October 30, 2016 - The Story of Our Righteousness

Well today is the 499th anniversary of the Reformation. Which may come as a surprise to you. Because there has been a lot of news about the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, but I think we are all so excited about it that we’re just excited to get a head start. So tomorrow will be the first day of the year of commemoration leading up to the 500th anniversary. So, for instance, tomorrow in Lund, Sweden, the Lutheran World Federation, which represents 90% of the world’s Lutherans, 75 million of us, will be having the first service of Commemoration. And Pope Francis has been invited to participate. Which, you can imagine, is a big deal. And for those of you who are web-savvy, the service will be streaming online starting tomorrow morning at 7:30. You can Google Lutheran World Federation and you will be able to find the website.

Inviting the Pope to celebrate with us is a new step forward. Because the most common narrative we tell of the Reformation is that the Catholic church was running the whole show, Luther thought Catholics were teaching things about Christ and righteousness that were wrong, on October 31st 517 CE he nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, the Catholics excommunicated Luther, we went on to start the Lutheran church, yay us. For the past 500 years, Lutherans have been somewhat self-righteous in our excommunicated status. A bit of: well you don’t want us? Fine, we don’t need you - in fact, we’re better off without you! We are a bit triumphalist in the way we have been telling this story.

But Christians are not new to telling our history in this way. There is another story that we tell in the same way, and that is the relationship between Christians and Jews. The Gospel of John, in particular, likes to tell the story this way: Jews were running the show, Jesus came to tell them they were teaching things about God that were wrong, the Jews killed Jesus, Jesus was raised and the disciples went on to start the Christian church, yay us. For the past 2000 years, Christians have been somewhat self-righteous in our own way. You don’t think we’re part of Abraham’s covenant? Fine, we don’t need you - in fact, we’re better than you, and God loves us more than you, and God doesn’t even want you anymore. That has, in fact, been the way we’ve read most of Romans - and in fact the way Luther read Romans. That our new covenant with God through Jesus replaced the covenant God had established with the Jews.

And what has been the result of both of these ways of telling our history? Both the Lutherans win over Catholics, and the Christians win over the Jews stories? Nothing but hatred, violence, hostility, and even killings. I’ve told you of some of the more horrible instances of Christians killing Jews, and we know that Lutherans were killed for their beliefs. What you probably didn’t learn in Catechism class is that Lutherans in several countries hunted down and persecuted - tortured and killed - those who weren’t Lutheran - whether they were Catholics or other non-Lutheran Reformers, particularly the Anabaptists. In fact, the service tomorrow in Lund is specifically called a Commemoration service, and not a Celebration service, because an important theme of that service will be repentance and forgiveness. Lutheran repentance, actually. Repenting for what we have done to others in the past 500 years, and also repenting for how we have hated our “Christian enemies” and how we have spent so much time not forgiving Catholics for what they have done.

Because that is the point of being a Christian, right? That we forgive those who persecute us? That we love those who hate us? That we pray for our enemies? This is what Christ showed us. When he died, he said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

By the grace of God, and this is certainly the work of God and not our own, we are forgiven. We are forgiven for killing and we are forgiven for not forgiving those who have killed us. And we have been given new eyes to the truth of God’s world. The truth that we are all God’s children, all of us made in the image of God from the first day of Creation. We are all children of God’s covenant, which cannot be revoked. The covenant we hear of in Jeremiah, the covenant written on the hearts of the people of Israel, the Jews, and through Jesus extended to non-Jews, that is to Christians - this is one covenant. 

