Reformation Day Every Day

Jesu Juva

St. John 8:31-36                                                            

 October 25, 2020

Reformation Sunday                                   

 Dear saints of our Savior~

          Back when I was a seminary student in St. Louis, I spent one summer working for the grounds crew.  If you’ve been there, you know that the seminary property is filled with beautifully maintained trees, shrubs and flower beds.  One day the supervisor sent a few of us out with chainsaws.  Our orders were to cut down some overgrown juniper bushes and trim off a few low-hanging tree branches.  One of my fellow students got a little carried away.  Apparently, the power of the chain saw went to his head because, by the time the lunch hour rolled around, this guy had practically deforested the entire campus.  Everywhere he looked, he saw something that needed cutting.  He just couldn’t stop.  To this day, the old timers still refer to it as “The Seminary Chain Saw Massacre.”

          I have no proof, but I suspect that the big statue of Martin Luther on the seminary campus just might have shed a few tears that day.  For the Reformation that Luther began 503 years ago this week was always intended to be limited, focused, and conservative—a reformation, not a revolution.  Luther wanted to conserve what was good in the church and to fix what was bad.  Luther was

working with a scalpel, not a chainsaw.  He didn’t want to slash and burn, but only to prune and trim away those teachings that were impure and un-Biblical.  He didn’t want to split the church or even start a “new” church.  He merely wanted to start a debate about reform.  So he printed up 95 theses, posted them on the doors of the castle church in Wittenberg, and so began what we now call “the Reformation.”

          And in many ways the Reformation continues to this day.  The church of Jesus Christ is always in need of reform.  In the church it’s never a “once and done” deal where we can finally sit back on our laurels and say, “All done.  Now we can just coast along until Judgment Day.”  Unfortunately, not so.  In the church there is always error, always drift, always a little undercurrent or wind that blows the church slightly off course.  Though with a scornful wonder The world sees her oppressed, By schisms rent asunder, By heresies distressed.

          And what’s true for the church is also true for each of the church’s members—for you and me.  Every baptized child of God is always in need of reformation.  Not a one of us can just coast our way into heaven.  You can’t put your faith life on automatic pilot.  There’s no “once saved always saved.”  There’s no “once confirmed always a Lutheran.”  Your baptism is not a magical ticket to heaven which allows you to live life by your own rules.  Your baptism is power—power for daily living in Christ and daily dying to sin and error.  Your baptism means that reformation day for you is every day.  Every day is a day of repentance.  Every day is a day of battle against the world, the devil, and your own sinful flesh.  For the Christian, every day is Reformation Day.

          In today’s Holy Gospel, many of the Jews had begun to believe in Jesus; but many of those who had believed were just as quickly turning away from Jesus.  They used to believe in Jesus; but not anymore.  God’s gift of faith in Christ can be lost.  Those who once confessed “Jesus is Lord,” can also turn their backs on Jesus and reject the gift of faith.  It wasn’t that God failed them.  It wasn’t that the preaching of Jesus lost its power and luster.  Instead, Jesus’ listeners stopped listening.  They refused.  They turned from the Word.  And without the Word of God, faith dies.

          There’s a warning here for us, to be sure.  Separate yourself from the preaching and proclamation of God’s Word, and you’ll starve yourself right out of the faith.  Let the dust start to collect on your Bible, and then watch your faith weaken, wither, and die.  The Word of God is what fuels the fire of faith.  Turn from the Word—stop listening to the Word—refuse to let the Word have its way with you—and the flame of faith burns out faster than that tiny, little candle inside your jack-o-lantern. 

          Of course, no child of God wakes up one morning and simply decides to disconnect from the Word.  It happens gradually, slowly, imperceptibly.  It may start with a Sunday morning sporting event.  It may start because of a conflict with another church member.  It may start with a move away from home to college.  It may start because of a pandemic.  People begin to wander away from God’s Word in these ways all the time; and with each step away from the Word, faith is further weakened and the distance from the Savior grows.

          Lest there be any doubt about this, Jesus makes this connection crystal clear:  If you abide in my Word,” He says, “you are truly my disciples.  Being a disciple of Jesus isn’t like being a member of a club or a union or a political party.  We can name and claim for ourselves nearly any affiliation we want.  We can call ourselves Christians or even Lutherans.  But to be a disciple—to be a disciple of Jesus is to abide in the Word of Jesus—that is, to be connected to Jesus by holding His Word sacred and gladly hearing and learning it, and allowing those words to have their way with you.  Faith that’s cut off from the Word is like a severed vine.  It will produce no fruit, and will eventually wither and die.

          But for those disciples who abide in the Word of Jesus, there is a wonderful promise:  You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.  Contrary to what you hear these days, there is such a thing as truth—absolute truth that holds true and applies to all people.  There is truth and there is error.  There is right and there is wrong.  There is good and there is evil.  And it is God who determines which is which. 

          The truth is a good thing, but sometimes painful.  The truth that Jesus preached is that we are all sinners.  And by “sinners” Jesus didn’t mean that we occasionally do bad things or say bad words.  It goes much deeper.  Jesus declared that we are all slaves to sin.  The good things that we want to do we cannot do.  And the bad things we hope to avoid doing—well, those are the very things we end up doing.  We are born into this world as slaves—captive to sin and death.  Worst of all, we can’t change that.  We’re stuck.  And sadly, we need a lot more than just a little reforming.  Some nipping and tucking and pruning and trimming and sculpting isn’t enough to free us from our slavery to sin.

          But Jesus says, If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.  Only the Son can free slaves like us.  And so God sent His Son, Jesus, into this world full of slaves.  The Son stood shoulder-to-shoulder with slaves like us.  The Son of God paid the price to make you free—not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death.  On Good Friday, the Son of God became the slave of all.  He did this so that slaves like us might become sons—sons and daughters of God.  And if the Son of God sets you free, then you are free indeed—forgiven indeed.

          That freedom is what Martin Luther discovered when He looked at the cross of Jesus and, for the first time in his life, saw mercy and love and undeserved kindness.  Luther re-discovered the blessed exchange—the sweet swap—which is the beating heart of the faith we confess.  Jesus takes our sin and, in exchange, gives us His righteousness as a free gift through faith in Him.  He who knew no sin became sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

          You need to remember this on those days when you feel like a slave to sin.  That’s no longer who you are!  You need to remember this when you’ve lived more like the devil’s child than like a child of God.  That’s not who you are!  When you are weak, His grace is strong.  When you are tempted, He will provide a way out.  When your sin and guilt threaten to crush you, He can carry it all away in the cleansing words of absolution. 

          Abide in the Word, and you have life and forgiveness.  Abide in the Word, and you are a disciple of Jesus.  Abide in the Word, and you are free indeed.  This is the honest-to-God truth.  The death and resurrection of Jesus means that you are free—free from the condemnation of your sin, free from the pain of the past, and free from worry about tomorrow.  In Jesus, every day is a new day of reformation—a day to begin anew in the love and life of our Savior. 

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.