SERMON FOR REFORMATION DAY, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2021                  TEXT: JOHN 8:31-36

          Martin Luther did not doubt that there was a God; what he feared was what kind of a God he would answer to. All manner of political issues and social factors contributed to the Reformation, but it began with this man’s desperate need for certainty that God was gracious. For many years he believed salvation required his constant striving for righteousness. No one’s good works could ever be good or plentiful enough to satisfy God’s justice. So, he was taught, do what you can and trust God to cover the deficit with his grace. But Luther was overwhelmed with a sense of his deep and enduring sinfulness, despite all his best efforts to be obedient and faithful. He had after all surrendered his life to the demands of the monastery, and he was scrupulous in adhering to the discipline it imposed. Yet the harder he worked at discipleship, the less confident he felt. Rather than finding comfort for his spirit, he sank deeper into despair. He saw himself and God through the narrow and terrifying lens of judgment — a dangerously incomplete view that distorted both parties and undermined their true relationship.

          “I confess that I have sinned against you this day. Some of my sin I know — the thoughts and words and deeds of which I am ashamed — but some is known only to you. In the name of Jesus Christ I ask forgiveness. Deliver and restore me, that I may rest in peace.” This confession comes from the order for prayer at the end of the day, also known as Compline. It was the last of the eight services of prayer observed daily by monastic orders. The confession is followed by these words of absolution: “By the mercy of God we are united with Jesus Christ, in whom we are forgiven. We rest now in the peace of Christ and rise in the morning to serve.” Every night Luther would have spoken and heard these words in the company of his whole community, but his conscience remained troubled. The sins he did not know, the ones hidden from his self-examination, no matter how thoroughgoing, haunted him. What was not recognized could not be confessed, and what was not confessed could not be forgiven. Yet the debt must be paid and would come due on the day of judgment, when it would be too late to make amends.

          And so Luther could never rest easy, never settle securely into the forgiveness offered him. By his own admission he was the bane of his confessor’s existence. Luther frequented the confessional with oppressive regularity, popping up again just as soon as he remembered a fault, real or imagined, that he had overlooked earlier. His exasperated confessor finally put him on restriction, insisting that he only darken the man’s door when he had something substantive to get off his chest and not to carry on as if he sinned every time he broke wind. Here is the soul’s immune system gone awry. Scruples of conscience are meant to protect the health of the spirit — identifying sin and attacking it, repairing the damage it causes and preventing its spread. But Luther experienced a cytokine storm of guilt, and it threatened to destroy rather than protect him.

          His spiritual director, Johann von Staupitz, counseled him to stop looking within and obsessing about his unworthiness. He urged him to look outward instead. Behold the crucified Jesus, who takes our sins to the cross and dies so that we might know the depth of God’s love for us. Luther followed where Jesus led, into the the darkness of his soul and out again, through the terror and angry despair to the assurance and freedom of God’s forgiveness. He wrote of the experience: “Now I felt as though I had been reborn altogether and had entered Paradise.” He came to understand that for God justification is the work of a father’s heart not a judge’s rectitude. Luther realized he could never be free from sin, but he could live undefeated by it — calling it out for what it was and braving its dangers for the sake of loving his neighbor. Luther’s understanding of the Gospel set him and countless others free from a crippling dilemma of faith. It changed their lives forever.

          But there is good reason to ask if his insight is still pertinent to our experience today. How many of us worry about God’s judgment or rub our souls raw in the search for a gracious God? Assuming that questions of faith are a major concern for people today, and that’s assuming a lot, many contemporary theologians say the primary issue is not whether God is gracious but whether there is a god at all. If folks can get over that hurdle and affirm the existence of God, they generally assume that the deity is well disposed toward them. Studies on religious attitudes in our society seem to back that up. Those findings don’t surprise me. Over the years I have encountered a lot of opposition to talk of sin. People would give their church a two-thumbs-up because the service was so “positive and uplifting”; they came away feeling good about themselves, equipped with “spiritual” tools to help them manage the stresses and challenges of daily living. Whatever second thoughts they had about what they had done and what they had left undone were soothed, guilt was off-loaded as toxic and unproductive, and God played the role of trusty ally in securing a contented life, maybe even a prosperous one. There is truth in all of this. Some understandings of sin are unacceptable. Guilt can be destructive — Luther knew that all too well — and it is easily used to demean and manipulate, especially when guilt morphs into persistent shame. And God is most certainly for, not against, us. But while there is indeed truth here, it is not enough truth to make us free.

          I recently read a review with the enticing title, It Didn’t Have to Be This Way : A brilliant account of 30,000 years of change upends the bedrock assumptions about human history. The book under consideration was The Dawn of Everything: A New Human History by David Graeber and David Wengrew, a cultural anthropologist and archaeologist, respectively. Their work is based on a wealth of recent archaeological discoveries from around the globe and the careful reading of often neglected historical sources. Their account of human development reveals just how much conscious and deliberate choice was involved at every step in the unfolding of human societies and their determining what it means to be civilized. “How did we get stuck?” the authors ask — stuck, that is, in a world of “war, greed, exploitation and systematic indifference to others’ suffering”?           

          Here and now Luther’s long-ago experience helps us speak the whole truth. The sinful condition of being turned in on ourselves, anxious about our own well-being, selfish, short-sighted, fearful of change. The gift of guilt, like the constant harping of a smoke alarm, alerting us to the danger, refusing to be silenced, pushing us to look outward. The sweet relief of sure and certain forgiveness. The power of Christ’s grace opening our eyes to other possibilities and new understanding; giving us the hope to move beyond the scars of the past and the strength to live a different future. If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. Amen.