermons, we will explore three mottos that marked the Reformation: “soli scriptura,” by scripture alone; “soli gratia,” by grace alone, and “soli fide,” by faith alone. Then on October 29, Reformation Sunday, we will sing Luther’s hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” and reflect on how the Christian church might need to be reformed in our own day.

So to begin, let us hear the Word of the Lord as it comes to us from the Letter to the Hebrews:

Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.

In the beginning, there was only one church. Now there’s a different brand of church on a lot of street corners. That would have been an unusual situation in the early 1500’s. The western church had its headquarters in Rome, and it was the only show in town, at least in Europe.

The kings and queens gave their solemn allegiance to the pope, who ruled over all Christendom, quite literally the dominion of Christ. The church was the center of all commerce. It was the glue of civilized society. It held the keys to the kingdom of God, and determined who would go to heaven and who would burn eternally. So it was always important to be on the good side of the church.

The church’s power was absolute. Its authority was unquestioned. If anybody misbehaved, they were punished publicly while the church approved. If anybody doubted the faith, they were reprimanded and threatened with fire. If a public tragedy occurred, it was widely believed to be God’s punishment for the sins of the people. And the only way out was to do what the church told you to do, and to believe what the church told you to believe.

Ah, “the good old days!”  Compare that with where we are now. There was no freedom to think for yourself. The church told you what to think. It shaped your entire life. There was no freedom to do as you wished. Life was difficult, and there weren’t a lot of options on how to spend your time. It’s nearly impossible for us to imagine what life was like for the 16^th century Europeans.

And then the Reformation happened. How can anybody explain it?

Intellectually, people were starting to think. Some of their thoughts were new. It would be another 150 or 200 years before the Europeans began to imagine how life might be constructed if the church wasn’t calling all the shots. Yet there was the stirring of a renaissance, a French word that literally means “rebirth.” There was a rebirth of imagination, literature, music, and the arts. Some dared to think freely, on their own time, of course,

But some of the leading thinkers were unshackled by tradition. They could read and write. Certainly this new form of humanism was fermenting across the land.

Economically, the times were changing. The old medieval system of a Lord in his castle and the servants in the fields was breaking down. People were finding opportunities to work in the cities. There was a migration from the countryside to the towns. As they lived closer together, there was more conversation, less isolation. People started to question the autocratic rulers who directed their lives, or tried to.

There was also a new form of technology, something called the printing press, which was the first form of mass communication. Words could be set in type, and then duplicated and sent far and wide. This prompted a desire for literacy – the printing press is no good if people cannot read – and therefore education was increasingly seen as a noble pursuit of the common people.

Things were changing intellectually, economically, and technologically. And into this situation comes an Augustinian monk named Luther. He had joined the monastery in a time of personal anxiety. One day a lightning storm came too close. It terrified him to think that he could die and would not be good enough to stay out of hell. So his way out was to join a strict monastery, to purge his soul before it ended up in purgatory.

Luther was a bit obsessive. He went to confession four times a day, usually for an hour and a half each time. He would unburden his soul to a very patient priest, receive the penance, stand up and step out of the confessional booth, and then think of some sins that he had not yet confessed. Spiritually he was stuck.

We can be certain that he was an exhausting brother to have around the monastery, anxious, zealous, frustrated, and frustrating. But in a smooth move, he was ordered by his superiors to teach at the new University in the town of Wittenberg. He didn’t want to do it, but he was ordered to do it. The task unsettled him even more.

Luther was certain that he was ill equipped to teach. So, in addition to his obsession with confession, he became obsessed with study. His textbook was the Bible. He started studying the Psalms, which he already knew from praying them continuously at the monastery. Then he moved to Paul’s letter to the Romans, and that’s when the light went on.

The year was 1515. Martin Luther started digging into the toughest, densest letter of the apostle Paul, and he got stuck in the very first chapter. He got as far as verse 16, where Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.”

Now, wait a minute: his whole life was about shame. He was ashamed of the thoughts in his head, ashamed of the functions of his body, ashamed by how much shame he felt. It never occurred to him to be unashamed, especially of the gospel and the power of God. And then to read that this saving power comes through faith, not by our inadequate thoughts and deeds, but through faith . . . well, the thought of it buckled his knees and drove him to the ground.

