Loving God, you reach out to us in love and make us your own through our baptism into Christ.  Continue to renew us in your love, that we might love and serve you rather than ourselves; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

    It’s relatively easy to see why this gospel from John 8 is appointed to be used on Reformation Sunday.  For the uninitiated, Reformation Sunday recalls some of the events in the history of the church – particularly when a young priest named Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.  The gospel is appropriate because one of Luther’s greatest struggles was in knowing that he was a slave to sin and desperately feeling the need to be set free.  Having been taught all his life about an angry God who was just waiting to punish him for his sins, it was like sweet relief for Luther when he discovered in the Scriptures that God was not waiting to condemn him but to save him (Jn. 3:17).  In fact, he had already been saved through his baptism into Christ.  He didn’t need to earn his way into heaven.  He was free to live out his faith in Jesus Christ -- to live in thankfulness and praise for the marvelous gift of salvation.

    Martin Luther would have understood completely when encountering the words of Jesus in the gospel of John: “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (Jn. 8:34).  He also would have understood how all of us need Jesus - the Son of God - to set us free from the power of sin.  He knew that God had created him and all that exists, but that sin had scarred that good creation.  He knew that if he were to stand in the presence of God he would be like a filthy rag in comparison with the holiness and the goodness of God.  He knew that he needed to be covered over with the righteousness of Jesus in order to be acceptable to God.  He knew that his sin and his slavery to sin would keep him from ever living in the presence of God, whether here or in eternity.

    The question to ask today is, do we share this sense of our own sinfulness in the presence of God and of our need for Jesus to set us free?  Do we understand that we are slaves to sin unless Jesus intervenes on our behalf?  Or are we more like the people who were talking to Jesus in the gospel?  Do we look at things and say, “We’ve never been slaves to anyone.  We don’t need to be set free.”?

    Certainly, the Scriptures teach us that as human beings we are subject to the power of sin right from the time of our birth.  We are separated from God and from other human beings because of that sinfulness and are subject to judgment and to death.  Yet, the Scriptures also teach that God has done something in order to restore all things to unity with himself.  God has acted in Jesus Christ in order to wipe out the power of sin and death and judgment.  All who believe in Jesus have been set free – free to live in love for God and for the people around them.

    Yet, we are bombarded with messages in the world around us that tell us that sin is really not much of a problem.  Everybody’s basically good, and after all, who matters more than you do!  Aren’t we told that it’s a good thing if we can be masters of our own life and destiny?  Yet, this is the very definition of sin – wanting to be our own gods - our own masters.  Sin is self-centeredness, or to put it another way, self-serving.  In fact, there are probably a good number of people who live their lives as servants to themselves, but then blame God when things go wrong as if God has actually been in charge of their lives!  How easily we forget that God is not going to come in, uninvited, and make everything just the way we want it.  Rather, God listens to the prayers of those who worship and serve him, and answers in our best interest and for our good, whether we like it or not!

    However, when sin is allowed to be in charge, that relationship with God just isn’t there.  In fact, if we believe what Genesis has to teach us about the effects of sin coming into the world, our relationships with other people all go down the tube, too.  Right from the time that Adam and Eve start serving themselves rather than God, there are problems with every single relationship.  The first relationship to go was the one with God, which had previously been one of love and companionship.  Now there was fear and shame on the part of the human beings, as they tried to hide from God.

    The next relationship to go was between husband and wife, male and female, as they immediately start blaming each other (and anybody else, including the snake) for their disobedience.  Then the relationship between brothers goes sour, as jealousy enters the picture and Cain kills his brother, Abel.  It doesn’t take long before the rebelliousness of humanity becomes so great that God is tempted to destroy all of them, but saves Noah and his family from the flood. Then finally, by the end of Genesis 11, the relationships between nations and peoples have broken down too, as they no longer understand one another and are scattered over the face of the earth.

    All of this is told in order to illustrate for us the effects of sin and of how it drives wedges between people and God and between one person and another.  Then the rest of the Scriptures from there on are all about what God did about it and how God has acted once and for all through his Son, Jesus, in order to bring people back into communion with God and with one another.

    The crux of the Reformation message is that we have been set free.  God has acted in Christ, who broke the power of sin by living a perfectly obedient life.  And then he broke the power of death by allowing human beings to put him to death on the cross and rising to new life.  And so, one might ask the question as to why our world still seems to be so messed up if Jesus has destroyed the power of sin and death.

    The thing is that God has continued to give human beings the freedom to choose how they will live their lives.  God comes to us and says, “This is what I have done for you through my Son, Jesus,” but nobody is forced or coerced into accepting God’s gracious gift.  We are free to believe in Jesus or to reject him.  We are free to allow the power of the Holy Spirit into our lives, or to close the doors and keep God out.

    At the same time, there are limits to our abilities as human beings.  We actually are not capable of believing in Jesus without the Holy Spirit at work in our hearts, enabling us to do so.  We also are not capable of living a good and sinless life.  Our captivity to sin is so strong that only the Holy Spirit can empower us to live in God’s way.  This is part of the truth that we learn as disciples of Jesus.  This is also why it is such good news that Jesus has paved the way into life for us.

    And so, as we seek to live as followers of Jesus, it is a life where constant growth and renewal are needed.  We have been given salvation as a gift, without earning it, because of the love of Jesus Christ, and because we never could earn it, no matter how hard we tried.  As we live in response to that gift, there are going to be times when we fall and when we fail to live as the people that God intended us to be.  This is why confession is part of our prayers to God.  As human beings, we will never become perfect this side of the grave.

    In the same way, the church will never be perfect this side of the grave.  The church continues to need renewal and reformation, mostly because human beings are allowed to be members of it!  Yet, none of this is cause for despair.  The Holy Spirit continues to be an ever-present power, leading us into God’s way both as a church and as individuals.  As such, it is our job to rely on that same Holy Spirit, listening for guidance, learning to be more and more Christ-like, and living out of love for God and for the people around us.

    We are saved by grace, through faith, for lives of service to God and to others.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, let us then live as the people whom God intended us to be.  Amen.

Reformation Sunday                            John 8:31-36
October 25, 2009                                Romans 3:19-28
St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church
Pastor Lynne Hutchison

© 2009 Lynne Hutchison  All Rights Reserved