True Reformation

“You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” That is what Jesus says to the Judeans who were following him. That idea or concept of truth occurs several times throughout John’s gospel. Two such cases occur in John 14:6 and John 18:38. The concept of truth is also something that the world has been seeking and trying to answer for…well I think forever.

In John 18:38 we have Pilate who is completely flabbergasted with why Jesus is before him. He has been handed this man Jesus by his own people and wants to know why he is there other than people say he is the king. Jesus responds that the reason he came into the world was to testify to the truth and that everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. That is then when Pilate asks him, “What is truth?”

John 18:38 NRSV

38 Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them, “I find no case against him.

So we hear that Jesus says that the truth will set you free and then we hear him say that he came to tell people about the truth and that people can belong to the truth. Truth seems to be something you can belong to, something that can be shared and something that will set you free. I feel like we’re in the courtroom of the movie “A Few Good Men” where Tom Cruise is examining Jack Nicholson and Jack asks him if he wants answers to which Tom says he doesn’t want answers he wants the truth. Jack replies with the famous line, “You can’t handle the truth”. We’re all trying to figure out truth. Jack Nicholson might not think that Tom can handle the truth, but the truth is something this world needs.

I purposely left out the other instance of Jesus talking about truth until now because I really wanted to get us wondering and thinking about truth. But this last instance of truth comes from one of Jesus’ “I am statements”. In John 14:6 he tells us that he is the ‘way, truth, and the life’. Here Jesus is much more direct than anywhere else where he tells us that he is truth or he is the truth. So truth isn’t some random concept or statement from a book that you can memorize, but it is a person. Jesus is truth.

All of that helps us to understand then when Jesus says that if you continue in his word we will be his disciples. Truth is our understanding of who Jesus is and what he means for us and for this world. Truth is knowing that Jesus is the revelation of God. Since truth is a person that also means that truth is relational and involves living into the relationship. It’s so much more than Tom Cruise needing to know the fact of whether or not Jack Nicholson ordered the code red for his soldiers that led to the events that happened after. It’s more than knowledge and understanding, it is faith and it is relationship.

That to me is what Luther was all about when he posted his 95 theses on the church door at Castle Wittenburg. Luther had come to the understanding that he could confess his sins day and night for the rest of his life and he would still not be perfect. He would still be a sinner. He knew what he was told and he did what he was told, but nothing stopped him from constantly feeling like he was a a slave to sin. There was nothing that he could ever do that would make him worthy of God’s love and forgiveness and break the habit of sin, even a dedicated monk like Luther.

It wasn’t until Luther was invited to be a professor and he was asked to teach from the New Testament that he encountered the letter to the Romans, that his life, faith and understanding of God as found in Christ Jesus changed. The idea that he was a slave to sin was reinforced, but what changed was that even though he was a slave to sin, Christ died to free him from that slavery. The Truth came to the world to save the world from its bondage to sin and death. Luther could not believe what he read and understood, and when he finally did his relationship with the Truth, with Christ Jesus changed. He was freed from the bondage of Sin even if he committed sins, because he knew that he was freed by the blood of Christ and there was nothing he could do to earn that freedom, but that it was a gift of grace, grace given by the one who is called Truth.

It is this kind of truth and freedom that Jesus in talking about in John’s Gospel. We are all guilty of sin, but if we continue with the Word, Jesus, then we’ll know and have that relationship with the truth and the truth will make us free. Just as a son can, once he receives his inheritance, free a slave from physical bondage, so too Jesus can, has, and does free all of us from our slavery to sin and death. Jesus also tells us in places like John 15:7 that if we abide in him then his words will abide in us. It is once again that relationship that exists when we not just read the words of the Bible but live in relationship with those words and the people around us that also live into that Truth.

Once Luther started abiding in Jesus and the Truth in this new way, he knew that he had to share it with others and bring it to the attention of the church. He wanted to bring this truth and grace and forgiveness to everyone. He wanted to put the Word made flesh into every household so that everyone could read, and more importantly, be in relationship with the freedom that the truth brought. That is the power of the Reformation and why we commemorate it and even celebrate it each year. We do our best to live into good news that Jesus is the truth and that true sets this world free. Free from sin, doubt, shame, and any voice that might tell them they are not worthy of love.

That is the gift that a Lutheran understanding of the Bible offers this world. A relationship with our creator is available to all and that relationship is made possible by the one we call Jesus, the one who inherited all the riches of the world and more, who then took all that inheritance and gave it to the whole world. We have this incredible gift of placing the love and grace of God in to the hands and hearts of all people. Let us live out Luther’s legacy as he intended; to share the truth with all people and to let them know the truth is the love of God as found in Christ Jesus. A truth that is more precious than any other this world has to offer. Amen.