The Sermon for Reformation Sunday
October 26, 1997

Christ the King Lutheran Church

The Rev. Edwin D. Peterman, Senior Pastor

The Lessons for the Day

• Jeremiah 31:31-34
• Romans 3:19-28
• John 8:31-36

Most of you have heard of the great magician Houdini, who lived some fifty years ago. He was famous for his ability to free himself from handcuffs, ropes, chains, straight jackets, locked trunks and just about anything else. He often issued challenges for people to confine him, so he could not escape. But always he would find a way of getting free from whatever people invented to secure him. One day a prison official challenged him to get out of a particular prison cell. Houdini accepted the offer and met the official at the prison. The official blindfolded him, placed him in a cell, and closed the door. Then Houdini was told to remove the blindfold and try to escape from the cell. Immediately he began to work on the lock—fiddling with it, jiggling it, and turning it this way and that. But no matter what he did, he was unsuccessful. Finally, after nearly two frustrating hours, Houdini gave up. He couldn't get out of the prison cell. At that point the prison official walked to the door of the cell and pulled it open. The door had never been locked.

There is a popular refrain that says, "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." But those who have looked into the matter a bit more carefully than Kris Kristofferson have discovered that freedom is one of the basic paradoxes of human existence. People desire to be free, and yet when they become free they don't know what to do with their freedom and as often as not hurry back into some form of bondage. Like Houdini, people allow themselves to be confined and then spend a great deal of time trying to escape, only to discover later on that nothing was really binding them at all except their imagination.

It is just this tragic paradox of human existence which Jesus addresses in today's gospel. He tells some Jews who had believed in him that if they continue in his word, they will be truly free. They immediately deny that they are in any way lacking in freedom, claiming they have never been slaves to anyone. Their reply shows how far they are into denial. After all, the central story of Jewish scripture is the Exodus, when Jews who were enslaved in Egypt are set free under the leadership of Moses. How could any Jew ever forget that story? Nevertheless, the Jews in today's gospel did not remember it. And the reason they did not remember it was because they were trying to make themselves free by denying that they were slaves. They were trying to secure their own freedom by pretending they were not now, nor had they ever been, in bondage to anyone or anything.

Jesus responds to their ignorance and foolishness by telling them that everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. Slaves do not have a permanent place in the household, but sons do. So if a son makes you free, you will be free indeed. Obviously Jesus is talking about the kingdom of God. What he is saying is that if you continue to allow yourself to be a slave to sin, including the sin of denying the reality of your own history, you will never be free. But if Jesus, the Son of God, declares you free, then you will be able to remember your own history and accept it realistically and still live in the freedom of the kingdom of God. But you cannot do this all by yourself. How can you, a slave, set yourself free? You can't. Only one who has the real authority of true freedom can set you free. Only the Son of God can make you free indeed.

In the sixteenth century Martin Luther found himself in a church that had an elaborate system for offering people personal freedom. Freedom could be obtained only by confessing all your sins to a priest, receiving absolution, and then doing a series of devotional good works that would make satisfaction for your sins and secure your forgiveness. The only trouble was that even while you were doing these good works of satisfaction, you were already starting to commit new sins which now had to be confessed, absolved, and satisfied. And in the course of this second round a third round would begin, and so you found yourself on a treadmill of hopelessness and condemnation.

When Luther posted the 95 Theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, he was attacking this very system. His first thesis was that the entirety of the Christian's life is daily repentance. What Luther meant was that while forgiveness is already obtained for us in Jesus Christ and given to us in the sacrament of baptism, we acknowledge our sins and repent of them daily, not in order to obtain forgiveness but in order to remember and claim the forgiveness we already have. Repentance and confession are not acts of desperation, but expressions of discipleship. We do not repent and confess to make ourselves free, but rather to live more faithfully in the freedom we already have. Article 25 of the Augsburg Confession says that we Lutherans retain confession in order that absolution may be declared and terrified consciences given consolation. In other words, the chief and most important part of confession is not striving for salvation as some far-off goal, but rather acknowledging the salvation we already have.

The church is a divine institution, but it is also earthly. As a result, the church is always tempted by demonic desire to make salvation and freedom something we must achieve through our own good works, rather than a gift freely given to us by God through faith. The gospel is proclaimed in one generation, but in the next works-righteousness starts to creep back in again. Just when we think we have finally gotten the concept, we lose it and find ourselves back in the earlier pattern of trying to earn salvation.

For example, Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon both said going to confession before communion was a good thing but not a requirement. Their contemporary, John Bugenhagen, said it was an absolute requirement, however. And that tradition continues to the present day in the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, which, for all of its professed strictness about following Martin Luther, relies more on Bugenhagen than on Luther for its communion practice.

In our own twentieth century we have seen the same thing occur in the Roman Church. The Second Vatican Council focussed on the centrality of Jesus Christ as our Savior, but now, less than forty years later, the Roman Church is on the verge of promulgating a new dogma which declares that the Virgin Mary is Co-Redeemer. That is, Mary is not only the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ. She shares equally with him in being the Savior of the world. And that's not all. The new dogma also states that henceforth no Christian is to pray directly to God the Father or to Jesus Christ. All prayers must go through Mary, who in turn will take them to Jesus and then bring back an answer to us. Even Roman Catholic theologians admit that this entire dogma is patent heresy, for scripture itself says that we have only one Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord. Nevertheless, popular piety and even the piety of Pope John Paul II are nudging the Roman Church in the direction of this absurd doctrine.

The tragedy of human sin is our wilful desire to make freedom and salvation something we have to jump through religious hoops to obtain. Whether it is mandatory confession before communion or calling in our prayers to God through the heavenly switchboard of Mary, there is something about all of us that simply does not want to accept freedom and salvation as the gracious gifts they are.

In the second lesson for today St. Paul clearly says, [All who believe] are now justified by [God's] grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. He speaks in the present tense, not the future. He is not saying, "Just think how it would be if you were some day actually justified and redeemed." He is not saying, "God has done this and that and the other, and if you will just pray hard enough and do what is right, you might be able to look forward to something better in the next life."

No! What St. Paul is saying is this: You are justified. You are free. Your works-righteousness is no longer required. The treadmill of religiousness is shut down. The salt mine is closed. The prison door is unlocked. You are sprung, right now, and there is no priestly probation officer to whom you have to report. So stop whining. Stop fiddling with the lock. Just walk out into the bright daylight of salvation. By the grace of God you are free, because the Son of God has set you free forever.