Reformation Day Sermon: Sunday, October 27, 2013

Reformation Day Sermon: October 27, 2013

PREACHER: Pastor Carrie Smith

Romans 3:19-28; John 8:31-36

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Yesterday, I was in Chicago for the wedding of a dear friend. At the reception, I mentioned that I would be going home soon to finish my sermon for Reformation Sunday. There were a few blank stares from the non-clergy in the room. “You know, Reformation Day,” I said, “It’s kind of a big deal.”

One friend-- an Episcopal priest—responded: “Preaching on Reformation Day shouldn’t be too hard! I mean, isn’t it just “Grace, Luther, Bible, Beer, and repeat?” Another clergy friend helpfully offered, “The best sermon ever is ‘God loves you—pay attention—Amen.’”

To which Luther might respond: “This is most certainly true!”

But this is indeed Reformation Sunday, and it is kind of a big deal for Christians in the Lutheran tradition. This is the day we remember how, on October 31, 1517, a priest named Martin Luther posted 95 talking points (we call them the 95 Theses) on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany. He posted them to start a conversation, and instead started a movement. Luther’s ideas, combined with the invention of the printing press and the advent of general unease with the excesses of the church across Europe, resulted in what is known as the Reformation. We, who call ourselves Lutherans, are Christians whose ways of worshipping, reading the Bible, and structuring ourselves as a church, spring directly from this period in history. We are a Reformation church, still proclaiming 500 years later “ecclesia semper reformanda est”—the church is always to be reformed. Amen!

I love Reformation Day, and not just because we get to sing “A Mighty Fortress” and hang the Luther Rose banner and witness fifteen of our young people affirming their baptisms at this afternoon’s Confirmation service. I love Reformation Day because it’s an opportunity to preach, loud and proud, about God’s gift of grace. This is the day when I get to stand here and say, along with the author of Romans: “There is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift”; and again, “We hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law”; and, with John’s Gospel, I get to proclaim to all my brothers and sisters in Christ, ““If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free!”

Sisters and brothers, say it with me: Grace alone, Faith alone, Word alone.

As a church of the Reformation we proclaim that we are saved by grace alone, faith alone, and Word alone. This is the saving truth that changed Martin Luther’s life and began a reforming movement within the Christian church: that no human being is made right with God by being good or following the rules, but that we are good and acceptable and worthy of being loved because God said so. In fact, God’s opinion on the subject of you and your worthiness is made clear on the cross, where our brother Jesus, Son of God, willingly gave his life for the sake of the world. This is grace, given as a gift, and revealed to us again and again through the Word. Jesus said, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Amen!

But the truth revealed to us through the Holy Scriptures is just so good we can hardly believe it! The gift of grace is so beautiful, so bountiful, and so boundless that we spend our lives making up rules, laws, excuses and exceptions to explain it away.

It’s like this: Do you know that annoying commercial that comes on every year (In fact, starting in about a week…) where the husband goes out to get the morning paper and finds a luxury car sitting in the driveway with a giant bow on top? Or maybe you know the one where the wife goes to get an ornament off the Christmas tree and finds a diamond ring? Or, most annoying of all, the one where the kids come downstairs to find a perfectly adorable puppy under the tree with a set of tickets to Disneyland in its mouth? 

Are you with me? Well, I hate those commercials. I hate what they do to our brains and hearts, how they change our expectations of Christmas and gift-giving. I hate them because then, on Christmas or a birthday, when we present our friends and family a lovingly knitted scarf or a carefully chosen sweater or whatever other gift we can truly afford to give, somewhere in the back of our minds we are thinking “It should have been a puppy. Or a car. Or a car with a puppy in it.”

These commercials are crazy, and especially crazy is the way they undermine our appreciation of every reasonable, thoughtful, and true gift given or received in love.

But here’s the thing: what we do with God’s grace is the exact opposite. God has already given us the gift to beat all gifts. God has given us the luxury car with the bow, complete with the puppy in the front seat and carrying the tickets to Disneyland, and what we say is “Dear God, thank you SO much for the new car floor mats. They’re just what I wanted.”

Can’t you just hear God saying, “Wait, what? Didn’t you see the car? And the puppy? And the Disney tickets?”

And we just respond, “Well, I saw all that, but I didn’t think that was for ME.”

Friends, God has given the world this amazing gift of grace for all through the cross of Jesus Christ, and we look right at it and say “Thanks for loving all the good people, God.” We even read it in Scripture and don’t believe it. We think “Yeah, it says that, but that can’t be for ME.” 

