Reformation Sunday 2006
Reformation Sunday
October 29, 2006
Jeremiah 31:31–34
“Wisconsin Directions and God’s Directions”[i]
Introduction: Today we celebrate Reformation Day. Twenty-five years after Columbus discovered America, a Catholic monk by the name of Martin Luther posted Ninety-five Theses for debate on the issue of indulgences. Indulgences, as you may know, were documents purchased from the Church that would take away the punishments for sin people thought they had to suffer after death in a place called purgatory. This Catholic monk by the name of Martin Luther saw these indulgences for what they really were—a moneymaking scheme for a bankrupt Roman church. October 31, 1517, was the day that this lowly monk and university professor began to attack publicly the way the Church had been doing business for years. He criticized what was unbiblical, but at the time he had no intention of splitting the Church. His goal was to reform the Church, to correct the abuses, and make straight what had gone crooked over the past few centuries. At least, that’s how it began.
But in the following years, Luther saw that the problems ran much deeper than just indulgences. The problems dealt with the liturgy, they dealt with leadership in the Church, and, even more central, they dealt with the certainty of salvation. They dealt essentially with these two questions: “Who rules the Church and by what authority?” and “How can I find a gracious God?” In other words, the fundamental questions were about the ultimate authority of God’s Word, and, how is a person saved, and can they be certain of there salvation. Luther’s goal was to return the Church to the Word of God, understanding his law that condemns sinners, and understanding the gospel, God’s grace and mercy given to sinners. To understand this we now that he studied and believed God’s Word that says, “that it is by grace that we are saved through faith, not of works, lest any man should boast.” These words are echoed in the gospel promise of God given to Jeremiah where the Lord has said, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
Unlike most people in modern-day America, Luther knew he was a sinner. He knew he deserved nothing but eternal punishment and perpetual hell, since he could not fully live according to God’s Law. The Law, with its demands, condemned him. The Law showed him, and it shows us, where by nature we are located spiritually. It showed him and it shows us that we are lost.
If you have ever been lost, the one thing that you want is directions, a way to get you where you want to go. As you know, my family and I are not from Wisconsin. Many of the people here have a certain way of going about things, and as is true of many regions of the world, a certain way of explaining things. One of the things that my wife and I have noticed is how Wisconsin people give directions. Over and over again it has happened to us in a way that we now have coined the phrase… Wisconsin Directions. This is how it goes. We are lost. So we stop and ask for directions, the people that we ask are always kind and friendly and ready to help. They begin by saying. Oh, I know how to get there. It is really easy, no problem. First you go down this road here. Its called county rd YYY but it used to be called Rd. Y but before that it was the old Zimmerman Rd. You go down three lefts, and you’ll pass by the pink house that used to be owned by Chuck, he was an animal skinner, did the best hides around, now its owned by some new people. I don’t know what they do. I don’t think they sin animals. After that you make two rights, by the big oak tree you will see a corner, be careful there, people have been known to drive right off the road. Five miles further and you will be where you want to be. The person is enthusiastically confident about the directions and so off we go. Three lefts later, two rights later, we have seen neither a pink house, a dangerous corner, or a big oak tree. And yes, we are still lost.
This was the problem that Luther faced, not getting lost in Wisconsin, but knowing that he was spiritually lost, and the directions that he was given to heaven spun him around from one direction to another leaving him totally uncertain about what direction to take, or wheter that direction would certainly lead him to God. This was the great wickedness of the Church in Luther’s day. When asked the question of how a lost sinner can get to heaven they were given a certain set of directions. All of them, according to fallen human reason sounded good. To get to heaven you must follow down the path of Good Works, then you turn down Indulgence Rd, you know, that’s the toll Rd. where you have to pay a fee, then you make a turn on Prayers avenue, remember to stop and say hi to the saints, then you drive endlessly down Purgatory highway, that is the undeveloped broken down rut of a road that beats most people half to death. If you make it through there, well, you should be in heaven. These sound like Wisconsin directions to me. If you follow them you are sure to be lost, just like you were at the beginning. These are Wisconsin directions but they are not God’s directions.
