Reformation Celebraion

Intro

David Books a New York Times columnist wrote a piece called “The Shame Culture.” In it he talks about how in the 1980 moral relativism ruled the college campus. We had gone from a culture with fairly clear right and wrong to a culture where the dominate thought was that there really was no right or wrong, but that subjective personal values had replaced objective moral principles. But now David Brooks says that is no longer accurate. The college campus’s are now awash with moral judgment. Moral crusade rapidly spread across college campuses and cities, and when this happens many people feel compelled to post support of it on Facebook within minutes and if you don’t you will be noticed and your community of friends will condemn you.

One of the things he shows in his article is how we have moved from guilt as the primary problem to now shame. The question is now is not so much right or wrong, but are you included or excluded.

One thing that stands out to me about article is that for as much as civilization has advanced technologically and economically we are still dealing with the same problems. What do we do with the fact that we feel wrong or excluded. guilt and shame.

Everyone of us has to deal with guilt and shame. It does not go away even if we say right and wrong are just subjective personal values. We still feel it. We don’t measure up to our own standards, let alone God’s. Or we often feel excluded from this or that group that we wish to be apart of.

And what we do to manage our guilt and shame is usually try harder to do what we think is right. And even then even our best efforts don’t seem to work because we still feel a nagging sense that we are not right or acceptable.

And we might tell ourselves “well nobody’s perfect” or “I just have to forgive myself.” But it does not go away.

Much of the Reformation was dealing with the same stuff. What do we do with our guilt and shame? How can we be righteous and accepted.

And the Reformation rediscovered God’s answer to this.

And God’s answer to this is found in his declaring us righteous, not because we are, but because Jesus is. This is justification by faith. So when we believe, when we trust our identity is in Christ, God counts Jesus righteousness and acceptableness as ours.

This is the key. The doctrine that the church stands or falls on as the Reformer Martin Luther said is this. Justification by Faith. And when we receive this gift and trust in God’s promised deceleration, that fear, guilt and shame melt away, and our hearts defy gravity.

So since we are celebrating God’s renewal that took place 500 years ago in the Reformation I want us to look at three things, Fist, why reform was needed, second what was reformed, and the way the Anglican church was reformed.

So first,

Why Reform was Needed.

The church in the 1500’s was ugly. Spiritual abuse run amuck. and we can’t go through everything, so lets just look at two.

First a downplaying of the authority and power of Scripture. This can be seen in the teaching of purgatory. Purgatory emerged as a belief early on in the churches life and it emerged as a pastoral comfort to people.

So let’s say you were a Christian that was worried that you were not clean enough to enter heaven when you die. That you know Jesus had paid the eternal consequences of sin, but what about the temporal consequences, the sins you “got away with here” The pastor would say you don’t have to worry about, that because after death you will be purified in purgatory before you go to heaven.

Over time though purgatory became less and less a comfort and more and more terrifying, to: if you don’t clean your life up now you will be tortured in purgatory.

And I won’t describe the kinds of torture here, because it is simply too gruesome. Then the church said you can buy indulgences from us to alleviate your family members who are suffering in purgatory. The selling of these indulgences is what set Martin Luther off to nail is 95 thesis to the church door 500 years ago.

Anytime you have a doctrine that not in Scripture will end up being abusive.

Another problem with the church was its teaching on how a person is righteous before God. It was taught that at baptism a child was cleansed, and now had to try and maintain that unstained, and if you sinned you had to go through confession and absolution and then you now have something of a do over, until you sinned again, rinse repeat.

Now the priest only absolved of your eternal consequences of your sin so you still had to pay the temporal consequences sins here on earth or in purgatory before you could enter heaven. Because they taught, and here is the key that you had to be righteous in yourself for God to consider you righteous.

Ultimately this experience was driven by fear of punishment and shame because well, you will never be good enough, and it was up to you. So if you could not do it, shame on you, and so shame and guilt were not actually dealt with.

Illustration:

I think it is hard to imagine what this must have been like.

But one way to think about it is imagine if the health and wealth preachers was the official teaching of the church. So Binny Hinn is not considered to be some off the wall guy down in Florida, but your pastor actually encourages you to buy one of his $200 blessed prayer shawls. That you will have special access to God depending on how much money you give. That is something of what it was like back then. And by the way you can never spend enough to remove your guilt or shame.

The Reformation

But things change, along comes this fiery monk named Martin Luther. God’s volcano as someone called him. And he stands up to the abuses and these teachings.

He does this first off, by going back to Scripture God’s word. If Scripture does not teach it it should not be a required belief. Because it will only lead to abuse. Purgatory is a good example. So God’s word alone is the the final authority, not popes, not culture, not councils, God’s word.

Secondly, Luther rediscovered the true doctrine of Justification by faith. That is that when we trust in God’s promises he considers us righteous in his sight. That is our righteousness and acceptableness before God is not a question of are we righteous in ourselves, but is a matter of Christ’s counting for us. That is why we read the passages we did.