So we make up our own rules:

“God loves everyone: but I can’t kick that addiction, so I’m the exception. Jesus is present in the bread and wine: but I’m not sure how that works, so he must not be there for me. Jesus died to save the world: except for my neighbor, because he’s a real jerk. I know grace is free: but I’m gonna earn it, gosh darn it.”

But friends, on this day of all days we can remember that Martin Luther (along with so many others) has already been down that road. He struggled with those same questions and tried to follow those same rules and even made up a few of his own. But it was through diligent prayer and study of Scripture that he was convinced of the magnitude of God’s gift of grace. He was so convinced that he stood in front of princes and church authorities to say, “Here I stand!” I cannot and will not take it back! For this Good News is just too good to ignore. It’s too good to hide. It’s too good not to share.

Theologian and food writer Robert Farrar Capon, who passed away just a few weeks ago, said this about the Reformation:

“The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace–bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.”

 (― Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon & Three: Romance, Law & the Outrage of Grace)

Sisters and brothers, my message to you this morning is that being Lutheran has nothing to do with Jello or casseroles or upper-midwestern culture. It actually has nothing to do with beer, either! Our understanding of God’s grace is the true gift and heritage of the reformation. We are Lutherans when we live into that grace. We are evangelical Lutherans when we share it with others! And we are truly free when we can look at ourselves and say “I’m not perfect, but I’m enough, because I am loved by God. Jesus has it covered. And this truth sets me free! I am free to love, free to live, free to appreciate each day I am given. I am free to drink deeply from the never-ending well of grace, and to bring others who are thirsty to the same waters. For if the Son sets me free, I am free indeed!

Today, on this Reformation Day, we gather to receive again God’s gift of grace through Jesus Christ. Together, we sing God’s praise, and pray that the gift of grace would continue to be a reforming presence in our lives, in the church, and in the world. This is what it means to be a Reformation people. This is what it is to be a Lutheran. This is most certainly true. Amen.

Sermon for Global Church Sunday: October 6, 2013

 Sermon for Global Church Sunday

October 6, 2013

PREACHER: The Rev. Dr. Robert Smith from ELCA Global Mission

Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ!

It is a pleasure to be with you today to celebrate Global Church Sunday. As Christians in the United States, we are strengthened by our engagement with sisters and brothers in Christ around the globe. Since its beginning 25 years ago, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has constantly sought to answer God’s call to participate in God’s mission of reconciliation and to touch people’s lives to promote the flourishing of human community.

With the 10,000 congregations in the ELCA, Bethany Lutheran has been responding to that call. 2013 marks the tenth anniversary of Bethany's relationship with the Kiutu Parish in Tanzania. This relationship has deeply enriched the lives of both communities, mutually building our capacities to participate in God’s mission of reconciliation.

 

Pastors from the ELCT prepare for the worship service honoring the 50th anniversary of the church. Photo by H. Martinussen, LWF Learn more here: 50th anniversary

I am privileged to serve in the Global Mission unit of the ELCA’s churchwide organization. Part of our responsibility is to maintain the church-to-church relationship between the ELCA and Christian companion churches throughout the world. Another focus is to build the capacities of congregations and synods to best accompany parishes and churches outside the United States.

So what is this all about then? Why do we work so hard to establish and maintain relationships with congregations and churches across time zones and continents? Is it all about charity and sharing the best of what we have with less fortunate people? And if that’s the point, don’t we have enough to do here at home?

For me and for the ELCA as a whole, the answer is simple: the God we are called to serve is a God of relationships. The Holy Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is a God of everlasting and essential relationships. Through the Good News of Jesus Christ, this God calls us into relationship with the very being of God, catching us up into divine reality. But it is not just for us alone. Our divine parent calls the entire world into loving and reconciling relationship, making all of us into sisters and brothers. The God we serve is a God of relationships.

The Bible uses several images to describe our relationship with other believers. Hebrews says that we are connected with all saints past and present in a “great cloud of witnesses.” Paul makes it even more intimate, saying that we are all part of the same body, the Body of Christ. Just as God exists in intimately connected relationship, Paul reminds us that “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (1 Cor. 12.26).

Our bond is most apparent in Holy Baptism. Today [at the 10:45 service], Oliver and Jordyn are being baptized. In this sacrament, Oliver and Jordyn will be joined both to the death and resurrection of Jesus and to the global Body of Christ. Our God is a God of relationships!

Most of you probably know me as Pastor Carrie’s Husband. You may not know what I do outside the home. I’m a pastor in the ELCA serving in ELCA Global Mission as Area Secretary for the Middle East and North Africa. You might want to know what in the world that means! In short, it means I am responsible for maintaining ELCA relationships in the Middle East as well as supervising our mission personnel serving in the region, including Danae and Steve Hudson in Jerusalem, who are sponsored by this congregation.

