28 October 2018 St. Athanasius Lutheran Church
The Festival of the Reformation
Vienna, VA
“Jesus, Here, For You”
Text:
Matthew 11:12-19 (Romans 3:19-28)
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God
our Father, and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
Some would say that we
should not have a Festival of the Reformation. We should not celebrate this
day, but, in fact, mourn. For the Reformation, they would say, divided the
church. A wound from which she still has not recovered.
So you should sing a dirge today, not A Mighty Fortress. The color
should be purple, not red. There should be repentance, not rejoicing. Luther is
no hero, but a villain. Not a reformer, but a revolutionary. Not a faithful son
of the church, but a traitor. Benedict Arnold, so some would say.
What shall we say to
this?
Well, the church had been
divided long before Luther ever came along. The apostle Paul already speaks of
divisions in the church in the first century. In fact, he says, there must
be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be
recognized (1 Corinthians 11:19).
After Paul, various heresies and false teachings in the early church caused
splits, and there was what was called “the great schism” at the turn of the millenium - some 500 years before the Reformation - when
the Eastern and Western Churches excommunicated each other. It seems that if
the church was ever united, it wasn’t for long.
Which,
honestly, is what we should expect. We heard a couple of
weeks ago, when we celebrated St. Michael and All Angels, that satan had been cast down to the
earth, and with that, the war in heaven ended, but the war on earth
had just begun. The kingdom of God would suffer violence. The church would be
not a church at peace and rest, but the church militant. Satan will attack
Christians, trying to lure us away from our Saviour.
He will attack the church, dividing her with false doctrine and sometimes even
petty squabbles. And he will seek to infiltrate, too. That
false doctrine find a home in the church and eat her away from the
inside out, so that she is nothing but a empty shell with nothing of substance
inside.
But though some sing a
dirge on this day, it is not a time to mourn. For one very
simple reason. Not because of Luther. We thank God for him, as we
do for all the church fathers who came before us, who
fought for the truth, who often gave their lives, and on whose shoulders we
stand.
Nor do we celebrate the
start of a new church, a Lutheran one, for that would be a grave
misunderstanding of what our church really is. For we are no
new church, but a very old one. For there is, in fact,
only one church. One true one. The church which is the Body of Christ. The
church which is made up of those who belong to Christ. Those baptized by
Him, fed by Him, absolved by Him, who believe in Him. The Christians of the Old Testament who believed in the promise of
His coming, and the Christians of the New Testament who believe that He came,
fulfilling all the promises and prophecies of the Old Testament. One church, hidden in this world of violence and division and sin.
No, we will not mourn for
this reason: because Jesus is here. And as Jesus said: can the
wedding guests mourn when the Bridegroom is with them (Matthew
9:15)?
Yes, we mourn our sins
and repent of them. And there is no shortage of sin to confess in our lives.
But our mourning is not for long, for then we hear the Word of Absolution, that
our sin is forgiven, taken away, not counted against us. You are free. And then
we eat and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus, His pledge to us of the
forgiveness of our sins and the promise of eternal life. That He who places His
Body and Blood into our bodies, will come and raise these bodies to eternal
life. So a foretaste of the feast to come, we call the Lord’s Supper. This is
just the appetizer of the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom. One feast,
though on many altars now.
So how can we mourn when
such great forgiveness is ours? This, for Luther, made all the difference in
the world.
Often times, the
Reformation is boiled down to the three solas:
salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, revealed in Scripture alone. Or
that it was all about justification by grace through faith, aparts
from works of the law, as we heard from Romans today. And those are certainly
true and hallmarks of the Reformation.
But maybe what the
Reformation really boiled down to was this: Jesus is here for you.
You see, at the time of
the Reformation, if you really wanted to get close to God and find Jesus, if
you really wanted to be spiritual, you were told to enter a monastery. And
there, through poverty, chastity, and obedience, through prayer, fasting, and
almsgiving, through climbing the ladder up to God in meditation and
contemplation, you could find Him, get close to Him, making yourself holy. And
Luther tried. He really tried. But the more he climbed, the farther away he
got. And maybe you’ve tried that, too. Praying more, reading more, obeying
more, trying more, trying to climb, trying to get to God . . . and it all seems
for naught. Life comes crashing down, problems pile up, old sins return, and
you find yourself no closer to God than when you started.
