Sermon: Reformation Day - 2018

28 October 2018

Text: Matt 11:12-19 (Rev 14:6-7, Rom 3:19-28)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

“But to what shall I compare this generation?” asks our Lord.  For what does “this generation” do?  It mocks John the Baptist because he doesn’t drink, and then mocks Jesus because He does.  “This generation” is not concerned with the truth, but only with adopting a narrative and then using it to arrive at a pre-conceived conclusion.

Why do they do this?

Power.  The “powers that be” like being in charge.  John the Baptist, the final prophet, is a disrupter, a disturber of the peace, that peace that the king enjoys because of society’s looking the other way regarding his immorality and corruption.  But like the boy in “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” John refuses to play along with the narrative.  John tells the truth.  The powers that be cannot have that.  John has to be killed.

And this is how many of John’s the Forerunner’s own forerunners in the office of prophet were treated in centuries past.  For as Lord Acton would famously put it: “Power corrupts.  And absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

And if John was considered a disruption, they haven’t seen anything yet.  For John has come to usher in the manifestation of God in human flesh, who comes to turn the universe upside down, to fill the valleys and make the mountains low, to straighten the crooked and level the rough places.  Our Lord Jesus Christ defies the narrative because He is the True Narrative, the Word of God made flesh.  The story of Jesus is the story of the universe, and His story is not just a convenient narrative to be exploited politically, His story is the story of the redemption of mankind.  His Narrative is the truth.  For He is the truth.  The powers that be cannot have that.  Jesus also has to be killed.

But of course, that is the very Narrative that our Lord has in mind.  It is why He takes flesh in the first place.  He comes to die, and He dies to rise.  He rises to give us life.  And we rise to the glory of God, according to His will, which He carries out at the cross, in love for us and for all of His creation.  That is the one Narrative that is both true and eternal.  And Jesus is the One who does indeed have absolute power, and yet, as the Psalmist says, “You will not… let Your Holy One see corruption.”  

In order to hold fast to the narrative opposing Jesus, they must cling to a lie: that he is “a glutton and a drunkard.”  But the rest of their narrative is true, for our Blessed Lord is indeed a “friend of tax collectors and sinners.”  He is the sinner’s greatest friend.  For He is the sinner’s Savior!

And “this generation” continues on throughout history.  The mighty and powerful lie about the disrupter, the whistle-blower, the boy who points out the Emperor’s nakedness.  And in order to hold on to power, they will lie, they will kill, they will destroy.

Martin Luther grew up among “this generation.”  For when the church of his day, reeking with corruption and wielding power that staggers the imagination, pushed a narrative that conflicted with the Holy Scriptures, a narrative that salvation was a commodity to be purchased, in the words of the preacher John Tetzel: “When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from Purgatory springs.”  This narrative stands against the clear Word of God: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received in faith.”

Once again, we are all “justified by His grace as a gift.”  How many of you pay for your gifts, dear friends?  Do your children anxiously run to the Christmas tree with their wallets in hand looking to make purchases?  How many husbands buy flowers for their wives and attach a bill?  What did the pope and the cardinals and the bishops think the word “gift” meant?  

On October 31, 1517, Father Martin published an academic paper that we now call “Ninety Five Theses” that includes this question (number 82): “Why does not the pope empty purgatory for the sake of holy love and the dire need of the souls that are there if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church?”

The good doctor was also a disrupter, also one who challenged the narrative of the one wielding power, and so Doctor Luther must also die.  He was condemned by pope and emperor.

But in His infinite mercy, the Lord God would not permit Luther to be tied to a post and burned alive – which is how Dearest Mother Church dealt with whistleblowers in those days.  God had other plans at that time of Reformation.  For there is an “eternal Gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on the earth.”  And there were others who would not buy the narrative.  There were other men in power, faithful men, who sought the truth rather than the lie, who wanted to know what Scripture taught rather than simply silence the one who preached it.

Thirteen years after Luther’s “Ninety Five Theses,” the emperor would command the German princes to reject their churches’ reforms and return to loyalty to the pope.  These princes bared their necks and dared the Emperor to behead them, for they were prepared to die rather than surrender the faith that they had come to know, the faith that Scripture teaches: that God is “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

For these men had finally heard that “eternal gospel” to be proclaimed to “those who dwell on earth” – that “one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”  The princes saw through the narrative that Luther was a heretic, that the pope is above scripture, that salvation is not by grace alone, that the common people could not have the Bible in their own language, and that the blood of Christ is not sufficient as a “propitiation… to be received by faith.”  They knew that this narrative was ultimately about power: power to control the people by means of fear, power to control the princes by means of taxation, and power to amass fortunes by prostituting the faith in exchange for secular power.

“This generation” continues today, dear friends.  For if you uphold the Scriptures, you might find yourself out of a job, unable to attend a university, hounded out of polite society, or perhaps even in a jail cell.

For the powerful continue to push an unbiblical narrative, one that calls good evil, and evil good.  We need to follow in the footsteps of St. John and Blessed Martin, and most of all, our Lord Jesus Christ, in believing, teaching, and confessing the truth of the “eternal gospel” – even in the face of the mighty who push a narrative grounded in the lie for their own retention of power. God may allow us to die in that confession, or He may permit us to live: but whether we live or die, we must confess that which is true.  

As St. Paul also teaches us by the power of the Holy Spirit, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”  The world mocks us just as they did John.  The world seeks to gag us just as they tried to do with Luther.  The world seeks to crucify us just as they did our Blessed Lord.  But as our Lord has said, dear friends, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you.”

Let us not be swayed by the narrative of the corrupt.  Let us “worship Him,” the incorruptible, “who made the heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water,” and do so without concern for what “this generation” will do next.  Let us “fear God and give Him glory” – now, and even unto eternity!  Amen!

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.