Reformation as Revolution
The reformation was a revolution.
I think it is easy to forget how absolutely radical Martin Luther and his reformation contemporaries were.
Imagine this: death is around every corner. If you or a loved one meet death between a sin (and there is a long list of ways one can do that) and confession, and aren’t able to get last rites, you are heading to a place of, “ great joy and pain.” A place where you will be purified of your sins, where you might suffer for them, a place no one really knows too much about but it doesn’t sound great: purgatory. This idea has been rooted in your brain since you were a child. You wear it like a cloak.
You can’t read the Bible, but you have been told again and again it’s in there. You try to go to confession as often as you can, to do penance and receive absolution so you can escape the unknown (probably suffering) of purgatory, but it’s hard. You’ve got work, you’ve got your family, you’ve got things to do. You aren’t sure if your loved ones died with sins on their soul. You don’t know if they might be suffering in purgatory.
Now, there’s this thing that people are talking about – you can give the church money and buy indulgences. You can get your loved ones out of purgatory! You can buy indulgences in preparation for the possibility that you might die with sins on your soul. But you don’t have a lot of money. But you want to get loved ones out of purgatory! What do you do?
This matter weighed on the souls of people in 15th & 16th century Europe. In posting the 95 theses, in sending out his pamphlets and making his arguments public, Martin Luther, the namesake of our denomination, set people free from the pressure and stress of worry about purgatory.
His simple assertion – that we are saved by grace through faith, that we could not be saved by works caused a revolution. By putting scripture in the hands of people in their own language, by telling them they could interpret scripture for themselves, that they didn’t need a priest as in intermediary, he set people free from the control of the church, free to learn what God was saying to them on their own.
Like many people who make huge cultural changes, he was hoping for reform. He thought he would point these problems out to the church, that his arguments would open their eyes and that they would change. He ended up facing death, and only through his popularity and having friends with power did he manage to escape.
Martin Luther risked death for his convictions – he risked death to follow Jesus Christ. He risked death so that people might be spiritually free.
I want to make sure I say here that Martin Luther was far from perfect. He was a hothead, he was kind of a jerk (who had very creative insults), and later in his life he became very antisemitic. That his writings were used to support the Third Reich and the holocaust are a stain upon his legacy that we must remember, as we remember the complacency of the church founded on his writings during that time.
Simul Justus Et Pecattor: Simultaneously Saint and sinner. It applies to Luther, too.
But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed and is attested by the Law and the Prophets, the righteousness of God through the faith of 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 demonstrate his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed it was to demonstrate at the present time his own righteousness, so that he is righteous and he justifies the one who has the faith of Jesus.
It was Romans that broke open Martin Luther to this idea of being saved by grace, to the freeing reality that we can never, ever be perfect but we will always be forgiven.
There is freedom in accepting that we all – every one of us – are sinners. We all mess up.
There is freedom in realizing that God is not keeping score.
There is freedom in loving one another the way God loves us. Understanding that each and every person messes up, that we all make mistakes, that we all hurt people and we are, each and every one of us, worthy of love.
There is freedom in following Jesus, as he says in todays reading from John.
As Christians, we are forgiven.
As Christians, we are free.
But what are we to do with that freedom?
In Martin Luther’s The Freedom of Christian, he writes,
“The Christian individual is a completely free lord of all, subject to none.
The Christian individual is a completely dutiful servant of all, subject to all”
For Luther, filled with the Holy Spirit, we are compelled to do good things and it is a part of Christian life. There is freedom in submitting ourselves to Jesus, which, in turn, means serving our neighbor.
He wrote,”
Finally, we will discuss those things done for one’s neighbor. For a human being does not live in this mortal body solely for himself or herself and work only on it but lives together with all other human beings on
earth. Indeed, more to the point, each person lives only for others and not for himself or her-
self. The purpose of putting the body in subjection is so that it can serve others more genuinely and more freely.
Although individual Christians are thereby free from all works, they should nevertheless once again humble themselves” in this freedom, take on “the form of a servant,” “be made in human
form and found in human vesture,” and serve, help, and do everything for their neighbor. This precedes the biblical text on which the original sermon may have been based.
just as they see God has done and does with them through Christ. And they should do this
freely, having regard for nothing except divine approval.
Look here! This should be the rule: that the good things we have from God may flow from
one person to the other and become common property. In this way each person may “put on”
his [or her] neighbor and conduct oneself toward him [or her] as if in the neighbor’s place.
These good things flowed and flow into us from Christ, who put us on and acted for us, as
if he himself were what we are. They now flow from us into those who have need of them.
Just as my faith and righteousness ought to be placed before God to cover and intercede for
the neighbor’s sins, which I take upon myself, so also I labor under and am subject to them
as if they were my very own. For this is what Christ did for us. For this is true love and the
genuine rule of the Christian life."
He closes by saying, “Therefore, we conclude that Christian individuals do not live in themselves but in Christ and their neighbor, or else they are not Christian. They live in Christ through faith and in the neighbor through love. Through faith they are caught up beyond themselves into God likewise through love they fall down beneath themselves into the neighbor—remaining nevertheless always in God and God’s love, as Christ says in John 1[:51]: “Very truly I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.””
What a glorious thing it is to have Jesus, to know we are both fallible and forgiven, to live in the now and not yet of eternal life, receiving glimpses of the kingdom on earth and looking forward to the kingdom when Jesus returns.
And as a response to this joy, to these gifts, we care for one another as though they are Christ. As Jesus says in the parable of the sheep and the goats, when we look upon the prisoner, we see Jesus. When we look upon the immigrant, we see Jesus. When we look upon the poor, the hungry, the unhoused, all of the people who are pushed to the edges of society, we see Jesus and act accordingly. When someone has done harm, we have mercy as God has had mercy on us.
And think about the freedom in this – the freedom to let go of judging people, of holding them (and ourselves) up to standards we will never meet. The freedom to simply love because we are loved, to provide mercy because we were shown mercy.
Simultaneously saint and sinner.
Saved by God’s unending grace.
Free in Christ to love and to be loved fully, radically, without restriction or borders.
It is a joy to be a Christian, and to overflow with love and mercy.
Amen
