Reformation Sunday Sermon
Reformation Sunday
October 26, 2008
Text: John 8:31-36
Preached at Messiah LC, Independence, MO
First, I just want to say that it is a great pleasure for me to be here today. Messiah Lutheran Church in Independence, Missouri is very near and dear to my heart. This is the church where I was baptized 39 years ago. I was confirmed here. I attended the school from Kindergarten to Eighth grade. And I came to church here almost every Sunday of my life until I graduated from high school and moved away for college. It is no exaggeration for me to say that the faithful pastors and hard-working teachers here at Messiah over the years played an extremely significant role in my faith formation as a young person in Christ and I am extremely grateful for that. So it is a joy for me to stand with you today to share the gospel.
Sometime when I am relaxing in the evening after watching the news, I might flip the channel to the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. There is one particular routine that he does every now and then that I like. It’s called Jay Walking and it’s when the host, Jay Leno, goes out onto the streets of New York and stops average passers-by, everyday Americans, to ask them general questions about U.S. history or current events. The joke is that these are supposed to be questions that people should be able to answer correctly. Questions like when was fought the War of 1812. We sit at home and watch people squirm to answer Jay’s questions and we laugh at them because of some of the outrageous answers they give.
Well, I sometimes wonder what would happen if the question Jay asked was something like, “Who Is Jesus Christ?” My fear is that many people, if not most people, would not be able to give very strong answers, that they would not be able to answer, “Who Is Jesus Christ?” in a way that accurately resembles the Savior as He comes to us in the Gospels. Only this is no laughing matter. This is life or death stuff.
Unfortunately, one of the misconceptions that is out there is that Jesus was really nothing more than just a good teacher, a moral philosopher, or a political and social reformer ahead of His time. They kind of think of Him as a hippie with long hair and sandals on his feet who talked a lot about peace and love.
The fact of the matter is that Christians understand Jesus to be so much more than just an ancient moral philosopher. We understand Him to be the very incarnation of God. He is God-in-the-flesh who came to dwell among us. And He rules the universe still today from the heavens.
One of the details that many people might get right about Jesus is that He died on a cross. So my next question would be, “Why did Jesus die on the cross?” I wonder how well we would do. The fact of the matter is that many people do not know who Jesus is and they do not know or they do not clearly understand what He has done for them.
One answer that we might hear is that Jesus died on the cross to show us how much He loves us. That’s not a wrong answer, but it’s incomplete. That still doesn’t tell us what it means. There were lots of other easier ways to demonstrate His love. And He did demonstrate His love in many fashions, by healing the sick, by giving sight to the blind. He showed His love to His disciples when He humbled Himself and washed their feet, their dirty smelly feet, which was customarily the duty of the lowliest servant in the household. The Lord Jesus humbled Himself to be the lowliest servant for His disciples. This definitely would have shown them that He loved them. He did not need to go so far as die on the cross simply to demonstrate His love.
Those who think of Jesus as nothing more than a mere social reformer might think that His arrest and crucifixion are the sad and unfortunate demise of any otherwise promising young man. The cross would then seem to have been a sign of His failure, a defeat. And here is where we must emphasize that the crucifixion of Jesus was not an unfortunate and unexpected end to His career.
A couple of years ago, there was the movie directed and produced by Mel Gibson called The Passion of the Christ. Perhaps you saw it. That film stirred up a lot of controversy, for various reasons. It is an excessively gruesome film for one thing and some people objected to that. Of course, the crucifixion was a very bloody and messy event and some would argue that it is beneficial for us to be reminded of that fact from time to time. Most of our artwork of the cross, the paintings and wall hangings and jewelry and Precious Moments figurines, are very pretty and clean and nice. I think it can be beneficial for us to recognize the shocking reality of how horrible Christ’s sufferings were, body and spirit, on our behalf. Not because I’m some kind of a sicko who takes delight in watching a man get scourged and beaten and hammered, but because I know that what He underwent, He did for my sake… and by my fault.
Many of us have heard the good news of Jesus Christ our whole lives and sometimes the danger is that we can become almost numb to its power because we have heard it repeated so often. The problem is not in repeating it. We must repeat it. The problem lies within ourselves because we allow it to become old hat and we allow ourselves to forget the meaning of it all. And maybe it is good for us to be jolted from our complacency from time to time.
But I recall that even before that Mel Gibson movie came to the theaters, the talking heads were on the television complaining about it because, according to them, it was all lopsided. It was lopsided, they said, because it only focused on those last few hours of Jesus’ life, his arrest, torture and being nailed to the cross. The critics objected because they felt that that skewed the message of Jesus, that it put all the focus on His death and left out His teachings. The way these objections were presented, it sounded as if these folks thought the crucifixion of Jesus was just a minor detail, an incidental fact about how He happened to die. What they failed to grasp is that while we would not want to ignore or neglect the teachings and miracles of our Lord, the crucifixion is what it was all about. That was the main thing. The death and glorious resurrection of Jesus. These are not minor details. This is the heart and core of what Jesus came to achieve.
It sounds morbid to the world, but Jesus knew He was going to be arrested and tortured and He knew that He was going to be condemned by the rulers and executed by the government. He not only knew that these things were going to happen to Him, but He intended for them to happen. In fact, the very reason Jesus Christ was born into the world was not to reform society and build a Utopia on the earth but in order to give His life as a blood atonement for the sins of all people. Jesus was born in order to die for you. It’s not accurate to say that the Romans or the Jewish leaders took Jesus’ life. No one took His life from Him. He gave it. Jesus gave His life to be a sacrifice to pay for the sins of the world. He died to pay for your sins and mine.
But again, why did this need to occur in the first place?
The Bible says that left to ourselves, we are all God’s enemies. That’s a pretty startling thing to say. We usually think only of God’s love and His mercy and His kindness. It’s not very often that we think about God’s wrath and the final judgment. It’s a hard topic to discuss. But the prophets and the apostles tell us that all people are born into a state of rebellion against God and that on that account we are all naturally God’s enemies, not His friends, whether we know it or not. And all of your sins are offensive to God. Even your private internal sins, your evil thoughts, are known to God and they stink to Him. We stink to Him. And that is why we need a savior.
Jesus said in today’s Gospel reading that everyone who sins is a slave to sin but that the truth will set you free. Jesus Christ is Himself the Truth. He is the Great Liberator who brings us out of slavery into freedom. As long as people remain in ignorance and confusion about who Jesus is and what He has done, they remain bound with chains, not chains made of iron, but chains of death. Apart from Christ, we were all in spiritual bondage; we were all bound to death forever.
But God has heard your cries. He loves you. He cares about what happens to you. You are loved and you have been died for. Rejoice. Don’t mope around like those who have no hope. Sing out loud because Christ has traded places with you; on the cross, your lust, your selfishness, your sloth, were all heaped onto His head and the Father penalized Him for all that you have ever done. You are loved. You have been died for. You are free. You will live forever. Alleluia. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
