Loving God, you sent your son Jesus in order to set us free – free to love and serve in communion with you.  Grant us an awareness of your gift of salvation, and fill us with love for all your people; through Jesus Christ our Saviour.  Amen.

           Imagine that you are a poor peasant in Wittenberg in the early 16th century.  You work hard and you attend mass faithfully, but you barely have enough to feed your family.  Then one day a Dominican monk comes to town named Johann Tetzel, who tells you all about the torture and the pain that awaits you in purgatory before you ever can get into heaven, for you will be asked to pay for your sins.  However, he also tells you about something you can buy that’s called an indulgence – a letter signed by the pope that will rescue you from purgatory.  Not only that, you can also buy indulgences for relatives who have already died.  That way, they, too, will be rescued from purgatory.

         Seeing as you are afraid of all of this torture and suffering that might await you, you line up with many other people in order to buy your indulgences.  You  actually can’t afford it, but what is a little bit of starvation next to years of suffering?  And so, you buy your indulgences, and on your way home you encounter an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther.  He grabs the indulgence out of your hand and says, “No!  You didn’t need to get this!  It is Christ who saves us – not some piece of paper signed by the pope!  It is Christ who sets us free!”

         Can you imagine the difference, once you finally come to understand what Luther is saying?  All your life you have heard about a God who demands all sorts of things from you.  Every time you sin, you must pay for it.  You must confess it and do penance.  Even then, there are sins that you might not know about, and you will pay for those, too.  It is purgatory that awaits, and not heaven.  Heaven is only for after you are worthy.

         However, the message that Luther discovered in the Scriptures is quite different.  It is Christ who has saved us and who has paid for our sins.  All those who put their faith in him are declared to be righteous.  “By grace you have been saved through faith” (Eph. 2:8).  This is the freedom of the gospel, for Christ sets us free from bondage to sin and death in order that we might live in love, and in the service of others.  This is the message that was at the heart of what we now know as the Reformation.

         One of the great tragedies from the time of the Reformation is that the gospel message of salvation and freedom that we have in Christ was never really discussed between those who protested (Protestants) and the Roman Catholic hierarchy of the day.  They literally talked right past each other, and when Luther was excommunicated, it was not so much for his ideas as it was for the way in which he had challenged the authority of the pope.

         It is really only in the last century or so that Lutherans and Roman Catholics have discussed the actual issues that were raised at the time of the Reformation, and thus there is a much closer understanding now than there ever has been in the past.  This is why the commemoration of this 500th anniversary has had a far more ecumenical focus than in the past.  As long as Christ is at the center, we have much that we share in common.

         Today, of course, in addition to commemorating the Reformation, we have also heard about the building and the dedication of Solomon’s Temple.  There are at least a couple of connections between these two things.  The first connection would be the building projects that were going on during both time periods and the hardships that the common people endured in both cases. 

         When Solomon was building the Temple in Jerusalem, it is both a cause for celebration and a cause for concern.  Solomon essentially made slaves of his own people in order to complete the building, sending them 10,000 at a time to go and cut timber in Lebanon.  It is this forced labour that ends up splitting the kingdom after Solomon’s death.  So this is all mixed in there with the accomplishment of actually building the temple.

         Similarly, at the time of the Reformation, the building of St. Peter’s in Rome was being funded by the sale of indulgences.  Essentially, St. Peter’s was being built off the backs of the poor.  At the time, you had church leaders who often were rich, and some who had even bought their positions as bishops or archbishops.  The absence of any care for the poor, which was so central in Jesus’ ministry, was not lost on Luther and others who thought the church had lost its way.

         The other connection between Luther and Solomon is one that has come up time and again over the past few weeks – God’s continued use of frail and fallible human beings.  Both Luther and Solomon did things that are less than stellar.  There are things that Martin Luther said and wrote that the Lutheran church has disavowed as not part of our Christian belief and understanding.  Yet, God still used him to point to Christ.  In the same way, even though Solomon is known for his wisdom and for building the Jerusalem Temple, he is also known for conscripting slave labour, having hundreds of wives, and in the end, worshipping other gods.  God did work through Solomon at times, but he is by no means a pillar of faithfulness.

         But then, are any of us?  Are there any of us who have always been faithful and who have never slipped up and fallen into sin?  That’s why it is such good news that we are reconciled to God – not because we have been faithful enough to earn it, but because Jesus was faithful.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God--- not the result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life (Eph. 2:8-10).

Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Reformation Sunday (NL 4)                                                          1 Kings 5:1-5; 8:1-13

October 29, 2017                                                                             (Ephesians 2:8-10)

St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church

Pastor Lynne Hutchison

© 2017 Lynne Hutchison  All Rights Reserved