|
|
Reformation Sunday, October 29, 2006 |
Romans 3:19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For "no human being will be justified in his sight" by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. 21 But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, 23 since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24 they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; 26 it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. 27 Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28 For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. Faith? What Faith? Whose Faith? “For we hold the a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.” These fitting words at once explain and mystify Lutherans and others who on this Sunday celebrate the reform movement within the Church that became known as the Protestant movement. They seem so clear and yet, they are interpreted so widely that it is hard to understand what they mean clearly any more. What does it mean to be “justified”? What does it mean that such a thing happens “by faith”? Which works of the law was Paul arguing over, and with whom? Many scholars of the book of Romans have come and gone trying to explain what these things mean. Surely I do not have the knowledge or the skill to completely understand their arguments, much less to summarize them. Even within the Lutheran community these things are not fully understood? Some wonder out loud if a festival of the Reformation is a problem. It revisits arguments from days long gone, they suggest. They create new arguments where none exist, and in a time when healing divisions, not creating new ones, might be in order. The lack of clear understanding about the basic principles of the Reformation makes it clear to me that we need to remember, if only so that we can commit ourselves to the healing of the church, a healing that was at the heart and center of the Reform movement, even though they never saw their dream realized. It seems that in our world, no less than in Luther’s time, there is a great movement afoot to make something that we do the crucial element of our salvation. Christianity is still, as it has ever been, tempted to be a religion of works that don’t work. Even faith is made by some to be a work. One wonders if Luther is laughing, turning over in his grave, or despairing, as he sees his work so misused. “God has done most of what you need for salvation, but you have to accept Jesus into your heart.” “God has saved you through Jesus Christ, but you have to believe the correct doctrines, as we do, to participate.” “God loves you and has saved you, so it doesn’t matter what you believe or how you live.” From new “works” to do, to the “cheap grace” of the last example, misunderstandings abound. Can we learn to move beyond the battle lines of who is “in” and who is “out” for just a moment to understand what Paul is saying God is up to? God does it all! First and foremost, for Paul, is the understanding that God does it all. It isn’t that the law and its place in Israel’s heart are meaningless, it is just that these things were never meant to effect a right relationship with God. It is God’s action, in rescuing Israel that initiates that relationship. It is God dwelling in their midst that confirms it. The covenant laws, no matter how they were understood were not the way TO God, they were the way OF God, reflecting the great love and mercy of God. Second, faith might be best understood less as something we do and more as something that we stop doing: we stop trusting in ourselves. I teach this to my confirmation students not with words but by living experience: I ask them, in the presence of their parents and classmates, to stand, turn their backs to me and keep their feet firmly planted while they fall backwards. I ask them to trust me to catch them (I have NEVER dropped one in 20+ years of doing this). But I do not support them right away, or catch them right away. I let them fall a bit. I let them fall past the point where they can catch themselves. Then I catch them under their arms and lift them gently back to their feet. Sometimes they can’t do it, or at least not the first time. They move their feet and put out their arms to catch themselves before they reach the point of no return. I still catch them, but we practice it again until they are able to let go. (On occasion there is a student who prefers not to do this, and I never force them to. They have to learn another way. I will also allow the students to catch me from time to time. I never ask the students to do anything that I am not willing to do.) When we are done we talk about the experience. I am clear with them that I am not a “stand in” for God; that God holds and guides them through far more than just a simple backwards fall. We talk about faith as trusting God with our whole lives, freeing us up to live more authentically, not having to worry so much about catching ourselves, not having to cling to our mistakes and justify them or excuse them. The kids are smart. They make connections from their experience that I don’t even see. But mostly they come away with what it feels like to let go and completely trust from an instant. That itself is a good learning. We go on as a class to talk about what it means to be justified. These students have heard that word before, in their computer “keyboarding” or “typing” classes. They know that a justified margin is straight down the edge of the page. From there I tell them that “justified” with God means that they have everything straight, everything in the right place. It means they understand God is God and they are creatures. It means they understand that God alone is trustworthy in the face of the challenges of life and the looming consequence of Sin, death. One of my kids, one year, put it this way, “So you’re saying that so long as we are trying to catch ourselves, we are trying to be God, and we aren’t letting God do his job.” It was so insightful that it took me a minute to respond that God does his job regardless. We just don’t have the freedom that comes with not needing to do it for ourselves. Our lives would be much more than they are, I explain, if we could all live and reflect God’s gifts. God’s dream of abundant life! Finally that is what the Reformation is about. It is about the freedom to live and reflect God’s gift of release from the burden of our sins, breaking the power of evil (death itself) and granting us new life, in abundance. This is a dream not only to free us from having to “justify” ourselves, but also to free our Churches from having to “justify” themselves and their differences as well. It is at this point that we see the difference between what we do as a way to God and what we do as following God’s way. If and when we trust in God, we see God’s way of giving himself for the sake of the creation as our way. If and when communities of faith learn to trust in God, they become places where people are free to live more authentically with one another. Forgiveness is the key. Here’s an example of how it works. Several years ago I heard about a study that was conducted in several area hospitals. The theory was that severe punishments for doctors who made mistakes were leading to cover ups for the mistakes, and they were never being corrected. So one hospital tried forgiving mistakes up front, so long as they were reported and corrective steps could be made for the future. Critics charged that this would lead to a “devil may care” attitude about mistakes and they would increase. In reality, they went down, significantly. Forgiveness works. Love works. God’s plan works. My father used to say that we do not confess our sins in order to get God’s forgiveness (thus making it a “work” and not grace at all) but rather we confess our sins BECAUSE of God’s forgiveness. We are free to confess because we know that God is forgiving. This authentic way of living leads us to communities of hope for a future in which all people might be bound together by this type of forgiveness. Now, I don’t pretend that we see anything but glimpses of this in our lives before we die and are raised from the dead. What I do know is that God’s way of love and forgiveness, of grace and mercy continues to be lost and found and lost and found. We gather on this day not to celebrate a Reformation that has happened, but to remind ourselves that we are a community and individuals where a Reformation is still happening. God’s spirit is active still. Jesus death and resurrection calls us still to trust in a new way of being. When we do, we share God’s future dream, if only in part, until that day when the promise of the future becomes a present reality for us all. Rev. Dr. Luke Bouman |
|
(top) |