Then there were other
reformers, radical ones, who said, yes, God is far away. That’s quite right. He
was here, but He ascended into heaven, to the right hand of God,
and is as far away from us as heaven is from earth. But you can’t get to Him by
climbing earthly ladders! Or doing earthly things. Oh
no! You must ascend spiritually. In your heart. Or ask
God into your heart. Oh yes, that’s where God is. . . . But Luther looked into his heart and
didn’t find God there. He found sin. He found doubts, fears, mistrust, pride,
envy, unholy desires, anger, bitterness - everything but God! And, if your like me, that’s true for you, too.
And then there were those
who say not to worry, for God is everywhere. But if God is everywhere,
is He anywhere? And while that may be true, is it comforting? Comforting when
we see the sin in the world? Comforting when we see the sin in us? Comforting
when sin comes crashing down on us? Comforting when sin comes erupting out of
us? Because why isn’t He doing something? A small child having a nightmare
might know her parents are in the house, but that is not the comfort she needs!
She wants them there, right there, for her! Holding her in
their arms, speaking to her, reassuring her, loving her. Us too.
And so Luther’s question:
I can’t climb up to God, there’s only sin in my heart, and yes, God is
everywhere . . . but where is He for me?
And so the Reformation
really came down to this: Jesus is God, here, for me. I don’t climb up
to Him, He climbed down to me. He’s not in my heart; I’m in His.
And yes, He is the God who is big, but who became small, and here, for
me. To do something. And this isn’t just
history; something that happened a long time ago. It is still true today. And here.
For where is God?
He is curled up in His mother’s arms. He is laid in a manger. He is touching
lepers. He is consoling widows. He is giving sight to the blind. He is giving
hearing to the deaf. He is loving the outcasts. He is
being arrested. He is being whipped and mocked. He is nailed to a cross. He is
laid in a tomb. But then He is risen from the dead!
The three days of mourning are over, and now is the time of rejoicing. And yes,
He ascended into heaven, but not to leave, not to be far away, but to be with
us more than He was before! For when He ascended, He also promised this: “Lo,
I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew
28:20).
And so He is. With us. For as He descended from heaven and was made man,
so He does not now make us climb up to Him with what we do or ascend to Him in
our hearts - He is still coming to us, still here with us, for us. His hands
still washing us, His voice still absolving us and teaching us, His Body and
Blood still feeding us. Here is my Mighty Fortress when the devil attacks. Here
is my refuge when my sins weigh heavy on me. Here is my comfort when the world
crashes down on me, when things don’t make any sense. Here is the Jesus who has
overcome the world for me, and so I know that I too will overcome. Though it
come through a cross, though it come through death and
the grave. He is Lord even of these. And He is my Lord, here, for me.
From
this reality, really, sprung the Reformation.
That the righteousness of God isn’t something to achieve, but given to us in
Christ. That Jesus isn’t far away, but here. That we don’t have to find Him
somehow, but He finds us. From that sprung the three solas.
From that sprung the teaching of justification. From
Jesus, not far away; but here, for me.
And
so for us. What we celebrate today is not a man or a church, but
Jesus, here, for me. The almighty God weak for me.
The all-present God here for me. The living God
crucified for me. The holy God made sin for me. The God of
all creation here loving me and forgiving me.
And this too: a church
where the violent come and still take Jesus by force. For when Jesus was born
of Mary, violent men came and took Him by force and put Him on a cross. Because He wanted them to. He allowed them to. For us. And now He bids us do the same! For
us men and women, violent in our sin, to come and take Him. Because He wants us to. To come and take
Him. To grab hold of His forgiveness! To take His Body and Blood! To
seize His promises and not let them go! And to rejoice, that Jesus is here for
you exactly for this. To be a friend of tax collectors
and sinners. Of the outcasts, the not-good-enoughs, the broken, the hurting.
And any church that does
not teach this, needs to be reformed.
And so this really is a
day to rejoice. As it says in the book of Ecclesiastes, there is a time to mourn, and a time to dance (Ecclesiastes
3:4b). And this is the time to dance and rejoice in the
forgiveness and life of Jesus, here, for you.
We’re not going to
satisfy the world and its desires. As we heard in the Holy Gospel today, they’re
going to want us to dance to their tune. But when Jesus is proclaimed,
when Jesus is given, when jesus
is played, then there is joy and we dance to that tune. For this
is the truth, the reality, that gives hope in the midst of whatever life throws
at you. That doesn’t mean life will be easy! It wasn’t for Jesus or Luther, for
Paul or the apostles. But as Paul would write - even from prison - Rejoice
in the Lord always. Why? For, he says, the Lord is at hand (Philippians
4:4-5). Literally! Bow your head, open your mouth, reach out
your hand, and you have Him. Jesus, and His life and His forgiveness, is
here, for you.
In the Name of the Father, and of the (+)
Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Now the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.