(Using the print feature in your browser will print the sermon without the navigation menu on the left.)
Lots of people can claim to believe in Jesus without truly believing what is ultimately true. The Jews in the Gospel lesson had been believing in Jesus, says Saint John. Lots of people can say that but do not necessarily hold saving faith. Jesus had been preaching before our Gospel lesson this: “Unless you believe that I am He” — the one sent by the Father — “you will die in your sins.” When Jesus affirmed that all He spoke was on the Heavenly Father's authority, many of these Jews appeared to be convinced. Yet, it seems, they had an incomplete faith. It seems they were simply impressed with the godliness of Jesus' preaching.
They were on one of those slippery slopes. Convinced of Jesus' authenticity as being one who speaks for the Heavenly Father, they thought they were making a God–pleasing choice. They had “decided to follow Jesus”, because they thought they had the free will to do so. You see, just because they believed in Jesus does not mean they believed He was the eternal Son of God come to save them from their sins. Like so many people today, these Jews in today's Gospel are simply trying to cover their bases before God — to them, Jesus is just one of many ways God gives to gain His eternal favor. He was to them a good teacher and example, and they were willing to hedge their bets that Jesus was right.
That makes these Jews a typical example of sinners who think they can do it themselves. They think they have the ability to do the right thing, and if they are good enough people, pious enough, somehow God will not let them die in their sins. Luther was like that at one time, trying to appease God through works of piety and penance. If as a monk, he could pray enough, perform enough rituals, pull down Jesus off the shelf just enough as some sort of magic charm, maybe the monk could make it all work out for himself, earn his place in purgatory at least.
There are too many to this day who feel the same way. If I can just show God that I love Him, show Him that I choose to follow Him, show God and my neighbors that I have the Holy Spirit, that I am a good and righteous person by my actions, then I will assure myself and others that God will take me to heaven. Then, there are those who count the numbers of prayers they say, count how many times they have attended services, the number of nice things they have done for the neighbor, and they try to make it all add up.
It is a deficient understanding of who Jesus is and what He came to do that leads to this. Jesus confronts this head on: “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 truth of God's Word is not just any truth contained therein. The truth for all of us is not contained in empty rituals, counting sacrifices, offerings, and prayers said. The truth is not that we can do anything at all to earn God's favor and save ourselves.
The truth of God's Word that sets people free is that God's eternal Son, Jesus Christ, came into the world, taking on our sinful flesh, to save sinners by atoning for our sin with the sacrifice of His own life on the cross. He bought the freedom of all people from sin with the cost of His own holy and precious blood. All of the Word of God contained in the Scriptures points to that central truth. All of our faith, all of our belief, all of our piety, must have as its focus and object Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected as well.
Today, we celebrate the Festival of the Reformation — three days early — the 31st of October, 1517, when Luther nailed the 95 Theses onto the church door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. If you've never been to Wittenberg or the Luther lands of east central Germany, you should save your pennies and go if you want to know the place from which your confession of the faith has come.
The Castle Church has a huge round tower, next to its entrance, visible for miles, with the words “Ein feste Berg ist unser Gott, ein gute Wehr und Waffen” in huge gold gilded letters going all the way around the tower. A mighty fortress is our God, a trusty shield and weapon. Down from the tower, about midway down the length of the Church, are two huge doors enscribed in bronze with the text of the 95 Theses themselves. The actual doors where Luther nailed the Theses were burned out during the various wars that swept through Germany after the Reformation. In the Church, Luther's grave lies under the huge pulpit in which he rarely preached. He preached regularly down the main street about three fourths of a mile at the town church, Saint Mary's, next to the town hall. Further down the street is the former monastery that was given to Luther and his family to live in. It is now a museum. Go all the way down the main street to the end of town opposite the Castle Church and you find the tree under which Luther burned the papal bull.
Luther, by the grace of God, came out of the darkness and despair of his sin and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, pointed God's people back to the truth of God's Word and away from the ancient and often repeated errors of trying to earn God's grace and the forgiveness of sins by doing works of service, piety, or worse, by dropping money in the Church's coffers. Luther rediscovered and gave back to the Church her Savior, Jesus Christ. He abided in the truth, and the truth set him free.
But for too many Christians and too many Lutherans, Luther has become not the person that points to Jesus' atoning blood and merit. Instead, for many he is just the person that freed them not to be Roman Catholic. He is the person who freed them to read the Scriptures as they saw fit according to their own sinfully flawed reasoning. For too many, he is the example of how to be independent and do your own thing. Luther called such people enthusiasts. Their thinking takes them back to the same place where Rome and those Jews in the Gospel lesson were stuck: in the ditch of trying to find your own way to heaven on your own merits.
