Sermon: Presentation of the Augsburg Confession – 2023

25 June 2023

Text: Matt 10:26-33 (Neh 8:1-2, 5-6, 9-12; 1 Tim 6:11-16)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Today is the 493rd anniversary of what became the birth of the so-called Lutheran church.  That’s the name chosen by our opponents to mock us as not being truly Christians, and the name stuck.  But if you read the Augsburg Confession, it’s clear that we Lutherans, so-called, are actually Catholic Christians who made some Evangelical reforms to go back to an older way of being Catholic, a way that is in accordance with the Bible and the early church fathers.

In 1530, the emperor, Charles V, had a plan to just force us to recant these reforms, but he at least had to go through the motions of pretending to listen to us.  He asked the Lutherans to write a document in order to have a proper discussion.  So Philipp Melanchthon – who is credited with writing the first verse of the hymn we just sang – wrote this Confession that was presented in Augsburg on June 25, 1530.  And right away, even many of our opponents were shocked to learn that we had been lied about. 

The Augsburg Confession continued to cause quite a stir even into modern times.  In the 1960s and 1970s, a team of Lutheran and Roman Catholic theologians met for dialogue.  The Roman Catholic theologians at that time were still in the dark about what we believe, and after studying for years with Lutheran theologians, this committee of some of the top Roman Catholic theologians recommended that the Vatican recognize our ordinations and our sacraments as valid.  The Vatican did not act on those recommendations.  And even before this, the man who would become Pope Benedict XVI, had argued that the Augsburg Confession should be declared a “Catholic document.”  Sometimes I run into Lutherans who don’t really know what Lutherans believe.  They need to read the Augsburg Confession.  Our church is committed to it, and my ordination vows include it.  Here we stand, dear friends.

The Augsburg Confession is short and sweet.  It has 21 brief articles of faith, followed by seven articles explaining various reforms that our churches had made in the 1500s that continue to this day.  I read this document 42 years ago, and never looked back.  While in Augsburg, the emperor tried to force the Lutheran princes to worship the way he commanded them to, and so the princes bowed, bared their necks, and invited the emperor to cut off their heads.  They would die before violating their consciences.  The emperor was shocked, and backed off.  He told them in his broken German that he would not cut off their heads.

Dr. Martin Luther had been put on trial eight years before this meeting at Augsburg, when he made his famous reply that concludes:  “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason… my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand.  God help me. Amen.”  A few days ago, I held an original 1521 edition of that speech.  It is written in Latin.  The “Here I stand” is missing in the earliest published editions.  “God help me” is written in very personal German instead of official Latin: “Got helff mir.”  And by 1530, many of the pastors, princes, and churches were saying the same thing, and instituting reforms.  Some of these very same reforms, like restoring the blood of Christ to the laity and having worship services in the common language – were instituted by the Roman Catholic church more than 400 years later.  There are even a few married Roman Catholic priests out there.  But in the 1500s, reformers were hauled before the Inquisition and burned at the stake.

As we just heard Jesus say, concerning our persecutors: “Have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.  What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.  And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”  Jesus also warned us that we confessors, we who place our trust in Him alone for salvation, would be hauled before courts and treated this way.  Some of the early Lutherans were executed.  Luther was himself condemned to death, but his princes protected him.  Our fathers in the faith were militarily attacked and suffered greatly because of their confession – which is our confession.  Jesus said, “Everyone who acknowledges Me before men, I also will acknowledge before My Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies Me before men, I also will deny before My Father who is in heaven.”

St. Paul speaks anew to us today as He wrote St. Timothy: “Fight the good fight of the faith.”  Paul points us to our Lord, “who in His testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession.”  And we also heard once more how Ezra brought the Word of God back to the people after their captivity in Babylon.  And indeed, all of our Christian life is a daily renewal, a return to baptism, a continuous life of repentance and recommitment to the Word of God – to which we are all captive, taking our stand, and refusing to recant.  And to some extent or another, all Christians suffer for the sake of the Word and of their confession.  But we suffer joyfully, dear friends, knowing that we do indeed fight the good fight.

Today, we are also calling to mind (as part of our 150^th anniversary celebrations), the weddings of our church.  For marriage is a holy estate established by God. The Augsburg Confession deals with marriage, since there was a controversy about it back then, which was: could the clergy be married men?  We find this in  the Augsburg Confession: “Complaints about unchaste priests are common… Since our priests wanted to avoid these open scandals, they married wives and taught that it was lawful for them to enter marriage.”  We went back to the older way of being Catholic, when priests, bishops, popes, and even the first pope himself – St. Peter – were all married men. 

Our confession predicted that unless priests could again marry: “Impure celibacy will cause many scandals, adulteries, and other crimes that deserve punishment from just rulers.  In light of this, it is incredibly cruel that the marriage of priests is forbidden.  God has commanded that marriage be honored.”

But we have a bigger controversy today than whether or not pastors can marry.  Today, the institution of marriage itself has nearly been destroyed by our unchristian culture and corrupted government: easy divorce, an anti-child and anti-family culture, legal abortion, same-sex relationships being called marriage, open promiscuity, so-called polyamory, transgenderism, and even the words “man” and “woman” themselves are no longer defined according to God’s creation and plain reason.

Today, across denominational lines, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Christians of every confession find themselves under attack for simply saying what marriage is, for quoting the Bible, for living out their consciences, for believing and making the good confession of Jesus, who says: “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’?  So they are no longer two but one flesh.  What God has joined together, let not man separate.”

When we live according to God’s creation, there is joy, dear friends.  When we make the good confession like Jesus, like the apostles, like the martyrs, like the reformers, and like the brave men and women today who refuse to allow modern emperors and modern churches to force them to worship at the altar of wokeness – we are doing what our Lord said to do, not to fear them.  Dear friends, remember our Lord’s words: “And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”

Let us reflect on the 150 years of marriages conducted by the pastors of our church.  Let us rejoice in the institution of Holy Matrimony.  Let us honor our forebears of every time and place who confessed Christ – in season and out of season – with or without the approval of society and state.  Let us continue to make the good confession.  Here we stand.  God help us.

Amen.

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