Caul Baby

In her novel Caul Baby, Morgan Jerkins tells the story of a family’s very successful business in selling caul. Caul is a thickened layer of skin found on babies born within an intact uterine sac. In the narrative a college student experiences an unwanted pregnancy and gives birth to a caul-bearing baby girl. With the aid of her uncle, the new mother gives her infant to this prominent but shunned caul-peddling family. All of the events occur on October 31st. The child is named “Hallow.” According to the matriarch, Hallow is to continue the caul legacy and reposition the ancestral corporation for the future.

Reformation Sunday calls our church memory to the significance of October 31st, 1517. It was the day that Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses on the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. He contested the business of indulgences as sanctioned by Pope Leo X and the Catholic Church. It was the poor who had the most “skin” to lose in this ecclesial business.

Indulgences offering forgiveness of sin were sold and purchased often to the financial detriment and hardship of the oppressed and marginalized. It was, in essence, a sales tax on sin. If you sinned, which everyone did, you had to pay the price. Sure, you could avoid paying the sin tax if you wished… but there would be hell to pay.

Indulgence salesmen scoured the kingdoms, convincing people to pay their dues so that they could be handed their get-out-of-jail-free cards. One particularly legendary indulgence salesman was a Domican Monk by the name of John Tetzel. He famously would enter a village and speak to the horrors of hell. He would take his hand, and put it over an open-flame, holding it there until it would begin to burn. The crowd would watch in horror has the scent of burnt flesh sifted about the square. But, he would say, you can escape this horror buy making your purchase today. “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs!”

It was a extraordinarily successful financial campaign. When fear of eternity overrides the need for food today, the money pours in. It was exploitation of all people. But it was perhaps most harmful to the poor. The poor could not afford this sin tax. And yet, they knew if they did not pay it there would be fiery consequences. This was the harsh ‘truth’ peddled by the church in Luther’s time. And, in many ways, it is still peddled today by congregations who use fear to control people. Fear is powerful. Fear is dangerous.

And, it can be tempting, to use fear when the chips are down to help control the game. 500 years ago, the church was trying to build St. Peter’s Basilica. It had a goal. It had put a lot of stock into that goal… but it needed support if the building were to be put together. It needed a lot of money… and a lot of supplies… and a lot of laborers. Fear was a useful tool to reach that end.

In today’s world, there is a temptation for the church to use fear in a different way. The number of butts in the pews are not what they once were. And it’s not just us. It’s practically everywhere in North America and Europe. The church is shrinking in attendance. It has been for decades, we all know this. And Covid-19 has exacerbated that trend. There is a very real reality that many churches are shuttering their doors… not for a time… but forever. Folks that used to attend regularly have fallen away. In a conversation I had with one person, not a member of any of our congregations, they made the comment of how much they appreciated going to online church where they don’t even have to pay. Church is free, how cool is that? But if you have ever been a financial committee meeting, you know church is not free to run. There are budgets. There are obligations. There are needs for us to meet. And so what do we do when the going gets tough? Create fear? Sell indulgences? Hold our hand over some metaphorical fire as a way to prove our intent?

It brings to mind the famous phrase, WWMD. What would Marty do. Alright, maybe it’s not so famous. But it might be helpful. So, what would Martin Luther do? In an era when the church used fear of eternity to raise funds, Martin Luther spoke out with a different kind of word. Grace for free. Divine forgiveness without financial exchange. No more sin tax. No more claims of fear for the future in order to offer control over the present. And why not? Because it is not the financial exchange that sets us free.

We don’t pay off our sins with a sin tax. We don’t prove our faithfulness to God by paying our church dues. Because it’s not about that. The gospel is not about us proving our value to God… the gospel is not about proving our worth and our faithfulness to God. No.

In our Gospel today we hear Jesus say, “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” The powerful message of the Gospel is that it IS grace for free. At least, free for us. It took the Son of God dying on the cross that we might be set free… but we are free indeed.

NOT because we paid some sin tax. NOT because we proved ourselves to God. NOT because we showed how faithful we were.

We are free… because Christ set us free.

It does take money, and materials, and laborers to manage a church the way we traditionally have. But grace is, indeed, for us… freely given by a God who died for us on a cross.

The church is going through a time of transition, but God’s grace is steadfast.

As I was preparing for today’s sermon I ran across a number of statistics that talked about how denomination does not matter to people like it once did. More and more, it doesn’t matter if a person is a Lutheran, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, a Catholic, a Baptist… the list goes on. And for a time, I wondered what the significance is to commemorate the Reformation and the beginning of many of those denominations when denomination no longer seems to matter to as many people in the pews.

And it strikes me, that it matters quite a bit. Not because we are celebrating the birth of these denominations. Not because we can cheer on that separation from the Catholic Church like a 4th of July Independence Day from Rome. In fact, Luther didn’t want to have an independence day from the Catholic Church. We want the church to be whole, not schismed against itself. And Luther certainly didn’t want a denomination named after him. If he knew we were still calling ourselves Lutherans, he’d probably be frustrated.

So why commemorate the Reformation? What does it mean to be a Lutheran today? When denominations seem like points of Whose Line is it Anyway… the show where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter?

The Reformation matters for us today… being Lutheran matters for us today… because when we take a serious look back to the past we can recall what sparked and shaped our faith movement that continues 504 years later. We can recall how the church wrestled within itself in how to proclaim Christ faithfully. We can recall how the church conversed at significant length on how we make use of scripture… do we insight fear to live faithful or else? Or do we speak to the grace which the faithful Christ gives?

In Caul Baby, Hallow reframes the family caul business. Initially she does what the matriarch tells her to do. Yet in the end, she decides her task is otherwise: she is to reimagine what it means to have skin in the game. Hers is the opportunity to reform what it means to sacrifice for another’s good.

Reformation Sunday reminds the Church of Luther’s efforts in reforming the church’s duty and responsibility. We are church. We are Lutheran. We are church together. We are church for the sake of the world. Not our own sake. But the sake of the world.

What the church looks like into the future may very well change. It has already before and will change again in the future. But as we experience change, as we work for reform in who we are as church today… let us not be motivated by fear of that which may be but instead be motivated by the truth… the truth that IS Christ. The truth of God’s grace and forgiveness made flesh and GIVEN to the world, not earned by it.

May we come to know the truth so the truth will make us free.