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By the glory of God, through Christ alone, His grace
alone freed us through a faith alone, we can only harbor through God’s Word
alone. It’s all ‘bout the grace, ‘bout the grace, ‘bout the grace, no devil…
It’s all ‘bout the grace, ‘bout that grace, oh yeah! The little ditty I just
sang came from some fun, the other spiritual directors and I invented, to sing
at one point in this past Fall’s Via De Cristo Cursillo weekend. Let me tell you, it was a lot of fun. BUT, it really IS all about the Grace of God
that freed us to hear the truth!
You want the truth?!
You can’t handle the Truth! Can you almost just see Jack Nicholson lips
biting out those famous words from the 1992 film drama, ‘A Few Good Men?’ They
do apply here, however, too. We may say that we want to know the truth God
needs for us to hear but we, more often than not, can’t handle it! This,
ironically, is known to be the “age of authenticity” for humanity according to
the modern philosopher, Charles Taylor, about our current times, and the
secular age. What is authentic, though, about avoiding reform? The Protestant Reformation sounds a lot
better than saying the protestors’ revolution against things that were not
willing to change for the better. In
fact, it probably even sounds better to say that people needed to re-form,
re-shape their outlook on what God’s priorities are for us and how we are to
have responded.
All Hallows’ Eve, October 31st, is the actual
marker for the 500th anniversary of the 1517 act of an Augustinian
monk to nail his 95 grievances upon the doors of the Wittenberg Cathedral in
Germany. Contrary to what history some
people may actually know, but, throughout our Christian heritage, there have
been several moments, cries for reform and change in Christianity. From the spark of the institutionalized form
of the church in the 4th century by the emperor Constantine, there
have been many moments of a cry for change.
The great schism of 1054ad is the very first departure where Byzantium
split with the Roman west, simply upon a theological argument about the aspects
of the Holy Trinity, being: “of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit...”
The 14th century saw its first martyred
reformers before Martin Luther being Jan Hus and John Wycliffe. Nearly 200
years before that infamous event, we now consider the official start of
Protestantism in the world, these men were already “upsetting the apple cart.” The only differences to why the events of
1517 were successful, was thanks to the invention of Gutenberg printing
press. See advertising works! All these history nuggets aside, humanity
loves to find or search out battles that do everything but address the truth of
what we should all abide in—God’s Word.
Jesus’ disciples in today’s beautiful cryptic passage from the Gospel of
John didn’t get it then, and we still struggle with it today: GRACE.
A number of years back, I thought it was fascinating that
it took some 500 years for the Roman Catholic church to come to an agreement or
accord with the Protestants, about that very issue Martin Luther posted upon to
which we are celebrating today. This
would be what we hear from St. Paul’s snippet from the Romans this morning: “28For
we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the
law.” This became known most completely
and debated for the past 1,900 years or so, as justification by Grace through
faith. Why is this still important for
us today? That conditional, “if,” from Jesus in today’s Gospel should give us a
clue: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; 32and
you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
At the time of the formation of the 95 theses, the Roman
church invented, “gift certificates,” for sale, that more or less, acted as a
legal receipt, transaction in receiving God’s mercy and forgiveness. These receipts were known as “indulgences,”
sounds like some kind of candy, doesn’t it? A little-known fact is that the
Roman church, at the time, had to shake people up for money to finish the
Sistine chapel. How many people here,
actually knew that? It was an ingenious,
but incredibly evil agenda placed in front of willful and fear-filled peasant people,
that they won’t receive God’s Grace to go to heaven, if they didn’t pay this
tax, buy the indulgence. Human nature wants
to try to find ways to manipulate around the truth to do what it wants to do
and not be accountable to our actions.
The Protestant Reformation, through the aid of the
printing press and several concerned reformers, helped to illumine that a
return to God’s Word is really what is needed, to see the truth behind Paul’s
treatise to the Romans to know their place in relation to God’s free gift of
Grace. We are all culpable to sin and
fall short of the glory of God… Yes, this is true, but Christ saved us to strive
forward on our lives’ journey to respond through faith by loving Him and
neighbor with the fruits of our lives.
