Reformation Sunday October 29, 2006.

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Psalm 46

Romans 3:19-28

John 8:31-36

With many Lutheran churches throughout the world, on this day we celebrate our story and identity as Lutheran Christians. This day could be a day to sing with triumphalist joy over and against those with different theological traditions. But our readings call us to glorify neither the reformer nor the tradition that bears his name but instead to draw from the deep well that is our theological heritage and glorify the One who truly reformed our world.

These texts are a divining rod pointing us to the important truth that energized Martin Luther's reforming movement in the sixteenth century and continues to energize our ever-reforming movement of the Lutheran Church in the twenty-first century: It is Christ who saves. For through Christ we have been "justified by faith apart from works." On this Sunday we celebrate and name this good news of God's grace that remains transformative and reforming in our lives and communities.

These words in the third chapter of Romans are central to Paul's concern throughout the letter that God's power is known and accomplished through the death and resurrection of Christ. The gospel is more than what we say about Jesus. It is words that do something; the gospel moves and changes, reforms and saves.

While we gain a deep fountain of insight, hope, and transformation from Rom 3:28, the verse comes in context--and a rich one indeed. Within verse 22 we encounter the phrase that calls on preachers to use their Greek syntactical knowledge of the use of the genitive. Is it an objective or subjective genitive? Do we translate this faith in Christ or faith of Christ? Grammatically and theologically, both interpretations are possible, with interesting and unique prospects for preaching with either translation.

Romans 3:24 speaks of God's gift ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) of grace. This gift is freely given, without cause, and is not deserved. This gift is given not because of who we are or what we have done but because of who God is (righteous) and what God has done through Jesus. Paul calls us to no longer focus on all that we need to do and what we have failed to do. Rather we are called to trust what God has done and, more important, to trust God's just and righteous character.

Jeremiah 31:31 proclaims that the "days are surely coming" when God will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and the house of Judah. This new covenant does not replace the old one but rather renews it, invigorates it, deepens it. As Christians we claim this new covenant to be Christ, who by his works has grafted us onto the tree of the covenant (Rom 11:17-24).

And the prophet proclaims, "I will put my law in their inward parts, and upon their hearts I will write it." The word of God will be placed deeply into the beings of God's people, into the inner most parts of them. This verse connects with the Sinai Covenant in Deut 6:4-6, "Hear, O Israel, the LORD is your God, the LORD alone, you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and soul and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today and write them on your heart." This covenantal relationship is deeply embodied, "I will be their God, and they shall be my people."

Our Gospel reading begins Jesus' long discourse about Abraham and the Judeans. John uses "the Judeans" as a sort of type character in his narrative, which showed the distinctiveness of Christ. It is important to note here that a better translation for the "Jews" would be the "Judeans," which connotes more than just the Jewish believers but a particular sense of nationalism, way of worship at the temple, and loyalty to the Pharisaic tradition.

The conflict in these verses may be about loyalty. The Judean Christians place their faith in what has been given them through their Abrahamic tradition instead of fully trusting in Jesus. As Wes Howard-Brook writes, "they want to affirm Jesus without giving up their privileged status in the Chosen People by virtue of their ancestry." (4) But Jesus is saying that it can't be both ways; freedom is given through full faith and trust in Jesus.

Throughout the pericope from John, in the Greek, we see a familiar theological theme for the Fourth Evangelist, the verb [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], to remain or to abide. Unfortunately the word is translated inconsistently into English and does not convey the thread of meaning very well. This is how I might translate the verses: "If you abide in my word ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), you are truly my disciples" (v. 31), and "the slave does not always abide in the household, but the son abides in the household forever" (v. 35).

For the Fourth Evangelist the theme of abiding and remaining with Jesus is a way of articulating belief and faith. Jesus is Jesus because he is from God and abides with God, and the promise of Jesus is that through him we are brought into abiding with God. This connects linguistically into the prologue of John ("the Word became flesh and dwelt among us," John 1:1) and Jesus as the true vine, "Abide in me and I abide in you" (John 15:4). Our freedom and our discipleship is abiding in Jesus, remaining with Jesus forever.

On this Reformation Day, we are introduced to familiar themes that float above us like felt banners rather than being written on our hearts. The challenge for preaching such familiar themes is that they often become streams of theological fluff floating above us. But these words speak of the promise of grace and relationship with God that is given into our very beings. How do we, as preachers, create a preaching experience where this message of grace, which so profoundly moved Luther and many throughout history, deeply enters into the hearts of our communities--and, perhaps most important, ourselves?

I think of the dramatic and transformative scene in Toni Morrison's Beloved when Baby Suggs preaches in the back yard of 124 with such sacred and embodied life, grace, and love to her people that they dance grace into their beings and it is written on their hearts. Morrison writes, "She told them that the only grace that they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it." (5) While God's grace in Jesus is most certainly ours even when we don't see it, it gives us life and changes us when we begin to imagine and believe it. In our preaching, how do we dare to imagine grace, and how do we preach it in such a way that it abides in our own hearts and the hearts of our communities?

Because it is Reformation Day, I must end with a Luther quote--only this one comes from Catherine: "I will stick to Christ as a burr to a topcoat." (6) How fortunate that we, as Christ's own, have a God who invites us to be more than a burr on God's topcoat. God invites us to deeply and intimately remain with God forever. SKO 

4. Wes Howard-Brook, Becoming Children of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994), 202.

5. Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Plume, 1987), 88.

6. Quoted in Roland H. Bainton, Women of the Reformation in Germany and Italy (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1971), 49.