Reformation Sunday: October 30, 2005.

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Psalm 46

Romans 3:19-28

John 8:31-36

First Reading

For Reformation Sunday the texts provide us with covenant, righteousness, justification by faith, and truth. The Romans reading here, among others, has become a battleground for theologians. The terrain is laid out in Stephen Westerholm's Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The "Lutheran" Paul and His Critics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). Indeed, a word such as dikaiosune has been translated as "righteousness" or "justice." Each translation gives a slightly different flavor to our understanding of the term. Paul Achtemeier (Interpretation: Romans [Atlanta: John Knox, 1985], 61-66) gives three broad interpretations: (1) legal righteousness; (2) God's action in reclaiming the world thus making the unrighteous righteous; and (3) to uphold the covenant (his choice). His five-page discussion is not adequate to all that has been written, and he lists a variety of other discussions to round out his own. The word does not stand alone and is played off other concepts, such as "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe" (3:22). Paul's notorious run-on sentences are hard to follow. For the translator a prior understanding may color the translation.

Justified by faith, whatever else we may say, is about how God can still be God of the ungodly. Is the point to make us righteous? or to deal with the fact that we are unrighteous? I would think it is the latter. Christ is righteous, but the sinner may be justified (3:26) through faith.

Justify (dikaioo) is translated "put into a right relationship," "acquit," and "declare and treat as righteous." There is a difference between being righteous and being treated as righteous. Our problems may lie in our understanding of Paul's psychology and our own. Krister Stendahl (Paul among Jews and Gentiles, and Other Essays [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976]) emphasizes that Paul's thought was focused on divisions and fractures in a pluralistic and divided world, not on the tortured conscience of the individual. Ernst Kasemann writes, "William Wrede and Albert Schweitzer both already considered that the doctrine of justification was a mere tributary of Pauline theology ..." ("Justification and Salvation History in the Epistle to the Romans," in Perspectives on Paul [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971], 61). One problem some Episcopalians had with CCM was the Lutheran position of making justification the focal doctrine.

The Feast of Booths/Tabernacles is the setting for John 7-8. As in all of John, chronology can be confusing; in 7:37 we are told it is the last day of the festival, and in 8:1 we are led to believe that it is now a day later, yet all of the characters are still here in the temple. The dialogues presented here make use of the ritual of the feast. For example, each day of the feast water was drawn from Siloam, taken to the temple, and poured over the altar. In 7:38 Jesus, quoting scripture, says, "Out of the believer's heart [belly] shall flow rivers of living water."

The Feast of Booths (Lev 23:33-36, 39-43) was the feast of the harvest and one of three mandatory festivals for every male Jew. It lasted seven days in the seventh month from the 15th to the 22nd day (Leviticus mentions an eighth day of rest). Booths made of tree limbs and palm branches were constructed for housing for the seven days. The mood was one of celebration.

This section deals with the polarization of every group you can imagine. In 7:5 we find out that Jesus' brothers doubt him. The crowd is split. The temple police are questioning (7:46). The Pharisees are divided as Nicodemus chooses to speak out (7:50-51).

In our text we find the "believing" Jews questioning Jesus. Their assertion that they have never been slaves is interesting. The booths of the feast are reminders of the Exodus. The people are inhabitants of an occupied land. They may be referring to Lev 25:39-46. There is an abhorrence that any Israelite would become a slave. Considering the history of this period the Jews were not docile in Roman occupation.

Here in John "truth" refers to a reliably accurate perception of reality (see also 1 John 1). This is contrasted to the doubts and questions expressed by the brothers, the crowds, the Jews. Later Jesus will contrast the truth with the works of the devil (8:44). In this and the following verses the truth is God's view of the world, a view that Jesus knows and teaches (see also 8:23-24).

Pastoral Reflection

We must remember that behind justification by faith is righteousness, which follows from covenant. If we fail to keep these three tied together we will end up preaching "a personal relationship with Jesus." Such a personal relationship runs the danger of being privatized and so free-form that it can come to mean anything anybody wants it to mean. Indeed, faith is in the context of a relationship defined by covenant.

An analogy may be drawn from the covenant of marriage. At the wedding bride and groom pledge "to join with you and share all that is to come, and I promise to be faithful to you until death parts us" (LBW). Living according to these covenant promises is righteousness. However, even Jimmy Carter lusted in his heart and thus violated, at least, the spirit of the promise. But the covenant can be maintained if the couple continues to trust each other and because of the trust strives each day to be faithful amid temptations to the contrary.

At the heart of marital counseling lies the question, "What do you want?" If each person wants to continue with the marriage, the counselor has a foundation on which to build. If either or both do not wish to continue, there is little any counselor can do. At the heart of justification by faith lies this same question, "What do you want?" God's answer is Yes to the relationship. Our answer is never so straightforward. It is more like, "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief." Because our answer is wavering and tenuous, the weight of maintaining the relationship falls on God. God's assistance to us in preserving the relationship is called grace.

In John even the believing have their doubts. They have their national self-respect to consider. But Jesus insinuates that patriotic feelings are not enough, loyalty to your congregation is not enough, if your life is taken up by sin. We are to continue in his word. "Word" here is a metonymy, where a part stands for the whole. John's Gospel reveals the unseen God, but we are ill-equipped to understand the whole purpose of God, so we achieve the whole by grasping the part we can understand.

John's truth can be seen as a worldview. We forget that there is a Christian understanding of the separation of church and state that predates the Constitution. The truth that sets free is an understanding of the world as seen through the eyes of Jesus. As is often noted in John, the Jews are concerned about what will happen to the nation. This is the concern about the Roman reaction to Jesus' preaching. Jesus calls his listeners to live and act on another plane that is neither antagonistic nor compliant to the powers. GH