Reformation Sunday, 10/27/2024

Sermon: Reformation Sunday, 10/27/2024

Texts: John 8, Romans 3, Jeremiah 31

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

At the heart of today’s celebration of the Reformation movement is a very basic, but essential question: What is the Gospel? What is the good news from God that once received, our lives are never the same? Of course, we hear it every Sunday: God in Jesus Christ has made us free from sin and death, and there is nothing we can do to merit such a gift; God has given it to us from the infinite depths of God’s grace and we receive it gladly by faith. This is the core message gleaned from the Scriptures that was obscured, which the Reformation movement so ardently sought to reify. It is all about what God has done for us, despite our inability to fulfill the law of God. In our tradition, this simple yet profound statement is the pillar by which the church stands firm. But at the root of this reality, we must take note of what propels such an action from God. Why did God do such a thing as taking His own flesh in the person of Jesus Christ and lived out the faith that ultimately saves us and gives us life to the point of death on a cross? What compelled Him to go to such depths of suffering for the sake of such a forgetful and stubborn species, us human beings? This week, I had the pleasure of reading part of Pope Francis’ new encyclical Dilexit Nos, which I think, highlights the deep truth of the liberating Gospel. It answers this burning question through the Apostle Paul’s affirmation: “because ‘He loved us’”.

Pope Francis remarks on these words of Paul, saying:

“The cross is Jesus’ most eloquent word of love. A word that is not shallow, sentimental or merely edifying. It is love, sheer love. That is why Saint Paul, struggling to find the right words to describe his relationship with Christ, could speak of “the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”. This was Paul’s deepest conviction: the knowledge that he was loved. Christ’s self-offering on the cross became the driving force in Paul’s life, yet it only made sense to him because he knew that something even greater lay behind it: the fact that “he loved me”. At a time when many were seeking salvation, prosperity or security elsewhere, Paul, moved by the Spirit, was able to see farther and to marvel at the greatest and most essential thing of all: “Christ loved me”.

Indeed, if we are able to descend into the depths of God’s heart, the source of love, it is because He has loved us first. And not only that, like the prophet Jeremiah so eloquently describes, God has written His love in our hearts. Through Christ, we are forever invited and sharers of an intimate relationship with God that abounds in a life that takes its meaning and purpose from the faithful life of Jesus. The way Jesus lived becomes our way to praise this God that made all these good things like freedom, mercy, justice, truth, possible.

As inheritors of the Reformation, nestled in this reality of God’s “I love you” through Christ, we are thus true to our name as we are constantly being re-formed by the fruitful consequences of Jesus’s faithfulness. God speaks to us, looks at us, feeds us,

caresses us, in the Word He shares with us, Jesus Christ Himself. It is no wonder why someone like Martin Luther would stake so much weight on the simple assertion of God’s overwhelming grace. Luther was known to be very scrupulous in regards to his spiritual life. He would agonize over what he termed his anfechtungen, something akin to spiritual warfare. He would be in the confessional for hours, counting each and every sin, feeling with every thought a unbreachable gulf between God and himself. The chasm was so deep, that Luther came to even hate this God that could never be satisfied, a God that would never find him worthy or good enough to love. Nothing he did could bring him to God. But the longer he abided in the words of Scripture, the longer he contemplated the Gospel in his study, he realized the life changing reality. His salvation did not depend on him at all. God had reached out to him since the beginning. The heart of this God that is incarnated in Jesus Christ is an all-embracing grace, there is nothing that needed to be done. He had lived for us, he has accomplished the law, He is the one which reconciles us and binds us tightly to God. Christ is not distance that needs to be breached. Christ is the closeness of God, it is God’s touch of our humanity in all its weakness and possibility.

God wrote His I love you in Luther’s heart, and thus the chains of sin that suffocated and weighed so heavy on Luther were broken apart. Luther experienced God’s grace as testified in Scripture and the history of the Church, his own life experience became a testament to the central conviction of the Gospel: that God does not heap on us the weight of our sin, no, He takes it upon Himself and has made us totally free from the

supposed finality of our failures and weaknesses. We could even reach the point of being happy in weakness and struggle, because this same grace abounds even more for our sake. We have hope of an ever expanding spirit being molded into the shape and content of Christ’s life.

So what is the Gospel, so central to our reformation? It is the incredibly good news that you are infinitely loved, you are constantly being reformed according to the faithfulness of Jesus. It is a love that sets you free with the truth of the One who embraces you, of the One that sees you just as you are and takes you up and does not let you go. Our failures are not impediments, but rather it moves Him to no end to take your hand and lift you up to His heart because His love has always been first from all eternity. So what good news that this Jesus has gone to the depths of life and death for you. That His life has become the bridge for us to walk in assurance towards the heart of God.

So walk in fullness of trust. If there is a reason that I’m standing before you today preaching, it is not because I’m fully confident in my own abilities to love, preach, teach and care. On the contrary, I am just a weak man. But in confident trust in God’s love, I stake my life in that He calls to wonderful ways of living that are burning to find expression within my heart, and I trust that God in the same way that He has placed this desire in me to love, preach, teach and care, that He will give the increase for these things to take place in my life for the sake of others. And He does this in all

our lives. In the Christian life there is no need of boasting of exploits, for all things are God’s, all is a gift, all is grace. How important it is to proclaim this gospel! In a world where our value lies in how productive we are, the voice of your Creator is letting you know that life is not about how much you’ve done, or how virtuous, or how able or unable, strong or weak, or intelligent, or rich or poor, or even how pious we have lived. It is all about the gift of being who you are, the giftedness of your unique existence in the sight of the One who has loved you since the beginning. Let us be joyful receivers of this gift and live in the freedom of a life close to God’s heart.