In addition to that primary role, I work closely with colleagues in the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches. All of this means I have become intimately involved in the lives of Arab and Middle Eastern Christians, especially in recent years as they have experienced the deep optimism and deep disappointments of the so-called Arab Spring.

But I am not the only member of this congregation involved in our denomination’s global work. We are blessed to have Bishop Emeritus Rafael Malpica Padilla, Executive Director for ELCA Global Mission, along with the entire Malpica family, as long-term members of Bethany. The global reach of Bethany Lutheran is extended and deepened through Rafael’s life and work.

All of this is important for you to know since your offering dollars directly support the work Rafael and I do on your behalf. When Rafael is hosting international guests for yesterday’s installation of PresidingBishop Elizabeth Eaton or visiting church leaders in Papua New Guinea with our colleague Franklin Ishida, or when I am in Geneva meeting with Christian leaders from Iraq, Bethany Lutheran Church is present. Our God is a God of relationships!

 

Rafael and Franklin on their most recent trip to Papua New Guinea

Now, through the 25^th Anniversary Campaign of the ELCA, congregations have the opportunity to participate even more directly in global work. In the Global Church section of the campaign, we have the opportunity to identify and support women leaders around the world, to help establish a new Lutheran church in the new country of South Sudan, and (my personal favorite!) help build the capacity for religious education among Protestant Christians throughout the Middle East.

Our God is a God of relationships. Ideally, our global relationships are informed by the call to shared suffering and rejoicing with fellow members of the Body of Christ. As we experience together the radical hospitality of Jesus, we accompany one another in the journey of discipleship. While our communities may experience different needs in different ways, we are not defined by what we lack but by the riches we have in Christ Jesus. In my work with Christians around the world, I have found tremendous riches in the midst of what most of us would describe as profound need.

In Russia, I have sat with Lutheran Christians still struggling to overcome the effects of Communism. The Cathedral in St. Petersburg was converted into a competition diving pool, but the community is persevering throughout Russia’s vast land.

Slovak and Hungarian Lutherans experienced Communism as well, but remember just as well the difficulties of the counter-Reformation and Ottoman occupation. Today, they are joining efforts throughout Europe to stand up for the civil rights of their Roma neighbors, a persecuted group still known by some as Gypsies. Remembering their own experiences of oppression, they are lending their voice to those who have no voice. Our God is a God of relationships!

In Palestine, I have seen how the Evangelical Lutheran Churchin Jordan and the Holy Land—by their own admission a poor church, a small church—provides a powerful witness for the wellbeing of all communities trapped by political conflicts. I have seen Palestinian Lutherans proclaim that creativity will overcome destruction, that relationships will overcome political divides. Our God is a God of relationships!

Our relationships are not only with Lutherans. I am still amazed at the relationship I have developed with His Eminence Jean Kawak, Archbishop for the Syriac Orthodox Church in Damascus. Because of the civil war now tearing the fabric of his country, this church is for the first time in the position of seeking assistance from others. The ELCA has responded to the needs of Syrians with over one million dollars in assistance. But remember what I said about churches possessing profound riches in the midst of great need: the Syriac Church is intensely proud that it is the bearer of one of the most ancient forms of Christian worship: the Liturgy of St. James, the brother of Jesus, chanted in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. In that liturgy, which is very similar to our own, we are joined to all centuries of Christian life. Our God is a God of relationships!

And of course our relationships are not with just Christians alone. In Senegal, the far western tip of Africa, I was privileged to accompany Senegalese Lutherans to a meeting with a Sufi Muslim leader. The Sufi Caliph closed our meeting by saying, “I would love for you to become good Sufi Muslims like us. But since that is not likely to happen, I pray that we will live as cousins every day” and then smiled broadly when the invitation was returned that he could also become a good Lutheran Christian. In a world where US military might is used every day to secure oil to support our lifestyles of excess, we have much to learn from a context where a profound lack of natural resources has led to strong relationships between Muslims and Christians. Our God is a God of relationships!

And then finally, during a conference this past week inWashington, DC, I encountered the strangest Other of them all: the pastoral staff of Willow Creek. Even in my deep suspicion and (I must admit) my envy of mega-church success, I was humbled and inspired by how these faithful leaders were supplementing their traditional pro-Israel commitments with genuine love for followers of Jesus in both Israel and Palestine and committing to political action for peace with justice. We will continue working together. Our God is a God of relationships!

As the prophet Habakkuk saw, “destruction and violence are before” us and our companions. The law has become slack “and justice never prevails.” Our call as members of the Body of Christ is to carry one another’s burdens, so that “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” In this suffering and rejoicing, the ELCA is a global church committed to global relationships since our God is a God of relationships. Amen!