The sites in Germany seem to emphasize the history that sees Luther breaking up the monster that was the Roman Catholic papacy and being a sort of revolutionary that stood up to the bully. What a brave and great person Luther was. But Luther rolls in his grave, because right above it is preached a steady diet of Reformed/Calvinist drivel that encourages people to try harder to prove to themselves and to God they are good enough Christians, with Luther as the example. Luther would be preaching that they need to remain in Jesus' Word alone, because that is the only source of truth, and only that truth can set you free from sin and death.
Contrary to the story of Luther I learned growing up in Indiana's Lutheran schools, the Reformation did not only have as its sole enemy the Roman papacy. The worst enemies, in many respects, were those enthusiasts who thought Luther's reformation was instead a rebellion. The earliest forms of charismatic Pentecostalism reared its ugly head at Luther's time. Anabaptists came out of the woodwork who believed infant baptism was not valid and would rebaptize people as adults when they had made their decision for Jesus. The followers of Zwingli and later Calvin would deny that God's Word performs what it says, and would deny that, when Jesus says, “This is my body…. This is my blood….”, Jesus means that He is locating Himself physically there in that bread and in that wine for the forgiveness of sins. They could not place their reasoning in service to the Scriptures. They preferred to abuse their freedom and walk the slippery slopes of self–belief and self–righteousness that lead to rank unbelief. They could not abide in the way, truth, and life that is Jesus Christ.
Luther spent more ink writing and preaching against the abuses of the Protestant enthusiasts that sprang up than he ever did against the Roman Catholics and their errors. Those Protestant enthusiasts currently surround us to this day, and they are not our friends in the faith. As Luther told Zwingli and his supporters at the Marburg Debates, as they continually denied the simple words of Christ, “Your spirit and our spirit cannot go together. Indeed, it is quite obvious that we do not have the same spirit.” Luther abided in the truth of God's Word that pointed him to Jesus Christ alone, and so had the Holy Spirit working in and through him. Zwingli and his friends, who abused their freedom and refused to submit themselves to Christ and His authority, were of a different spirit that does not come from God.
That's why the Luther sites in Germany tell an incomplete story. They are controlled by the German State Church, which long ago unionized with the descendents of Zwingli and Calvin. So the Luther sites are not going to point you away from the Reformed and Calvinists, only away from the Papacy. As a matter of fact, Germans today care more about Luther because he is the father of their common German language — many there are so spiritually bankrupt, they know nothing of the truth of God's Word. Europe and most of her people long ago walked along and slipped down the slope to unbelief, abusing its freedom by indulging themselves in every sort of modernist unbelief. There, but by the grace of God, go we! These examples are why it is so important to stick to the pure Word of God alone, to diligently study God's Word, to diligently study our Creeds and our Lutheran Confessions which so clearly explain for us the truth of God's Word and His will for our lives.
The Son, by His Word, must set you free. Then, you truly will all be free. Your freedom is not a freedom to do as you please, therefore. It is a freedom from sin that has been bought with the cost of Christ's own blood. It is a freedom to live as redeemed and sanctified people, fully confident that this life is not the end of all things, but is on the way to the eternal joy in which we will live for all eternity after our resurrection from the dead. Only a redeemed and truly faithful person who has been freed by the blood of Jesus can sing: “And take they our life, goods, fame, child, and wife — though these all be gone, our victory has been won — the Kingdom ours remaineth.” (Lutheran Service Book 656, stanza 4)
There is one historical site in Wittenberg that tells the entire truth about Luther. The fight against the papacy and indulgences was necessary and important, and all of the famous sites are important. But the little church in the middle of town at which Luther preached and presided over the Divine Service almost every Sunday for so many years — Saint Mary's — is where the truth about Martin Luther is to be found. There is the much smaller pulpit from which he preached thousands of sermons, including those that would be the basis for our Small and Large Catechisms. There is the altar painting by Louis Cranach the Elder that says so much. A good picture is worth more than a thousand words. Luther is pictured in the same pulpit you see when standing there in Saint Mary's Church, and he is pointing out from it to a huge crucifix on which hangs our Lord Jesus in all his agony. The crucifix is between Luther in the pulpit and the congregation who is listening to him preach. He is pointing the people to Christ crucified. There in your Lord Jesus' suffering, death, and resurrection is the truth that sets you free. Luther humbly listened to God's Word and put all of his time and talents in humble service to it. There, the atoning blood of Christ given for us sinners is the truth and the freedom that Luther lived in. By grace, through faith, and for the sake of Christ, may we remain there as well. God grant it for Jesus' sake. Amen.
( TOP )