Loving God, your love and mercy amaze us so much that sometimes we have trouble believing it.  Help us to experience the freedom that you give to us through Jesus and to live each day by the power of your Spirit; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

    Have you ever had somebody phone you up and tell you that they have a free gift for you?  How did you respond? (excited? suspicious?)  Most of us who have been around the block a few times are probably at least a little bit suspicious when somebody offers us a free gift.  We ask, “What’s the catch?”, right?  What are we going to have to do in order to get this “free gift”?

    Today, I’m wondering if people respond to the gospel with the same sort of suspicion.  After all, did you hear the “free gift” offer in today’s second reading?  All who put their faith in Jesus Christ are justified by God’s grace as a gift (Rom. 3:22-24).  Another way to say the same thing comes from Eugene Peterson in The Message:

Out of sheer generosity [God] put us in right standing with himself.  A pure gift.  He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be.  And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.

“A pure gift.”  That’s how God saves us and forgives us.  Jesus did it for us.

    Yet, are most of us really comfortable with this?  Do we still ask, “What’s the catch?”  Do we want God to give us a list of things that we really need to do in order to get in?  Or, do we just create our own list so that we won’t have to feel “beholden” to anybody?

    I truly think that this is a large part of what was going on in the church at the time of the Reformation.  People wanted to have things that they had to do in order to get into heaven, and so the church leaders created things that people could do.  They could purchase indulgences.  They could do lots and lots of penance.  They could pay in order to come and see bones and relics from the saints.  They could pay to have a certain number of masses said – especially masses that would remember their dead relatives and move them on their way out of purgatory into heaven.

    Now, regardless of how much you know about the Reformation, you’ve probably heard somewhere along the way about a guy named Martin Luther who nailed something to the church door.  Even that much made it onto the Simpsons when Lisa apparently created Lutherans.  Anyways, the date when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg was October 31, 1517.  Do any of you know why Luther chose Oct. 31st in order to do this?  

    The next day would have been All Saints Day, and there was going to be a display of bones and relics of the saints at the church the very next day.  As I already mentioned, people could come and pay a fee and view these relics, and it was believed that this would help speed their way into heaven – kind of like having the good deeds of the saints rub off on you simply by being close to these relics.

    And so, part of what Luther was saying in his 95 theses was, “Listen, people.  You don’t need to do this.  You don’t need to keep paying money that you can’t afford in order to reserve your spot in heaven.  This is not what the Scriptures teach.  God saves us as a gift.  It’s right there in Romans and Ephesians.  We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  It is God’s gift.”  Even today, though, I’m not sure we know what to do with this.  When confronted with God’s grace and love, how many of us still prefer legalism?

    You know, I might be reading things wrong, but it seems to me that the churches with lots of rules have a higher attendance and a higher level of participation.  Think about it for a moment.  If you are taught that you need to be at worship every Sunday and giving at least a tenth of your income to the church in order to be worthy of salvation, aren’t you going to take that pretty seriously?  Or, if you’re taught that you must receive the Sacrament every week and must go to confession and do penance in order to be fit for salvation, wouldn’t you take that pretty seriously, too?  Or, if you have a list of rules to follow – things like no smoking, no drinking, no dancing, no wearing revealing clothing, no gambling – then you can really tell who is in and who is out, can’t you?

    It seems to me that, in spite of the fact that most of these are humanly created rules, people much prefer having the cut and dried, “Here’s what you need to do.”  And yet, some of those same rules have created so much anguish over the years.  There were the people in Luther’s day who were dirt poor and yet were told that they could not attain salvation without paying for it.  There are the people who have been shunned or kicked out of the church over the years for a failed marriage, or a breach of the rules – often at the very time in their lives when they were most in need of love and support.  There are the people who have experienced only judgment from the church and from Christians and who believe that God really has no use for them at all.

    The heart of the Reformation message, and the message that we still need to hear today, is that our preferred way of doing things is actually backwards.  Once again, I like the wording used by Eugene Peterson in his paraphrase of Romans 3. 

What we’ve learned is this: God does not respond to what we do; we respond to what God does.  We’ve finally figured it out.  Our lives get in step with God and all others by letting [God] set the pace, not by proudly or anxiously trying to run the parade. (The Message)

God saves us through Jesus Christ as a gift, and all that we do is in response to God’s grace and love.

    Actually, this is where the freedom comes in that was mentioned in our gospel for today.  Rather than constantly having to wonder if we have done enough to make the grade, God says to us, “You are my own dear child through your faith in my Son, Jesus.  Now go and become the person whom I always intended you to be, empowered by the Holy Spirit and imitating Jesus.”  We are free to make mistakes.  We are free to worship and to give thanks.  We are free to live as children of God, saved and forgiven through our baptism into Christ.

    Of course, because we belong to Jesus, we will quite likely do some of the same things that are legislated in more legalistic circles.  However, when we worship regularly or give generously or pray daily or receive the sacrament as often as we can, we do it not out of fear but out of love.  The same goes for how we live our lives.  Certainly, those who believe in Jesus live in a certain way – loving and serving God and the people around us.  Yet, once again, it is not out of fear that we might not have done enough to get in, but out of gratitude for God’s gift of salvation and out of love for Jesus Christ.

    This is the freedom that comes from knowing Jesus Christ as Lord.  Thanks be to God for this most gracious gift!  Amen.

Reformation Day                                Romans 3:19-28
October 31, 2010                                John 8:31-36
St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church
Pastor Lynne Hutchison
 © 2010 Lynne Hutchison  All Rights Reserved