Let us pray…
May the words of my mouth and the meditations
of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
Amen.
Like the Israelites listening to Jesus in John’s gospel, many of us
might balk at the notion that we ever have been, or are now, enslaved. Like them,
we have short memories.
I say that because we often begin our worship with the rite of
confession and forgiveness, saying to God, “we confess that we are in bondage
to sin and cannot free ourselves.” We name how sinfulness is the very nature of
our human condition. And then we forget.
God doesn’t forget, but thankfully, God does not leave us there in the
muck and mire of our sin. Because God loves us, God forgives our sin and frees
us from bondage. It is completely God’s action for each of us, and it is
pure gift.
Until we understand the size or volume of our sin, we cannot grasp the
magnitude of God’s action for us. We fall back into thinking we need to believe more, do more and earn God’s favor.
Unless we accept that the cross upends the way we think the world should work, we will
continue to underestimate what our freedom in Christ means for us, and for our
neighbors.
Because freed from sin,
slaves to no one and to nothing,
we are called to be servants to all.
I often say faith is never only about me and Jesus. It is always
a cross shaped relationship, between God and us, and between us and our
neighbors, community and world.
Which brings me to my question for us today as we remember Luther’s
teaching and the movement of the Reformation more than five hundred years ago:
“What does faith free us to do that we cannot do alone?”
Faith frees us from fear. One of the
stories we hear about Martin Luther is how his understanding of who God is was
transformed by his reading of Scripture. When he studied St. Paul’s letter to
the Romans, his image of a vengeful and punishing God was replaced by a God of
mercy and grace whose awesome gift for us is the righteousness of God flowing
to us that brings us into God’s presence. We are to “love and fear God” not
because God is wrathful but because God’s grace is beyond our comprehension.
Faith frees us to follow God’s will, keeping Christ at the center of our
lives. When we accept our chosen-ness by God, and God’s abundant love for us, we
can stop competing for approval in the world and its terms. We can, like
Luther, stand up and boldly claim, “I am a baptized child of God” with
confidence that God is with us in all of the ups and downs we experience. Abundant
life in Christ is found in relationship.
Faith frees us to stand with our neighbors. At Grace we have a
history of more than four decades of showing up in our community, partnering
with ministries who provide food, shelter and assistance to people living
without basic needs. In any given week, you can see Grace members volunteering
at the Rescue Mission, at Interfaith Assistance Ministries, the Thrive Clubhouse,
and Habitat for Humanity, as well as at Safelight, the Storehouse and the Free
Clinics. In the book study we just wrapped up, we heard stories from the global
church where faith has empowered communities to build schools, to provide
health education and prevent diseases like malaria and to work across
ecumenical and even interfaith divisions to address needs. Faith says that none
of us are whole unless all of us are whole, and when one suffers, we all suffer. Faith frees
us to love selflessly.
Today as we celebrate the freedom given to us in our faith in Christ
Jesus, we are also celebrating the affirmation of baptism milestone for Dustin
and Kaylee, young adults whose faith has been nurtured and formed here in our
congregation and by their family. They completed their confirmation instruction
but had not yet participated in the milestone and expressed a desire to do that.
On this Reformation Sunday, let us celebrate that we are joined
together in faith and commit to living in the freedom faith gives us for the
sake of the world God loves.
Amen.
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