Then he went on to the next verse: “The righteousness of God is revealed through faith by faith…” Luther had been convinced of the righteousness of God; he believed it was a terrible justice whereby God was absolutely right and the rest of us are completely wrong. But to have the words “Gospel” and “righteousness” in the same phrase? That was troubling, intriguing, perplexing. It drove Luther to deeper study, deeper reflection.

As somebody says,

“Luther came to the conclusion that “the justice of God” does not refer, as he had been taught, to the punishment of sinners. It means rather that the “justice” or “righteousness” of the righteous is not their own, but God’s. The “righteousness of God” is that which is given to those who live by fiath. It is given, not because they are righteous, not because they fulfill the demands of divine justice, but simply because God wishes to give it… It means that both faith and justification are the work of God, a free gift to sinners.

As a result of this discovery, Luther tells us, ‘I felt that I had been born anew and that the gates of heaven had been opened. The whole of Scripture gained a new meaning. And from that point on the phrase ‘the justice of God’ no longer filled me with hatred, but rather became unspeakably sweet by virtue of a great love.’”[1]

All of that long story is introduction and illustration of our text, from the letter to the Hebrews:

Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.

The word of God is living and active. The philosophers will say the Reformation emerged from free thinking folks who bucked against the Roman system. The economists will say that the feudal system was breaking down and pushing people toward financial freedom. The techno-wizards will say the printing press spread around Luther’s sermons and forged new communities. But at the heart of it all, God spoke.

That’s what the Bible means by “the word of God.” It’s not referring to a Book, it’s pointing to a Voice. The Bible records what faithful people have heard God say through the ages, but what we really need is to hear God speak. And the great miracle of miracles comes when God’s Spirit breathes alive the ancient words that God first spoke.

Now, there’s no other Book that is so accessible to scrutiny and study. The Bible is unique. The Muslims do not scrutinize their scriptures; they recite them, without commentary. But the Bible has been discussed and debated, questioned, explored, and studied, ever since the Jews began to collect the texts of their storytellers, sages, priests, and prophets.

The Christians come out of that tradition. Our Bible is an open book. It’s a human book, with human stories and human literary forms. It is also a holy book, not merely because of what it says, but because of the God that it points to. It is the primary means by which God gets through to us, an open book waiting to be read and studied.

But God will only get through to us if we open the book. And if God gets through to us, it’s like a two edged sword. It cuts away all the distortions and the lies. It frees us from all the tangled deceptions of the human mind and heart. It slices away all the nonsense that we tell ourselves.

So imagine you’re Martin Luther, and your whole life has been an anxious climb to self-improvement. You have tried to claw yourself toward perfection and you know you’re failing miserably. You’ve angered your father who thought you belonged in law school, and you’ve joined up with a monastery that somehow reinforces all your spiritual inadequacies.

And when you’re ordered to teach the Bible, you start to read it, really read it – and you discover at the heart of whole thing is the Word that you are forgiven. Not because you’re good, not because you’re earned it, but solely because God says you’re forgiven. All those spiritual burden that you’ve been carrying are sliced away by the sword of the Lord.

The “righteousness of God” comes by God declaring you are righteous, when you know that you’re not, but you trust that God makes it so.

This is where the Reformation begins, friends, where it begins again and again: as God speaks and slices away all the excessive demands of religion and invites us to trust that we are loved with an eternal, holy love.

For Martin Luther, it sent him on a lifelong trajectory of studying the Bible, reading it night and day, writing commentaries, preaching sermons, teaching classes, and eventually deciding that the Bible is so important that he translated it out of the old churchy language of Latin into the language of his German neighbors. His conviction was that the Bible belongs in a language that can be understood.

And this will be how God speaks to us: through the ancient texts, in our own language.

But beware of the day when God speaks anew: “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword…able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Before God, no creature is hidden…”

With that, the medieval church would find itself exposed, its unquestioned authority punctured by the Bible and the German scholar who studied and taught it. Luther would go on to say, “A simple layman armed with Scripture is greater than the mightiest pope without it.”

More on that next week, as Luther nails some of his newfound understanding to the church door.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Justo Gonzales, The Story of Christianity: Volume 2 (New York: Harper Collins, 1985) 19-20.