IN Genesis 16:6 we read Abraham believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

What Luther found was that we are at the same time righteous in God’s sight and sinners. That our sins our unrighteousness, our uncleanness, our un acceptableness does not count against us, because Jesus righteousness his cleanness, his acceptableness counts for us.

Sometimes we feel unacceptable because of what we have done, other times because what has been done to us. Recently there has been a movement on social media, in light of the Harvey WineSteen scandal. Wemon all over the country have been posting on social media Meetoo, that is they have been saying I have been sexually assaulted too. I praise God for the courage of these women, because it takes courage.

Because one of the evil things about sexual assault is that the victim often feels intense shame. That somehow it was their fault, they could have done something different or that they are somehow now tainted or damaged.

And while I cannot do justice to the weighty ness of this matter right now, what I can say is that if you find your identity in Christ, that is not the way your heavenly father sees you. You are accepted as righteous, clean, pure, and complete in his eyes. In the eyes of the one who matters most, you are accepted.

declared righteous in his sight: Justification by faith

Now how do you help people who have been under the tyranny of a corrupt church get this?

The Anglican Church

Well one way the Anglican's, the reformers in the Church of England did it was through worship.

Thomas Cranmer wrote the first English book of common prayer, which is like a worship service book.

And the service that we are doing this morning is the service he wrote, with the language updated a little.

If the church needed to emphasize Scripture and justification by Faith, this worship service brings it to the people.

It is saturated with Scripture. The reformers believed in the wonder working power of God’s word. They did not think of God’s word as dead or static, but living and active.

When God speaks things happen. So from beginning to end every bit of the service is either God’s word or paraphrasing and reordering God’s word.

The second emphasis is Justification by faith. Throughout the service you have this beat of our sin—Gods grace—response of faith.

We can’t go through the whole service, but I want us to go to the center right before the climax of the service

After the prayers we confess our sins, acknowledging that we are not righteous in ourselves, and the burden is more than we can bear.

Now for the reformers confessing sin is not groveling or wallowing in pity or self loathing. They saw it as the true reality that the closer we get to God the more we see how we are not like him.

The reformers believed we were really sinful more than most would say today, but they believed God was more gracious and loving than most understand today. And so after confession we hear God’s wonder working word spoken over them declaring them forgiven and righteous in his sight all who turn to Jesus.

And then after the assurance of pardon we have, what has been called, the comfortable words. This is it at the very heart of the Reformation:

You can see these in your bulletin.

First: starting with human longing our hurting and struggling hearts: Come to me you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

Second we move to God’s longing: For God so love the world that he gave his only begotten son. What do we hear in these words? A displeased Father? No divine longing to answer human longing, A fathers love for his children who run from his love.

Third: we move to salvation from a human point of view: This is a true saying worthy of all to be received, that Jesus Christ came to save sinners. We don’t have to run and hide in shame because Jesus came not to shame us but to embrace us. Are souls are weary and heavy laden not because of lack of sleep, but because of the shame we carry. And we work hard to cover ourselves with any other identity, but Jesus comes to cover us in his love, to give us our true identity, to save us.

Last we move to salvation from God’s point of view: If anyone sins we have an advocate with the righteous, he is the propitiation for our sins. Jesus advocates on our behalf before the Father. God is angry at sin. He would not be a loving father he was not angry with the things Harvey Weinsteen has done. Jesus satisfies God’s anger so that we don’t have to. He advocates on our behalf, saying he or she is with me. Ive got this one its okay.

God’s word spoken: the burden of shame and guilt drop to the ground. The answer to our weary heavy laden souls is not found in what we do, but who we believe. God so loved us so much that he goes finds us hiding and not only covers our shame, but Jesus vouches for us.

And when we are no longer weighed down with shame and guilt our hearts defy gravity. Lift up your hearts we lift them to the Lord.

These are the words that follow immediately after we experience this peace with God and one another.

Thomas Cranmer set up this worship service in such a way that after we experience being freed from sin, shame and guilt our hearts are lifted into the very throne room of heaven and we sing with the saints and host of heaven Holy Holy Holy. And there we eat with our savior and are satisfied to our hearts content.

Conclusion:

This is what Thomas Cranmer gave his life for. This is Justification by Faith. And this is what we need today. You see we cant explain away our sin, we cannot make ourselves clean, we cannot remove our nagging conscience. The answer is not within us. The answer is Jesus Christ.

Martin Luther, the reformer wrote this very thing into his hymn “a mighty fortress is our God”

Did we in our own strength confide, Our striving would be losing; Were not the right Man on our side, The Man of God’s own choosing: Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;

Lord Sabaoth His Name, From age to age the same, And He must win the battle.

Jesus has won, shame and guilt are defeated. And when we find our identity in Jesus the weight of shame and guilt fall away and our heats will defy gravity.