Sermon for Reformation Sunday

THE TRUTH IS A PERSON

Reformation Sunday
October 25, 2009
John 8:31-3

Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.

Dear friends in Christ: Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Ever since the ELCA convention last month, it's been even more fashionable than usual for more Lutheran Lutherans than they to bash the ELCA for not abiding in the Word.

I have absolutely no doubt that sometimes we've been more vehement than we needed to be, and maybe even a little nasty. More than that, I have absolutely no doubt that there have been times when I have personally let my frustration spill over into rhetoric which was less than helpful.

Part of the problem is the Pharisee in us- the part that thanks God that we are not as the ELCA is. But part of it, too, is the recognition that we are surrounded by professing Christians who feel no particular obligation to continue in Christ's Word. They're perfectly willing to tell us that, though seldom in those precise words. And it's hardly just the "liberals" among whom that tendency prevails.

We hear from our fellow conservative Christians that we confessional Lutherans need to "lighten up" about the Real Presence and baptismal regeneration and the other issues which divide us from Protestant Evangelicalism. Some argue that only matters which directly affect the salvation of individual souls ought to be church divisive. Others suggest that there's a sort of Great Consensus among those of us who want to be biblical Christians, and that whatever we disagree about beyond that consensus can't really be important- or at least as important as making a united witness to the world.

I well remember the afternoon over at Faith Lutheran on University in West Des Moines when Bishop Hougen and the clergy of the ELCA's Southeastern Iowa Synod gathered to discuss our view of truth. We were presented with three possible attitudes toward the truth which some in the Church hold. One was the traditional notion that truth is, at least to some extent, knowable. The second was Modernism- the idea that while there is indeed such a thing as truth, it's finally unknowable. And finally, there was Post-Modernism- the idea that there really is no such thing as "truth."

The presenter asked for a show of hands. Exactly two hands went up when he asked how many of us believed that truth was knowable- mine, and, interestingly, Bishop Hougen's. The overwhelming majority of the pastors present declared their belief in Modernism- in the notion that truth was unknowable. It still seems incredible to me, but there was even a substantial number whose confession was that there simply is no such thing as truth.

How can you not be frustrated in the face of that? These men- and women- had sworn at their ordination to conform their teaching to the Scriptures and the Confessions, and most of all to the Truth in its ultimate form: the Word made flesh, the Truth become a human being named Jesus, Who lived in a definite place and time and spoke certain definite words and made certain specific claims about- yes- truth. But more than that, Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be the Truth- and the Way, and the Life, too, and the only way by which human beings can come to the Father.

There are those who deny that Jesus ever lived- despite the fact that His life is far better attested than that of, say, Socrates. To question that He lived isn't really intellectually respectable, but people do it anyway. Others want to pretend that He was a Great Religious Teacher, on a par with the Buddah or Confucius or Mohammed. C.S. Lewis pointed out that a man who made the claims that He made, and made them falsely, could either be the greatest fraud the world has ever known or a lunatic on a par with the man who believes himself to be a poached egg, but never a great religious teacher or even merely an ethical man.

But in this Oprahfied and intellectually nihilistic world, even those who claim to be His followers deny that there is such a thing as truth. That being the case, it can hardly surprise us when the clear and consistent testimony of Scripture with regard to human sexuality is set aside by some of those very people.

But that it shouldn't surprise us doesn't make it less frustrating. How can a person confess the One Who claims to be the Truth with one side of his mouth, and deny that there is such a thing as truth with the other? How can a person claim to be His disciple, and yet disregard what He has to say about the binding nature of the Moral Law?

I don't know. How can we?

Because we do, you know- and just as blatantly as those in the ELCA we like to point our fingers at. It's certainly both puzzling and disturbing that some can have such compassion for the poor and for discriminated against minorities, and so little for the unborn. But is it not just as great a contradiction to be filled with compassion for the unborn, and to fail to have the same compassion for the poor and for the other victims of social injustice?

We accuse others of picking and choosing what they accept in the teachings of Jesus and what they reject. And so they do. But so do we. Sectarianism is as much a sin as syncretism. A failure to confess what unity we have with other Christians, and to combine our confession of the truth when they err with charity and a due regard for the Eighth Commandment is as much a denial of the Truth Himself as a willingness to be accomplices in the trivialization or denial of what He taught us.

All too often we judge not only doctrine and behavior, but people. The Truth made flesh forbids that. And in our daily interaction with our fellow human beings both inside and outside the household of Faith, we are often so certain of our own rectitude and insistent upon our own rights that we forget that Jesus came to call, not the righteous, but sinners- and that to assign ourselves a place with the righteous is to define ourselves outside of those for whom He came. All to often we forget that the Truth bids us empty ourselves as He did, and humble ourselves, and be willing to take the role of the transgressor and to suffer all that it entails even when we do not deserve it, for the sake of the other.

A pastor I know remarked in a sermon on this text a few years ago that all of the problems the Church faces finally boil down to a failure to continue in Christ's Word. But I think it goes beyond that. I do not say that our lives would be filled with nonstop ease and joy if only we continued in His Word. To say that would be a lie. His way is the way of the cross. His way is a way of suffering. His way is a path of self-renunciation and self-denial. The cross is the greatest of all truths. To be a follower of Jesus is to share His Cross. "When Christ calls a man," as Bonhoeffer once wrote, "He bids him come and die."

But our failure to be who Christ calls us to be, and thus to ultimately share in the joy that only those who bear the cross with Him can know, always comes finally from our failure to continue in His Word. If we are in slavery to sin and to bad habits and even to pride and self-righteousness, it's not because we don't try hard enough or haven't managed to summon up the willpower. It's because we refuse to die.

But die we must. To continue in Jesus's Word is to die daily to sin and self-righteousness, and to the temptation to thank God that we are not like those who do not continue in His Word. To continue in Jesus' Word is to accept its accusation, and its condemnation, in all its sternness and gravity.

But it is also to rise daily, just as He rose. Yes, the cross hurts. And yes, the cross is central to what it means to continue in Christ's word. Yet it was through the cross that He bought our pardon for our failure to be what He is, and to continue in His Word. It was through the cross that Christ came to rise again, as He bids us rise, living in the forgiveness and righteousness that He purchased for us on the cross, living in the freedom that can only come when all that is selfish and self-centered and proud and willful in us is crucified with Christ, and we live as what His word proclaims us to be: righteous, not with a righteousness of our own, but with His, and living a life that is His, having laid down our own at the foot of the cross.

And that, you see, is finally what continuing in His Word is all about: living as what that Word declares us to be. His Word declares we who are by nature slaves of sin to be free, to be sons and not slaves; for His sake to be beloved and accepted where for our own sake we deserve only to be judged and to be condemned.

We are surely right to insist on the Real Presence, and that the New Birth takes place just as Jesus says it does, by water and the Spirit. Those are important truths for those of us who daily lay down our own lives in our baptism, to rise again living His, and who receive His forgiveness and His very life in His very body and blood in the Supper. But to continue in Christ's word- to be free- is more than having our doctrine straight. It is to recognize our need for mercy, and to trust in the mercy offered us in Christ. And it is to live as people who daily die to any claim to know the truth apart from the One Who both died and rose to justify ungodly folk such as we confess ourselves- apart from Him- to be.

It is to lay down our lives and any claim to be in the right, and to live instead as forgiven sinners whose only righteousness is Jesus, is to continue in His word. To do that is to know the One Who is alone the Truth, and Who alone can set us free.

May the peace of God, that passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.