By Pastor Ashton Roberts
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27 Oct, 2024
Reformation Sunday is one of those times when we read virtually the same texts, if not exactly the same texts, every time the observation rolls around. I would most oft en rather preach on the 23 rd Sunday after Pentecost on some rather obscure text from the Gospels than I would on Easter or Christmas Eve. I preach about the resurrection and the incarnation all the time. I am running out of new things to say. And now we have been commemorating the Protestant Reformation and the remarkable legacy of Martin Luther for 508 years. We have been in talks with the Roman Catholic Church for more than 50 years— which is why we are calling this a ‘commemoration’ and not a ‘celebration’— and we have found in that time that we have such wide theological agreement that a joint statement by both churches declaring our agreement on the doctrine of Justification, the primary point of division at the time of the Reformation, is now 25 years old. So, what exactly are we commemorating? For a lot of us, our heritage. Afterall, we are immigrants to this land, and when our forebears landed here, and set up homes and raised crops and families, institutions and livelihoods, they also brought their uniquely German, or Swedish, or Norwegian, or Finnish, or Icelandic, or Danish, faith with them. Some of us were confirmed in our great-grandparents’ language, celebrating with lefsa, or lutefisk, or a potluck, or copious amounts of beer and sausages, or whatever Icelandic people eat. We throw huge Oktoberfest celebrations, we sing old German hymns and Swedish tunes, even if the words are now in English. We memorize Luther’s words in the Small Catechism, even if all we remember 20, 30, 50 years later is ‘Sin boldly.’ We break out the red shirts, sweaters, sport coats, socks; We don our Luther roses and will spend most of the rest of today singing “a bulwark never failing” and maybe Googling “What is a bulwark?” Dr. Lisa Miller, in her book The Awakened Brain, tells us that her research has concluded that religion is 100% environmentally received, meaning that religion and culture are virtually synonymous. To practice our religion is to practice our culture. We receive from our ancestors and we pass on to our progeny these cultural exercises, expressing where we come from and who we are. Dr. Miller contrasts this religious expression against spirituality, an innate sense of transcendent connectedness to something or someone who loves us, holds us, and guides us through this life. While religion and spirituality overlap to a large degree, they are not the same thing. And I think this is Jesus’ point in our Gospel reading. Jesus is speaking to the Jews, and that word itself would be better translated as ‘Judeans,’ because it is referring to people from the region of Judea who expressed their cultural identity by being from this place and worshiping the One God in the Temple in Jerusalem. Only later, once these people from this place who worshiped in this way, were no long in this place and the temple was destroyed so they could no longer worship in this way, did the term come to mean anyone of this common ancestry and religious heritage. Jesus is speaking to these people, who are from this place, and who worship in this way— and even though he is also from this place and worships in this way, he tells them they might have missed the point entirely. Jesus explains “If you continue in my word, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” And these people, who have been practicing a yearly ritual where they reenact God’s deliverance of their ancestors from slavery in Egypt, say to Jesus, “We are children of Abraham, we have never been slaves to anyone.” A lot of good all those Passover’s have done? It’s almost as if the seder begins “What makes this night different from other nights?” and the reply came back, “I have no idea. Pass the lambchops.” Were I to ask you, “How has being a Lutheran had an impact on your experience of God?” What would you say? Would you point to the lefsa or the Luther rose? Would you point to the altar or the font? Or would you say, “I have no idea. Pour me another beer.” Jesus doesn’t disparage their place or heritage, but Jesus calls them to see through it to an experience at the heart of this reality shared by all places, cultures, religions. The freedom that Jesus was bringing was larger than any one place or any one time, any one religion or culture. And these Judeans who believed in Jesus were not being called to set aside their Judaism but to include their Judaism in a bigger universe than the one they had been invited to imagine. Jesus was inviting them into relationship with the One God of the Temple who transcends culture and place. I believe that this is the calling of the reformation. If we are beholden to a culture, or a single expression of religion, we too are likely to miss the invitation to relationship with the God who transcends our culture and place. I was not born to Lutheran parents, or grandparents, or great-grandparents. In fact, to my knowledge, I have zero Scandinavian blood, and you have to go back several generations to find a German relative. I learned of Martin Luther in my World History class memorizing the date of the Reformation alongside Johannes Guttenberg and the printing press. I grew up in church, hearing of God’s hatred of sin, of God’s jealousy and vengeance, of God’s wrath and terrible recompense. I sang “Jesus Loves Me,” and as soon as