It is the reason that I say, during Communion, that Jesus gave the wine to his disciples saying, “This cup is the covenant renewed in my blood.” You will remember that it has always been said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” But the Greek is not entirely clear. The Greek allows either way to be said. And our new interpretations of the writings of Paul, which we’ve come to through deep biblical study and conversations with Jews, lead us to understand that we did not properly understand what Paul was saying. He was not rejecting the Law, or Israel, or the old covenant. He was, in fact, expanding the already existing covenant so that it would now include those who were not Law-observers. That is to say, non-Jewish Christians. Paul never proposed a new covenant for Christians, let alone one that would replace and exclude the old covenant with the Jews. Paul was saying that God’s covenant now would include both Jews, God’s children since Abraham, and Christians, God’s children since Jesus. By the grace of God, we now know that God’s commitment to God’s children is even deeper than we imagined.

And we are now coming to realize this in light of Lutherans and Roman Catholics, too. In 1999, which I am a bit embarrassed to admit was almost twenty years ago, together we signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, in which we agreed we share “a common understanding of our justification by God's grace through faith in Christ.” That joint understanding is: “By grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works.”

You see, what we came to realize is that we had spent a lot more time arguing with one another than truly trying to understand one another. And fault lies on both sides. We were both so insistent that we were right, and that God was one our side, that we never tried to explore how we could both be right, and how God could be with both us. Finally, 450 years later, we actually listened to the Holy Spirit’s promptings to us, and began to explore what one another truly meant, and to hear that, in fact, we did mean the same thing when it came to God’s justification.

We came to the truth that we have come to in our understanding of the Jewish faith, that God alone makes us righteous, through a variety of ways. God makes Jews righteous through the Laws of Moses, and God makes Christians righteous through Jesus Christ. We now see that we are all children of God, through different means. But those different means and ways should not separate us, because it is God who keeps us together. We all agree that God’s relationship with us is as we see from Jeremiah, “No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” All - Jews, Lutherans, Roman Catholics. And so together, we can all turn to Psalm 46 and proclaim the words we find there that we already read this morning, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble, Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change. ... The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” So, while we enter this 500th anniversary of the commemoration of the Reformation, we remember our own failings that have presented us from reaching this point sooner, but we celebrate that, through God, all things are possible, that God’s love for us never ends, and that, as Christians, God restores our righteousness, not through our own efforts, but through Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God, Amen.

Oct 23 - Criticizing Others is Criticizing God

Would you say you’re more like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, or like the tax collector? Be honest, because I’m not going to ask you to raise your hands, which one would you rather be like? Me, I’m more like the Pharisee. I am thankful that I’m not a thief or a rogue or an adulterer, and I’m thankful that I can be proud of the job that I have. I don’t fast twice a week, but I do give a tenth of my income to charity. I’m thankful that I have values and morals and ethics that make me a valuable member of society, and I’m glad that I come to church on Sunday morning. I have no desire to be like any of the people I see out there who are lost and struggling with their lives, who don’t know how to live, and who are trapped by the consequences of their own foolish decisions. I feel bad for them, and I’m glad I’m not one of them. I turn to my faith when I’m in trouble, rather than to any of the millions of others options out there.

And so I understand why the Pharisee is glad not to be like the tax collector sharing the Temple space wit him. The tax collector was employed by Rome. He would have been Jewish, which means he would have been a traitor to his own people, knocking on doors and seizing people’s property in order to give Rome, the foreign, pagan occupier, what it demanded. His job was not sanctioned by Torah, which advocated forgiveness of debts.

So why, then, does Jesus say that it is the tax collector, the one raised in his religion but turned his back on it and on his people, who is justified rather than the Pharisee? To be clear, Jesus is not bashing Pharisees here. He is not calling into doubt the authenticity of the Pharisee’s claims. The Pharisee really was a good man, and the tenth of his income that he gave to the Temple was undoubtedly used in helpful ways. There is no question that he truly was an upstanding member of society. But Jesus is implying that all that is besides the point. Why?

When we learn the grammar of a language, we’re taught to pay attention to what the subject of the sentence is, and what the object is. The subject is the person or thing doing something and the object is the person or thing that something is being done to. Take the sentence: the disciples ate the fish. The disciples are the subject - they are the ones doing something. The fish is the object - it is the thing that something is being done to.