There’s no transaction or barter here, but a calling for our spirit to
change—re-form, re-shape to God’s destined path for each and every one of us!
Several days ago, I saw a beautiful short video of a
caterpillar’s journey into transforming into a butterfly. What a truly wonderful image to compare that
to the Christian’s spiritual formation journey!
The creature literally changed inside and out. Then, we could say that
it’s New life officially took off, began.
The caterpillar realized its purpose before its life-changing journey,
which was to eat leaves. It was given a
mission and stepped up, to just DO it.
There was no bargaining chips or barter, you could say even for this
simple creature, there was a willingness to simply do and see where life leads
next. Caterpillar faith? Sounds kind of
hilarious but that’s our problem as well.
Why have we not stayed true to our humble place as children of God?
From the humble beginnings of church planting and one on
one faith based discipleship throughout the Book of Acts and all of Paul’s
letters… We’ve re-invented gathering together as the Body over the centuries,
with lots of failures and lots of triumphs. All in all, discipleship over this
time, should have taught us, shown us the truth to where God really needs us to
be. Paul’s letter to the Roman church,
just like Martin Luther’s 95 theses were epiphanies to getting back down to the
basics of God’s Gracious hand in guiding humanity. Seeing, realizing the truth of God, resisting
God’s hand in leading us to change is where we are still stuck. We’re still children of Grace and promise,
but we can’t live into our end of keeping that promise, being children of God
living into the lifestyle of Grace.
Our willfulness is our sin and we turn away from the
mirror of God’s law to know and grow from that truth. In this 21st century quote, “age
of authenticity…” All we can say, that is genuinely authentic, is our
justification of our willfulness over and above God’s Will and an avoidance, abandonment
of God’s Law for our temporal, self-concerned purposes. Is this really progress? Returning to that
caterpillar’s journey, I recalled a memory from when I was on fellowship doing
art in Johnson, Vermont. In the summer
of 1994, I won a full fellowship to study and paint for a whole month in the
small little town of Johnson, Vermont.
Never previously been to the east coast before, it was a delightful,
small little country town just outside of Burlington, Vermont. The entire town was composed of little
B-n-B’s as well as this studio program, artists’ colony was there.
What was, at the time, such a strange memory for me
painting there, was that the studios were built inside a beautiful shell of a
tragically abandoned Congregational Church.
This was before I found God to have re-entered my life some nine years
later… I would be placed in an upper make-shift room above the altar area where
the giant beautiful stained-glass window would make up a corner of my studio’s
room. In retrospect, with Christ most
fully in my life now, what a powerful image to think about spiritually? Creating as humans do, within a shell of a
place once created to grow within, and go about from, to share the faith. At
the time, I really didn’t see how tragic that place really was, in regard, to
commenting on where we are at as disciples of Jesus.
Life is a series of challenges upon us all, once we
become truly aware of God’s guiding and saving Grace active and on-going in our
lives. It isn’t a challenge we should
willfully backdown from, or manipulate to our agendas. We are called to
reform. The Reformation is, and will
always be ongoing, but the ball is in your court to whom, it is to truly serve.
The early Reformers of the Protestant
Reformation needed us to realize the truth to God’s Grace and our call to
respond in faith. Reformation Sunday should be a Sunday that we not only
celebrate our Protestant heritages, but spiritually celebrate persevering
answering God’s challenge to us all, to grow and go boldly into an unknown
future with great courage, hope and most importantly a gracious and grateful faith!
Let us Pray,
By the glory of God,
We have freely received through Christ alone,
His grace alone, which freed us through a faith alone
we can only harbor through God’s Word alone,
For a Re-forming future growing towards His Kingdom goals
For this one solitary life and our journey in the next.
Thank You Lord for Your Amazing Grace.
AMEN
October 29th,
2017; Reformation Sunday; Year A; SOLA Lectionary
Sermon By:
Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins, OSST
Psalm 46;
Revelation 14:6-7; Romans 3:19-28; John 8:31-36 RCL: Jeremiah 31:31-34
The link below is to this sermon's delivery at First Congregational Church
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