2023 10 29 Sermon
Reformation through Humility & Faith
Reformation Sunday
Romans 3:19-28; Matthew 22:34-40
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
Back when I was serving in my first call up in the mountains of Pennsylvania, my church organized a day trip to Gettysburg to tour the historic Civil War battlefield. Even as we added to the throngs of tourists who visit every day, the place still feels like holy ground for the 50,000 casualties of that battle. Our tour guide rode the bus with us, and took as to the spot on the Union lines where the boys from our county were stationed. She took us across the ridge that is home to the Lutheran Seminary, which was at times occupied by both Union and Confederate armies. And she took us to the very end of the Union line; a place known as “the fishhook” because it curved away from the main part of the line in order to protect the soldiers to the north.
After our tour, I began reading a novel of historical fiction called The Killer Angels by Michael Shara. The novel takes you through the unfolding battle from the perspectives of four of the officers who served—two Union, two Confederate. The character whom I found most sympathetic and interesting was Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, commander of the 20th Maine Volunteers. If you’ve ever watched the movie Gettysburg, which came out 30 years ago and is based on the book The Killer Angels, then you’ve seen a dramatization of Colonel Chamberlain and the 20th Maine as they defended “the fishhook”.
Something that has stuck with me all these years after reading the book is the depiction of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. He reflects on the cause of abolition which motivated him to fight, and his recognition of the “divine spark” in each person, black and white, who are all created in God’s image. Yet he also recognized the horrors of the war he was serving in, and he keeps saying to himself, “what if you are the one who is wrong?” In putting these words in the mind of Col. Chamberlain, the author was not trying to make us doubt the evils of slavery, or diminish the struggle for racial equality, but to help us reflect on the need for humility when undertaking any endeavor we might regard as righteous.
This posture of humility was reflected in President Lincoln himself, and we see an example of this in his essay called “Meditation on the Divine Will”. Lincoln wrote: “In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be [wrong], and one must be wrong… In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party…” Now, that’s humility! As dedicated as he was to ending slavery and preserving the Union, Lincoln always took time to reflect on the impact of his many decisions, and maybe he was even thinking as he wrote his essay: “perhaps, in some way, I have been wrong.”
And Lincoln, being steeped in the Bible, may very well have been inspired by St. Paul in Romans 3:10-12, 22-23 where Paul writes: “There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who has understanding, there is no one who seeks God… there is no one who shows kindness, there is not even one… for there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” St. Paul would apply these heavy-handed words most of all to himself. He was all too aware of his failures and shortcomings. He knew the wrongs he had done, not least of which was starting his career as a terrible persecutor of the church, as he approved of the killing of St. Stephen, and as he searched for Christians to have arrested.
When his life took a miraculously different direction, Paul could have fallen into despair by dwelling on the sins of his past. But instead he found hope for the future by turning to humility, and basically recognizing “hey, I’m no better and no worse than anyone else. Like everyone else, I have done things I shouldn’t have and failed to do things I should have; and therefore I have rebelled against the will of God.” After all, as Paul writes in Romans 3:19, the commands and teachings of God (this is what he means when he refers to “the Law”)—the commands and teachings of God—have been given so that “the whole world may be held accountable to God.” Woah. Big stuff. Heavy stuff. Cultivating a posture of humility is necessary in the face of all that. And (St. Paul came to realize) something else is necessary, too. Faith.
Faith not in our efforts to carry out God’s commands and teachings, because we will always fall short despite out best efforts. It is our faith in Jesus Christ, and the faithfulness of Jesus Christ towards us, that does it. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” he writes, yet St. Paul does not stop there. He continues. “But we are now justified—we are made right with God—by God’s grace as a gift,” because Christ Jesus gave himself for us on the cross. From the cross, Jesus forgive our sins; and in being raised from the dead he opens the door to a new way of life that begins imperfectly now, and comes to perfection in eternal life.
Faith, in biblical understanding, is essentially trust. To say that I have faith in Jesus means that I trust Jesus. I trust that Jesus keeps his promises. I trust the forgiveness he offers from the cross. I trust that his risen presence is there in Baptism and Communion, and his Spirit is present in the Word of God. I trust the new life for today and salvation for eternity that he freely makes available. I trust Jesus that all of this is possible—not because I am able to believe hard enough (or even to believe just a little bit); and not because I have earned it by being exceptionally good (or even just ‘kind of’ good). I trust because Jesus has given it as a gift from the God who is gracious and merciful, and abounding in steadfast love.
Therefore I am free; you are free; the whole human race is set free to risk trying to figure out the details of what it means to love God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind; and to love your neighbor as yourself.
All your heart? All your soul? All your mind? We are definitely going to fall short! But the love of God, and the unfailing faithfulness of Jesus for us, sets us free to keep on trying to love and serve with humility and faith, even if we might get some things wrong sometimes. This is what it means to be “justified by grace through faith”.
And this is the legacy we celebrate today, on Reformation Day. Martin Luther didn’t invent the saying “justification by grace through faith”, even though this verse from Romans inspired him and has inspired us as Lutheran for the past 500 years. Luther simply uncovered a great biblical teaching that was always there, hiding in plain sight right in Romans 3, but had been largely forgotten in the church of his day.
God continues to bring reformation to the Church of Christ, everywhere around the world, whenever Christians turn to Jesus in humility and faith, and “hop outside the box” to experiment with ways of loving God and loving our neighbors wherever they may be. And as we learn from our experiences the Holy Spirit can keep growing us as followers of Jesus. Amen.