Preacher: Pastor Elizabeth Damico
Sermon 10.29.17
John 8:31-36
MLC Year A
If I had listened to any of the articles or commentaries leading up to this, the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, then this sermon today would be a history lesson. Martin Luther, the monk of the hour, would be the focal point and we would all leave perhaps feeling better informed about history and proud of our denominational history, Lutheranism.
I just couldn’t listen to those articles, not just because I’m not a historian. But because when I think about the spirit of Reformation Day, it leads me to reflection, reflection over the reforming movement that was, our current brief moment in the life of the church and where the reforming movement may lead us, should be we so faithful as to listen. So, I was pondering these questions this week, “What does it mean to be a Lutheran 500 years after the reformation began, what does it means to be a Lutheran today?”.
In the spirit of this reformation reflection, I would like to share a bit of my personal walk towards being a Lutheran, something I very much cherish as a woman of faith. I did not come into Lutheranism naturally, so to speak. I do not come from a long line of pastors or even Lutherans and there is not a drop of Scandinavian blood running through my veins (not that Scandinavian equals Lutheranism, but more on that later). In fact, in my family there was strong strains of Catholicism, Baptists, Missouri synod Lutherans and Methodists. I choose Lutheranism after much seeking elsewhere. My mother was a church musician and my Dad would drag us to church wherever she was playing or conducting. When she died, she had been working at a Lutheran church and that is where we (kind of) remained. I felt very uncomfortable being at the church that held her funeral and I didn’t go to school with any of the kids in my confirmation class, so I felt like an outsider all the time at church. So, with the wisdom of a lovestruck teenager, I followed my high school sweetie to the Evangelical Free church in town and dove deeply into the praise and worship culture of high emotions, high demands for Christians, high volumes of music. The messages I heard at this new church conflicted with the messages of the church I felt so uncomfortable with. I moved toward the messages about God that were black and white, easy to label behavior or people as “good” and “bad” I even felt more comfortable with the long list of bible verses I was to memorize and the hours of bible study the “good Christians” were expected to complete. I liked the clear expectations that helped me to feel like I was in God’s good graces and knowing what lines I should never cross — it was direct, explicit. For those pivotal high school and early college years I was mostly immersed in a church culture that demanded extremes, and while the phrase “Giving glory to God” was used frequently, I slowly became aware that my spiritual well being really was determined by me. I was the subject of every prayer prayed, I was the focus of our singing, my emotions, my knowledge, my morality — this is what every message circled on over and over again.
Not so dissimilar from Luther’s very personal struggle, though I was certainly not tormented during these years nor was I fearing for my life, I did feel the weight of God’s judgement cast upon me, “ Could I sacrifice enough for God’s favor? Would I ever feel enough, earn enough, be enough for God to love me?”. These were the questions of that time in my life.
Later, as I attended at Lutheran college, I was invited to help out with music in the campus chapel and that led to a job in the campus ministry office planning worship. Suddenly I was singing those “old” hymns of my childhood but I had new ears to hear. I could hear that “I” was not the subject line, instead we were singing of “God beyond all praising and Beautiful Savior and God our help in ages past”. God was the center of the subject line, I experienced an expression of faith that held a God as the certain and firm foundation on which to lay my faith, rather than me.
Luther found this same shift as he scoured Scripture while in seminary. He grew up hearing of the black and white, the demands, the complete inability to be at peace with God. This life changing (and eventually world changing) revelation came because Martin was reading his Bible, which is so simple and so profound all at the same time. It was through the study of God’s Word that a liberation fell upon this suffering man and it was so sweet, so absolute that he had to share, he had to call attention to corrupt practices and culture that was holding this sweet liberation hostage!
Thanks be to God that the core message of freedom and reconciliation are still at the core of the Lutheran church. The Lutheran tradition holds high the spiritual practice and discipline of reading God’s Word and doing so in the language of the people gathered. The Lutheran tradition makes room for the holy mysteries that exist when mortal, flawed people are in relationship with an Almighty, Immortal God. And the Lutheran tradition does not center on the individual experience, our tradition sweeps us up into the wide community of faith of all times and places and points us all toward the suffering neighbor so that we can be beacons of hope and freedom for others.
These core messages were sung into my ears after years of religious judgement and extreme emotional experiences. I heard the sweet liberation given to us in the cross and knew this was the expression of Christ’s church that I was being called to. I truly believe it is the inward peace that we share here during worship that empowers us to live freely and generously for the sake of others, this is exactly what Martin Luther did with his whole life and it is what so many have done for us so that we would walk by faith. We do not pass on Lutheranism, we share the gift of grace, the wonder of God, the power of the Spirit. That is our legacy as God’s children, we express it through the Lutheran tradition here, 500 years later.
And the reformation spirit of the church continues.
By the grace of God the church’s roots will always remain firmly in the gospel. But how will we grow? Martin Luther called out the church that he loved and did so for the sake of those who were unable to experience that liberation. Certainly, though we love our church, strains of exclusion, blindness and division remain throughout the church on earth. Did you know that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is the whitest denomination in our country? With over 3.5 million members we are 96% white. Could the future of the reforming church include naming, repenting of, and being agents of healing this systemic racism?
Learning and breaking open God’s Word together has long been a treasured practice of the church. And yet we are increasingly unfamiliar with the bible. Could braving the Holy book be a part of the reforming future of the church so we are all more equipped and inspired to share God’s love?
Luther experienced the sweet liberation of Christ, and in the church that bears his name I discovered a God that is all loving, making all things — even me — new, each day. How you experience this God and this liberation is a part of God’s story and it is how the church will continue on in the reforming spirit. We are liberated and set free before God and we are liberated and set free so that others may experience this promise, too.
I think one of the truest tenets of Luther’s struggle and the church that bears his name, is that because of the ever reforming Spirit of the church we are comfortable naming our imperfections! We know there is work we are still called to and that invitation extends, not from Martin Luther to us, but from God’s own Word to our own being so that all may know God’s love. That is what it means to be a Lutheran 500 years in the making.
“This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.” Martin Luther
We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing towards it.
By the grace of God, may it be so. Amen.