Sermon: Reformation 2008

I am the kind of Lutheran that loves this church so much that I pre-ordered my ticket to see the Luther movie in the movie theater. I can’t pretend that I didn’t cry when I saw Luther post those theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg. Our celebration of Reformation makes me proud to be a Lutheran, proud to have a heritage of reform, proud to be a part of a church grounded in growth. I love that this church was formed by a man wanting to put the scriptures into the hands of the people. I love that we believe that in those scriptures we could find a real truth. A real life. A real freedom.

The days are coming says the Lord. So begins our reading from Jeremiah for this morning. The days are surely coming when our celebration of reformation will be just a distant memory, when we will be finished with our constant reforming, when the Spirit of God will have had her way with us, and we will finally reach that place where we become our most full selves, the body of Christ in the world. The days are coming, but even on this day, those days seem far off, too far off.

I went to a small religious college. It was there that I came face to face for the first time with an altar call. It was the first time someone told me that I needed to ask Jesus into my heart. I had never heard of this before, growing up Lutheran, I was baptized, I went to church camp, I went to confirmation classes, I missed the memo about asking Jesus into my heart. I was also quite confused when I saw many of my friends asking Jesus into their hearts all the time. They would have big moments of conversion, then something would get in the way, they wouldn’t feel as close to their faith anymore, they would do a few things that definitely fell into the sin category, and there they would be again, marching down the aisle of the church and asking Jesus back into their hearts.

The days are coming says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people. I will put my law within them, I will write it on their hearts, I will be their God and they shall be my people.

That’s the funny thing about our hearts, on this celebration of Reformation, we remember that God has promised to be with us, to wash us in grace. There is no rhyme or reason to why God has chosen to be in relationship with us. Most of us haven’t asked for it, and if we have, we certainly have trouble living as if that is the truth. We are sinners, but called saints by a God who has made an unbreakable covenant with us, has written the law in hearts, has made us God’s people, has invaded our hearts, filled them, shaped them so that they can only be called the shape of God. Walter Brueggeman says, “this covenant is given by God without reason or explanation, God wants the relationship with the people and resolves to have it. So God declares that he will write himself into the people.” It isn’t about us asking, it is about God doing. God comes down, and fills us with God’s very presence. We don’t have to keep asking, we just have to feel into those places where God already is. It isn’t about our work, it is about God’s.

We need this reminder of reformation, because it reminds us of the shape of our hearts. We don’t need flashy programs or new ideas, the covenant has been written into our hearts, we are made in the shape of a God that is constant through time, a God who has promised that we will be in relationship with him regardless of ourselves. God has wormed into our hearts, written herself upon them, and we cannot get out of this relationship without cutting out part of our own hearts.

That’s where Jeremiah and John seem to meet. Because Jeremiah tells us about the law written on our hearts, and Jesus in John’s gospel promises us that it is the writing that will set us free. It is the inscription inside of us, that gives us freedom we can’t get from anywhere else. It isn’t about heritage or ancestry; it is about what God has done and continues to do. The celebration of Reformation, for as proud as it makes us to be Lutherans, isn’t the point. The point is what God has done, where God has gone, how far God will go to be in relationship with us, to set us free from all the binds us, from all those things that hold us prisoner. We are in constant reformation, because those sinful natures keep getting in the way, keep telling us that there is something that will be more satisfying that will give us more than a relationship with God.

We are the people that both Jeremiah and Jesus are speaking about. We are the people of God, we are the ones who receive this promise. We have been grafted into this everlasting covenant. We are the ones that God loves with such depth that nothing can separate us from that love. And yet, we are also with that gathered crowd in our gospel wondering how we could ever be slave to anyone or anything. We are the ones who will listen to the freedom of the gospel and then wonder if there is something a little less difficult out there to give us the same results. We can’t imagine that we have ever been slaves, that there are forces and sins that have such a deep hold on us that we can’t even see it anymore.

Today, we will celebrate with six young adults as they affirm the promises made in their baptisms. They will stand before us and decide for themselves that they are a part of this holy family. But, confirmation is not the end, it is only another beginning. Just as we seek constant reformation in our church, we also seek constant reformation in our lives. Because for as much as we desire to live into the freedom of the gospel, to taste the free gift of grace, sin gets in the way. We do not live as we ought. We forget these promises, we ignore God’s law, we turn off the voice inside of us that urges us to live as God’s faithful people. It is in that relationship with Christ that we are set free. It is in the love that God has for us that we are set free. We exchange all the pain, all the ugliness, all the sin and the sorrow, all those things that bind us and break us down, we exchange all of it, for a relationship with God. For a return to the way we were made. And it doesn’t end on one day. It doesn’t end with one promise. It is difficult work, coming back again and again and falling down only to be covered with grace.

The truth of Reformation is that God is always doing a new thing, always within us, always with us, always covering us with grace. We will be made free. We don’t ask God into our hearts, God is already there. God desires to be in relationship with us, even as we break our end of the bargain, even as we ignore what God has done and continues to do. This is a new kind of covenant, one that cannot be broken, and so it doesn’t count on us. It counts on God. Amen.