Perhaps we need to start again. First, we understand that we are lost, condemned creatures that cannot find our own way. We fail to live up to the measure that God demands from us. It is like the sign at the amusement park. If the sign at the amusement park says you have to be 5 feet tall to ride, and you’re only 4 feet, 9 inches, nothing you can do will change your situation. You’re stuck. You’re cast out. You can’t ride the ride. That’s what God’s Law does to sinners. God’s Law, shows sinners their sin, and yet it demands perfect obedience (Lev 18:5).
But God has a plan and He has a direction for our lives. He has a way for us to get to where He wants us to be, and where we want to be, in Heaven with Him. He doesn’t want us to be corrupt, condemned sinners, but rather, a new creation. He wants us to be complete, new, pure, and holy. This is where God wants us to be. He wants to be our God and we His people and He wants us to know Him. That is, have faith in Him.
But how do we get from being lost to being in Heaven? How can we know the eternal God? What are God’s directions? If the Law tells us we’re corrupt sinners, how can we ever become what God wants us to be? The answer is the Gospel—the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins because of Jesus Christ. As God says through Jeremiah, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
God’s directions are simple. To get to heaven we don’t have to go anywhere or do anything. We simply believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior. God’s promise to forgive our sins is fulfilled in Jesus Christ through His death on the cross, that pays for our transgressions by His own blood. He has traveled the way of sorrows for us, living a perfect life and thereby fulfilling the law of God on our behalf. He traveled the road to the cross and suffered our eternal suffering. Through His resurrection we follow Him, by faith to our home in heaven. It is nothing about what we do, but it has everything to do with what He has done. We simply believe and trust in Jesus as our Savior, God’s salvation and forgiveness in the flesh of His Son.
All we do, is by God’s grace and the power of His Holy Spirit, cling to this precious gift that we are freely given. When Johann Friedrich, Elector of Saxony (1503–54), was thrown into prison, when all his books were taken from him and his pastor was forbidden to come to him, he said smiling, “Go ahead and take them! I know one thing for certain: even if they take everything from me, they will not be able to take my Lord Jesus and the eternal life he purchased with his blood out of my heart”[ii]. The elector had heard the Gospel of Christ, and by it he had total confidence that God was gracious to him. Because of the preaching of Luther and others, the elector did not trust in indulgences or his own works. Instead, he trusted in Christ, even when he had lost everything in this world.
Because of his blood and cross, the Gospel is preached in the Church and throughout the world. By the Gospel of Christ, God forgives you your sins.
Because you are forgiven, God begins a new creation in you. While here on earth, we don’t’ always recognize that God has made us a new creation through His Son, but it is true. Our God will bring us home where we will be made a totally new creation in Christ Jesus.
Conclusion: Luther’s goal was to return to the Word of God and find the grace of God therein, in the preaching of the cross of Christ. Luther wanted to do nothing new, but just to return the Church to the old faith and practice. He fought against a Church hierarchy that paid more attention to rules and laws than to the Word of God. He stood up against a Church that preached only rules for living and not the full and free Gospel of the forgiveness of sins in Christ’s death.
These problems have not left us. We, too, know the need for an ongoing reformation. We must always be on guard because people are still trying to give out Wisconsin direction to Heaven. Do this, do that, go here go there and eventually you will be there, if only by mistake. We must not make this mistake and we must always give out God’s directions to Heaven. Our problems today are not exactly the same as the problems in Luther’s day, of course. But Luther’s answer must be our answer as well. Standing squarely on Scripture, we will hold up the Gospel, which says that by faith in Christ alone, based on God’s Word alone, founded on God’s grace alone there is salvation. We can be ceratin of that salvation. In a spirit of love for our brothers and sisters, we will speak the truth, the entire truth, of God’s Word. We will confess our sins, we will trust in Jesus Christ alone. Today we give thanks to God for the Gospel, the same Gospel of grace spoken by Jeremiah, confessed by Luther, and preached here in our church today. May God keep us steadfast in this Word and grace.
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[i] Rev. Benjamin T. G. Mayes, associate pastor, Our Savior Lutheran Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan
[ii] (Hermann Fick, Geschichten aus Kirche und Welt zu Dr. M. Luthers Kleinem Katechismus [St. Louis: Concordia, 1906]