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Sermon for Reformation Sunday – October 29, 2023
Jeremiah 31:31-34, Romans 3:19-28, John 8:31-36
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.
“If you continue in my word,” Jesus said, “you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
Martin Luther continued in the Word. As a monk and a scholar he had the privilege of studying the Bible, God’s written Word, at a time when many did not have access to the scriptures. The printing press was still a very new invention, and there just weren’t that many copies of the Bible available. But Luther had access to the scriptures, and the more he continued in the Word, the more he discovered that the truth he found there didn’t align with the so-called truth that was being taught and practiced in the church at that time.
And so it was that on October 31st in the year 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. He wanted to have a conversation about the truth he had found in God’s Word. He had 95 debating points, 95 truth claims gleaned from the scriptures, that he wanted to discuss so that the church could get back to the truth he found there. By posting it on the church door on All Hallow’s Eve, right before people would be pouring into church for All Saints Day worship services, he ensured that lots of people would see it.
Well, lots of people saw it alright! Those new-fangled printing presses resulted in copies of the 95 theses spreading all over Europe. The truth claims Luther was making struck a nerve. Luther’s call for the church to return to the truths found in God’s Word unleashed a firestorm that eventually led to him to being declared a heretic and an outlaw. Long before people ever talked about cancel culture, the medieval church tried to cancel Martin Luther. They burned his books. He was excommunicated from the church. He had a bounty placed on his head and was hunted like a common criminal, which made it necessary for him to spend nearly a year in hiding.
Luther unwittingly unleashed a fierce battle for the truth. On one side you had medieval church bureaucrats and councils and bishops claiming they had authority over the truth. The truth was whatever they said it was, which just so happened to be whatever advanced their power and lined their pockets. The most obscene example of this was the sale of certificates of forgiveness called indulgences. Instead of freely proclaiming forgiveness in Jesus’ name as commanded in scripture, Christ’s forgiveness was turned into something that could be bought and sold. Forget confession. Forget repentance. Forget the absolution. You could just buy a handy-dandy certificate and you’d be covered. You could even buy forgiveness for future sins! The church authorities made a fortune selling their version of the truth. This part of the story is pretty well known.
What might not be as well known is that once the Reformation was underway you also had what came to be called the “enthusiasts.” The enthusiasts claimed that the truth was whatever they felt it was. They claimed direct revelations from God not only independent from the church, but apart from the scriptures! The truth, for the enthusiasts, was based on their own individual thoughts and feelings. Once Luther opened that Pandora’s Box, they felt empowered to advance their versions of the truth as well. And so the Reformation was a time of great confusion about what the truth even was.
Does this sound at all familiar? We too live in a time of widespread confusion about what the truth is, about where the truth can be found, about what truths we should live by.
We too live in a time of changing technology. Like the printing press 500 years ago, the internet and especially social media have changed the conversation about the truth in dramatic ways, both good and bad. On the one hand, the internet has made it so that the lies broadcast by major media institutions long seen as authoritative no longer go unchallenged, but on the other hand it has also provided easy platforms for a million more liars!
Fast on the heels of the internet is the unfolding emergence of “artificial intelligence,” or “AI,” which, out of thin air, can produce astonishingly realistic images and videos with voice cloning. If you think those fake texts you sometimes get, supposedly from me, asking for gift cards, are confusing and disturbing, wait until you get a phone call with a fake version of my exact voice, or the exact voice of a family member, pleading for something, interacting with you in real time. It’s already happening. The struggle to discern what is true, what is real, is only going to get more difficult.
Adding to this confusion is the postmodern malaise of extreme subjectivism, where the truth is whatever someone’s feelings tell them it is. As with the enthusiasts of Luther’s time, there is a widespread belief in our own time that all truth is self-determined, that we define our own realities. This is not new. This is not progress. This is the oldest trick the devil has, going all the way back to the Garden of Eden, when the serpent hissed to Eve, “Did God really say,” encouraging her to live her own truth and eat the fruit God had told her not to eat. And the result continues to be chaos and conflict and confusion.
“If you continue in my word,” Jesus said, “you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” So what is this truth, and how does it make us free?
As Luther battled both the authoritarians on the one hand and the enthusiasts on the other, he called both to the truth he found in God’s written word. The scriptures are the place to find the Truth above all truths. The Bible contains God given truths for us to live by.
The scriptures, Luther taught, proclaim God’s Word of law and gospel, God’s Word of command and God’s Word of promise. The scriptures contain both the deepest truth about us and the deepest truth about God.
The truth about us, as we hear from Jeremiah this morning, is that we have broken the covenant God has made with us. The truth about us, as St. Paul says in our reading from Romans for today, is that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The truth about us, as Jesus says in the gospel reading, is that everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin, and a slave doesn’t have a permanent place in the household. The scriptures tell the truth about us, the truth about our situation, the truth about our fallen human nature, the truth about our need for redemption, for salvation.
Thankfully, the scriptures also tell us the truth about God. The truth about God is that, as Jeremiah says, he forgives our iniquities and remembers our sin no more. The truth about God, as St. Paul teaches us, is that he has redeemed us, he has saved us, he has made us right with him through Jesus. We are justified by his grace as a gift, received through faith in him. The truth about God, as Jesus says in our gospel reading, is that he has sent his Son to make us free, so that we will no longer be slaves to sin, so that we will have a permanent place in the household.
This freedom is not a freedom to pursue our own versions of the truth. Christian freedom isn’t freedom to do whatever we want! As St. Paul so aptly puts it in Romans 6: “You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” We are freed from sin and death and freed for a life lived in right relationship with God, a life that aligns with the truth God has revealed to us.
In a time of radically changing information technology and cultural upheaval, a time of chaos and conflict and confusion, we will continue to fumble our way through truth claims. We will probably continue to argue and disagree about what is true with a small ‘t.’
But as Christians of the Reformation, we have a heritage which continues to call us back again and again to the capital ‘T’ truth found in God’s Word. It is this truth that we can hold onto in the midst of everything going on around us. It is this truth that unites us as God’s people. It is this truth that we can all strive to live our lives by. It is this truth that we can share with a weary and confused and hurting world.
As Christians of the Reformation, we have a heritage which calls us again and again to do exactly what Jesus calls us to do today: to continue in his Word. It is in continuing in Christ’s Word that we are truly his disciples. It is in continuing in Christ’s Word that we come to know the truth that makes us free. And if the Son makes us free, we will be free indeed.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church