Reformation Sunday

John 8:31-36

On this Reformation Sunday, we celebrate the freedom that we have in faith,
the very same freedom that the apostles claimed even when they were imprisoned for witnessing to “all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day he was taken up to heaven” (Acts 1:1-2), and, the very same freedom that the Augustinian monk Martin Luther seized when he criticized the Catholic Church for false teaching and abuses of power.

But, dear Church, dear Church, please hear me when I say that this “freedom” is not the same freedom that western culture, and especially our American culture, has embraced; the freedom we have through Jesus Christ is not unfettered individual choice.

It is not the freedom to construct and deliver explosives that can kill or maim, regardless of how much you dislike a person, resent their power and position, or disagree with their political viewpoints. 

And it is not the freedom to violently act out against a group of people in their place of worship and murder men and women who believe differently about who God is.

The freedom we have in faith is a freedom for the neighbor and the stranger.

Yesterday afternoon, after a man killed eleven people and injured others at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, these words were lifted up by colleagues:

Goodness is stronger than evil;
love is stronger than hate;
light is stronger than darkness;
life is stronger than death;
vict'ry is ours, vict'ry is ours,
through God who loves us.
Vict'ry is ours, vict'ry is ours,
through God who loves us.

Text from An African Prayer Book selected by Desmond Tutu, © 1995 by Desmond Tutu.

That hymn, “Goodness is Stronger than Evil” was written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1995 when he was chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that examined the atrocities committed by both pro- and anti-apartheid groups during the period of white minority rule in South Africa in the second half of the 20th century. Unlike Nelson Mandela who was jailed for 27 years for his leadership in the African National Congress, Tutu lived and worked in Johannesburg throughout the 70s and 80s advocating for change by building consensus in his community. Working from within the Anglican church first as the dean of the cathedral and then as Bishop he also worked in the secular world to address injustice and in 1984 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his achievements.

Tutu’s witness embodies the freedom we have in faith that is not self-centered or motivated by self-interest but rooted in love for the neighbor and the stranger.
But all too often, we exercise our freedom at the expense of others and when we do that, we are not free at all, but captive to sin. 

In today’s gospel, Jesus is telling the Jewish leaders about this freedom that is found in faith when,
as if their ancestors had never fled Pharaoh’s Egypt,
or wandered in the wilderness for forty years,
or been exiled to Babylon and later persecuted by the Romans, they said, “Wait, we've never been slaves! We are descendants of Abraham.” (v. 33)

Comfortable and complacent now, they had forgotten where their very own grandfathers and great-grandfathers came from and how their own ancestors suffered. They were oblivious to the weight of sin they carried and to the ways they remained bound and shackled.

Jesus tries again, saying, “everyone who sins [which, by the way, is all of us] is a slave to sin.” (v. 34) And then, again he names that freedom from sin that is the promise received through faith.

The Prayer of the Day we said earlier in worship was inspired not by Desmond Tutu, but by another Anglican priest, a 17th century Archbishop of Canterbury named William Laud. In its words, we called on God, remembering that Jesus continues to free us from our sin.

In the petitions we asked for God’s promised redemption, publicly and institutionally, in the capital-c “Church”
where it is corrupt – as in the decades of sexual misconduct by Catholic priests that was first covered up and now is being addressed there and across denominations to ensure the safety of children and adults;

We asked for God’s promised redemption, where there is error – on Saturday, the family of Matthew Shepard, the young gay man who was killed in Wyoming twenty years ago in a hate crime, inurned his ashes at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. in a reversal of (again) the capital-c “Church"’s historic position rejecting LGBTQ people.

We asked for God’s provision for the Church and among its people where it is in need – not because we live in fear of what we do not have or cannot see, but because we trust God that will equip us for the ministry we are called into for this time and place.

And we asked for God to unify the world where it is divided – as Bishop Elizabeth Eaton wrote last night,

“We are reminded that hate-filled violence knows no bounds – whether a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, [Wisconsin], a Christian church in Charleston, [South Carolina] or a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania]. As people of faith, we are bound together not only in our mourning, but also in our response.”

Today, we can respond by claiming our freedom in Christ to love the neighbor and stranger.
Many of you will remember Pastor Dee Liss who preached here in the summer; her husband Howard, one of the co-owners of Bicycles here in Shelby, attends Temple Beth El in Charlotte with his father, and last night, I asked their permission to write notes of encouragement to their congregation. So on your pews you have notes like this and you have pens. I ask you now to write words of encouragement and prayers for their community. If you’d like to just sign your name or our church’s name, that’s ok, too. I will send our notes to their rabbis this week.