I could read, sounded out the tiny plaque on my grandmother’s wall, that promised me “God is Love.” But I also being taught that while God may love me, that love is conditional. If I didn’t accept that Jesus had received on the cross the punishment that I deserved, and if I didn’t ask for forgiveness, if I didn’t ask Jesus to come and live in my heart to shield me from sin and God’s judgement, that this God would righteously and justly damn me to an eternity of conscious torment in the literal flames of Hell. Weighty stuff for a 7-year-old. But the older I got, and the more of the scriptures I could read for myself, the more I learned of this God who is Love, the more I experienced of this God who is Love. Eventually this experience of God’s unconditional Love led me to a break with the church of my upbringing, and I began to search for a tradition that resonated with my experience. When as an adult I read of Martin Luther’s experience of rediscovering the Grace of God hidden in plain sight in the very passage from Romans we read here today, I knew that this was my spiritual home, even though I am not German or Scandinavian. There is a whole movement of folks out there deconstructing their faith of their childhood, unlearning the God who is mad and vengeful. I was lucky that I John 4:8, “God is Love,” was written as plainly on my Grandmother’s life as it was on her walls. I was lucky to have found Luther’s writings online, to have wanted to reform my faith and not abandon it. But so many of our Lutheran churches are far more concerned with maintaining a cultural heritage that by and large, Lutheran evangelism has looked more like colonization. We have not invited people into a relationship with the God of Love and Grace so much as we have invited folks to be German. But until our experience of God’s Love and Grace transcends time and place we will be as bound up in the trappings of our culture and place as these Judeans who thought they were the only ones who knew where to find God. So, what might the Lutheranism of the Future look like if it isn’t all lefse and lutefisk, beer and potlucks, or whatever Icelandic people eat? I believe it will be a spirituality that leads people to a language they can use to express their experience. Lutheran Spirituality will begin in what I like to call “Paradoxy.” Lutherans excel at non-dual thinking. We are simultaneously saints and sinners, bound and freed. We are beholden to both the law and the gospel. Jesus is both God and Human. The Eucharist is both bread and wine AND body and blood. So we can abandon language about what is right and wrong, in favor of what is helpful and unhelpful. God both includes everything and transcends everything. So a Lutheran Spirituality will have to unlearn unhelpful pictures of God and relearn the God Who Is. For this we will need the Cross. Martin Luther says that Theologians of the Cross call a thing what it is, while Theologians of Glory call good evil and evil good. Jesus said that you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. The Cross becomes for us the new tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, and we eat its fruit in the Eucharist. Then knowing the difference between what is good and what is evil, we can trust God to reconcile both, first in us as saints and sinners, and then in all the world, including all things and transcending them. The truth can only have its fullest impact in relationship, because only relationship can handle the vulnerability, accountability, and transformative power of truth without imposition or colonization. God Loves us by becoming us; that is, in relationship with God we are being transformed into the Love that God is. Grace, then, is the way that Love behaves. We become this Love by practicing this Grace, through Hospitality, Generosity, and Solidarity, by making space in ourselves for our neighbors as God has made space within God’s self for us. We Love our neighbors by becoming neighbors. Luther said, “God doesn’t need your good works, but your neighbor does.” We need long, slow, loving relationships with folks who disagree with us, without canceling, scolding, or chiding each other. We need church. We need communities were we can walk along the path until the path becomes clear. We also need the church because we cannot do the work of Justice, wrestle with the scriptures, come to faith, or even live our lives alone. We need access to doctors, lawyers, teachers, community helpers in relationship and not just behind a pay wall. We need access to mothers and aunts, to fathers and uncles, to elders and sages, to brothers, sisters, siblings when we have had to escape the culture and place of our birth to survive. We need meaningful work and a place to do it, especially if and when we cannot do what we love for a living. The Lutheranism of the Future cannot be a cultural heritage project, inviting folks to be German, to come and sing our songs or observe our festivals. The Lutheranism of the Future will require us to know the truth through the lens of the Cross and to be set free from all the mighty fortresses we have constructed to prevent change. The Lutheranism of the Future will be a common spirituality more than a common religious expression. So, what are we commemorating here today? What new thing might a preacher find to say? Luther experienced the truth and it set him free. Lutherans of the Future won’t be born, so much as freed— by the truth that the God they feared doesn’t exist and the God Who Is Loves them already. Amen.