Reformation Sunday
Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 46; Romans 3:19-28; John 8:31-36
This Sunday, Christians of the Lutheran perspective celebrate the Protestant Reformation. In 1517, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, the Reformer, nailed 95 academic theses on the church door in Wittenberg, Saxony, Germany, for debate among fellow professors and students at the University of the same name, where he taught. Luther’s theses were against the practice of selling of indulgences by the Church at the time. Indulgences were certificates one could buy for oneself, a relative, or an acquaintance, to ensure less time in purgatory or a straight pass to heaven, depending on how much one was willing to pay.
When the sellers of indulgences reached Wittenberg, Luther declared the whole thing to be preposterous. As a bible scholar who later made scripture available to all by translating it from Latin to the people’s language, Luther knew the practice to be against the good news of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Later the Reformer unveiled the Doctrine of Justification to the world, on which the global Lutheran and Roman Catholic Churches now agree. This teaching says that Christian believers have their sins forgiven, are saved, made righteous, or justified by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, revealed to us in scripture.
Lutherans are a little more radical on such doctrine than most. You may have heard this before, we stand for faith, Christ, grace, God, and scripture, as the lone agents of our salvation. More, Lutherans “hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law (Romans 3:28).” What does it mean? It means there is nothing we can do to earn such salvation, justification, or forgiveness of sins. We have no merit whatsoever in the good things (works) we do. It is not our own doing. The faith that leads us to do such a thing is a gift from God (Romans 3:24; Ephesians 2:8). God did as God promised (Jeremiah 31: 31-34), and Jesus is the fulfillment of such a promise. Christians worldwide celebrate this gift, the new covenant in the blood of Christ, during the Eucharist.
This brings us to our gospel reading and the freedom that comes only from Jesus. Whenever I heard that the word will set us free and that the Son makes us free, I struggled with the question, freed from what? A closer look at the text unveils the obvious answer, Jesus frees us from sin. However, as a true descendant of Abraham, I struggle. I have always been free. God is on my side and forgives me; great! Off I go. Nonetheless, that is neither the promise nor the gift. The precious value of this timeless gift relies not on what we are freed from but on what we are freed for.
Bridging Faith 