Thank you.
Now, in a tradition that reaches back through generations, may we ask for God’s ever-reforming presence and power to accomplish what God has begun in us.

Let us pray… [1]
Almighty God, through the death of your Son you have destroyed sin and death. Through his resurrection you have restored innocence and eternal life. We who are delivered from the power of the devil may live in your kingdom. Give us grace that we may believe this with our whole heart. Enable us, always, to steadfastly praise and thank you in this faith, through your Son Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.

[1] “Martin Luther’s Prayer for strengthened faith,” in Herbert F. Brokering. Luther’s Prayers.

22nd Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 10:35-45

I love books and crosswords and puzzles. And for word-lovers, the Oxford English Dictionary or OED is the ultimate authority for the English language. Its volumes contain more than 600,000 words and tell the story of the English language over 1,000 years. Revisions and additions are made regularly as language evolves, and five years ago, this phrase “fear of missing out” was added. It is the apprehension that life is going on without you and “THE place to be” is not where you are. Whether it’s seeing artisan glass at the Biltmore House, watching “Hamilton” on stage at the Belk, or having the winning ticket for Tuesday’s lottery drawing, it is easy to succumb to this kind of fear.

When I hear the Zebedee brothers speaking to Jesus, I wonder if they shared this “fear of missing out.” When they ask to sit on his right and his left in His glory, are they simply asking for a blessed assurance from Him that they will be with him always? They’ll be in the right place? Of course, a less generous, and, okay, more likely, interpretation, is that they were jockeying for power and for prestige.  

But what’s remarkable isn’t that two or the disciples ask a self-centered question. Throughout Mark’s Gospel, the disciples are shown as foolish, forgetful, terrified, and perplexed. They show us that discipleship isn’t about competence or common sense; it’s not about our gifts or our abilities, or even about our desires; discipleship is about following Jesus and responding to what God first gives us. 

What is remarkable here is how Jesus responds to James and John. He doesn’t get angry with them; he doesn't scold them or rebuke them. Instead he tries again to help them understand that discipleship is costly. 

In his “Heidelberg Disputation”, Luther contrasted the theology of glory that puffs us up with pride in our own strength and good works against the theology of the cross that calls us to follow Christ with obedience.1 Luther introduced this theology of the cross when he was called before the leadership of his Augustinian order to further explain the complaints he had raised against the Church in Rome with his 95 Theses the year before. And, that is also where Luther first introduced the hidden God, the One who is found “in the humility and shame of the cross” and in the suffering of Jesus.

When Jesus answers James and John, he asks them, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" (Mark10:38)

This is not a cup of consolation (Jeremiah 16), salvation (Psalm 116) or blessing (1 Corinthians 10) but, as the psalmist writes, “a cup with foaming wine, …[that] all the wicked of the earth shall drain …down to the dregs.” (Psalm 75:8) It is the cup of rejection and condemnation that Jesus suffers when he is arrested. And the baptism is not the one that Jesus was given by his cousin John in the Jordan, but the sacrificing and self-emptying action that will happen on Golgotha at his crucifixion.

Discipleship is costly. But redemption is given to us by our patient and loving Redeemer, 
by Jesus Christ who came and lived among us to show us what it looks like to live not for glory, but for God.

As we get ready to go into the world this week, think about where you experience the fear of missing out…is it in the ways of the world, and the things of glory that deceive and distract us from the self-emptying love that Jesus models?

We do not need to be afraid we are missing out or grasp for the “good life”  because our security and our value — our identity  — is not found in the world but in the cross. And every time we remember our baptism at the font and eat and drink the bread and the wine at the Table, we are joined with Christ in His baptism. When following Jesus is costly, our hope is sustained in Christ who suffered for us.

Today as we prepare to offer our gifts and commitments for the upcoming year of ministry in our community, I pray we will answer the call Jesus makes to his disciples, to live our lives faithfully, willing to ask our questions, but assured of God’s love and forgiveness, with our eyes set on the way of the cross and not glory.

Let us pray…
Life-giving and redemptive God,
Thank your for your Son who lived among us and taught us what self-emptying love looks like.
Forgive us for our selfishness and thirst for glory;
Satisfy our hunger for power with your love and mercy.
By Your Holy Spirit, empower us to live forgiven and free to follow Jesus.
It is in his name that we pray.
Amen.

1. Martin Luther, “Heidelberg Disputation.” In Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, edited by Timothy F. Lull, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 43-44.