If we look at the grammar of what the Pharisee and what the tax collector said, they give us the key to this story. The Pharisee says, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of my income.” The tax payer says, “God, be merciful to me!” When the Pharisee speaks, the subject of the sentence is himself. He is the one doing things. “I fast. I give.” God is pretty incidental to all of it. But when the tax payer speaks, the subject of the sentence is God. “God have mercy.” God is the one doing things. The tax payer is, in fact, the object. The one having something done to him; having mercy done to him.

The point Jesus is making is that when we come before God, whether it was in the Temple, or in church, or in daily prayer, we are to make God the subject of our speech. We may very well be good Christians, regular church-goers, give to charity, kind to friends and enemies. But that is not the point. The point is that God has made us good Christians, God has made us regular church-goers, God has given us charitable hearts and a kind nature. As Paul says, “this is not our own doing, so that none may boast.”

So we dare not look down on those who don’t aren’t Christian, who don’t go to church, who don’t give to charity. It’s true that God has not done the same thing for those people but God is doing something else. And if we criticize them, we are criticizing God. When we look down on people who spend Sunday mornings at home, and say, “Oh, people these days don’t go to church, it’s so appalling, no wonder our world is so awful,” we are criticizing God. As Lutherans, we believe that God sends the Holy Spirit into our hearts to give us faith. In the case of those people who don’t go to church, God has clearly given them a different path to follow in life. God has not called them in the same way God has called us. We are here because God called us here, not because we, in and of ourselves, are good people. We are as wretched and sinful as the tax collector, even if we don’t recognize it. But God, in great mercy, calls us to church every Sunday, gives us the hearts to be charitable, and kind. God, for reasons we will never know, has not done that for others. And who are we to judge the actions of God? (We can argue with them, like I said last week, but we cannot judge them.) When we judge the actions of others, we are judging God.

The point is not that Jesus is contrasting the behaviour of the Pharisee with the behaviour of the tax collector. He is not condemning the Pharisee for saying that he fasts and gives. Nor is he lifting up the tax collector for being so humble and self-abasing. If the tax collector had gone to Temple and said, “Oh God, I am so awful, I am so sinful, I am horrible, I will do better,” Jesus would have condemned that too. Because then the tax collector would have been making himself the subject of his prayers. The point is that Jesus is contrasting those prayers in which we make ourselves the actors and those in which we make God the actor.

Once the Holy Spirit moves within us to help us see this, while our actions may resemble those of the Pharisee, our speech ultimately ends up like that of the tax-collector. “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Because who among us doesn’t judge the behaviour of others? I confess that I judge others - not by whether or not they go to church, but by whether they are kind, or whether they give to charity. And in that, I am a sinner. We are all sinners.

But we thank God that God is merciful. If God judged us half as harshly as we judge ourselves and we judge others, we would be in serious trouble. But God is merciful. God shows us mercy when we judge, and God puts mercy into our hearts. And in that mercy, God makes us righteous. At the end of the parable, Jesus says, “I tell you, this [tax collector] went down to his home justified rather than the other.” The tax collector was justified because he turned to God to justify him. The Pharisee was not, because he turned to himself. No matter how wretched and sinful our lives, when we turn to God to be the subject of our lives, when we ask God to make us righteous, God does. There is no having to wrestle with God over this one. When we pray that God would make us good and righteous and charitable and kind, God does. We all have those moments when we catch ourselves thinking or saying something that isn’t particularly kind, and, if we are honest with ourselves, we think, “Oh, I wish I were nicer.” But even that wish is one that makes us the subject. But if we find ourselves in these situations and we pray, “Oh, God please make me nicer,” or kinder, or more generous, or braver, or more understanding, God will do it. God will act in our lives. God will respond to these prayers. And in doing so, God will justify us, as well. And so we thank God, for God’s great mercy, for God’s past working our lives, and for the work that we know God will continue to do. Thanks be to God. Amen.