October 25 -- Bound at the Center (Reformation Sunday 2020)

Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, October 31st 1517.  I first saw that door on October 5th 2012.  I came up to it at night, and it does have that shrine feeling to it.  A silence came over me, a tear welled up: in spite of all the mythology, the hype, the centuries of repristination, the tourism — this was still the place...where it all began!  [pause]

Actually it had begun long before, but this is a monumental scene and today we mark and commemorate this pivotal moment in our church’s history.  The action of nailing up the 95 theses was only at the beginning of Martin Luther’s brave and theologically grounded public, political protests.  He was only 34 years old!  Standing up to the immense and dangerous powers of his day.  (Ooh, I wonder what Luther would say to the powers of our day…I’m sure he’d be railing against all those who oppressed people who are poor and marginalized…some even doing it from behind the thin veneer of religious piety.

And Luther stood up to them — why? — for personal fame and fortune?  To be a big hero in history? For his own glory?  No, Luther stood up, spoke, acted, protested because his “conscience was bound.”  He was compelled by the word of God, by these words that we read again today from Romans and John — “for we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law”…“So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

Luther was freed by grace.  
                And so are we, friends.  So are you.

503 years later, we Lutherans — even we Lutherans — can operate like we’re still bound by the letter of the law.  But friends in Christ, we are freed by grace.  (In fact, many scholars point out that it’s not “faith in Jesus,” like most bibles translate.  But more accurately it’s possessive/genative: we are saved by the faith of Jesus…whole ‘nother sermon!  It’s Jesus’ faith — not our own — that saves us!  I mean, it’s all grace...grace upon grace!)

So we go then, to share, to stand up, to tell the story of Jesus and his love, to speak out and protest publicly, and serve our neighbors and those who are poor, and love our enemies, and take care of our own bodies and God’s planet, not because we have to or because we’re supposed to, not because we’re bound by some law to do these things...but because we can’t help ourselves.  This is what grace does to us!  AMEN?!  Our good works are simply a “consequence of God’s grace,” as one of our daily Christ in Our Home devotions put it.  I like to call it eucharistic centripetal force: when we come in contact with this grace we are flung out into the world by a force beyond ourselves, i.e. God’s mercy and love!
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A few years ago I had the pleasure of hearing one of our premier Luther scholars in the ELCA, the Rev. Dr. Former-Bishop and now President of GettysburgPhiladelphia’s United Lutheran Seminary Guy Erwin, who talked about the Continuing Reformation.  

One of the pillars of the Protestant Reformation, he reminded us, is that it’s ongoing.  Semper Reformanda.  Always Reforming.  And as he reflected on this ongoing reformation and what the church looks like as we’re moving now into the next 500 years, Dr. Erwin suggested that we be a church that’s “bound-at-the-center, not bound-at-the-edges”.

I loved it!  It reminded me of that image I’ve talked about before of the church as a herd of good cattle, congregating around good water.  We are bound by what we come to the center to receive, not by strict boundaries at the margins.  The edges are fluid and permeable.  God’s people are held together — not by a high wall or an electric fence that makes clear cuts, and defines and divides us from/apart from/even above the rest of the sorry world.  No, our walls and gates are open.  God’s people are held together instead by what’s at the center: the cross, the font, the Holy Book, the healing oil, this welcome table of grace…

Dr. Erwin was suggesting that much of the past 500 years (not all, but much), has been about binding/defining ourselves as church at the edges — who’s in and who’s out.  What if the re-formation continues with a focus instead on God binding us at the center, God leading us, freeing us, God gathering us around good water?

How does the farmer get the livestock to stay together?  By building bigger walls, stricter fences, or simply by offering better water and food?  Grace frees us to tear down the walls that divide us from the world.  

The truth makes us — locked up and set apart? — no, the truth makes us free indeed.  Luther was freed by grace.  And so are we.

So how do we open up our walls, our borders, our fences and gates even more?  Here in this place?  How do we interact with neighbors and strangers, with the world...arms wide open?  
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I remember the setting where Dr. Erwin said all these things.  It was in a big hotel conference room:  there are doors all around the edges, and they were open!  He didn’t say it, but I thought it was the exact visual of what he was talking about:  People were coming in and out of the room as he was speaking.  You could hear the murmur of conversations out in the hall.  I guess you could be distracted by it, if you wanted, but what Dr. Guy Erwin was saying was the real draw, it was so good, that most of us weren’t concerned with who was coming in and going out, with who was sitting down and who was getting up to leave.  The edges were permeable, see?  How might we make our walls more permeable, our gates more open?    

I think Facebook is another image of that.  No one’s keeping anyone here.  You are free to sit down, visitors are free to sit down…and by grace we are free to get up and leave!  There’s nothing keeping anyone.  The gift of the church now is that we don’t have that kind of power — which is a false notion anyway.  It breaks my heart when I get a sense that people are serving and participating in congregations because of some holy obligation, or guilt or burden on their shoulders.  You can always pick up on that when people use the word “should”...  Lutherans would never admit to “holy obligation” in those RC words...but sometimes, I know our actions prove otherwise, and we can still bind ourselves by the law.  

Hear these words again, friends in Christ:
We are justified by the faith of Jesus, apart from our works, free from holy obligations prescribed by the law.  This is most certainly true.

The Mighty Fortress doesn’t mean a high wall of rules and regulations about who’s in and who’s out!  

The Mighty Fortress is our God, and our God is everywhere (!) — both in here and out there!  Our God is saving grace, boundless love, peace, joy and forgiveness — not just for you and me, but — for this whole world!  

It’s easy to mis-imagine the mighty fortress, as our church fences, our ecclesiastical border walls.  

This new day, these new years of re-formation that are before us, call us to permeate our borders and re-focus on the center:  the Meal, the Story, the oil of healing and forgiveness, the waters of baptism, and the cross (i.e. God suffering with us in our suffering).

The Reformation continues, friends.  I’ve always thought that when the church falters, we falter from a lack of imagination, and we falter from our slavery to fear.  Martin and Katie Luther stand for the opposition of slavery to fear, they stand up as saints who have gone before us, who point us back to freedom by grace.   Both of them faced incredible fears in their lives, in their time and place...  


Paul’s letter to the Romans and the Gospel of John, call us back to the liberated imaginations that God has given and intended for us.   The movie The Hurricane, which has always been one of my favorites, the main character calls it “transcending”:  
    Denzel Washington portrays the boxer and falsely accused of murder Reuben Hurricane Carter.  From prison he speaks to a young man he’s mentoring about his imprisoned predecessors and contemporaries — Nelson Mandela — and how we must transcend the bars that keep us down.

Romans and John call us back from fear and into freedom — freedom from worrying about what might happen if we fling wide open our doors and windows, freedom to let the Spirit move in our midst without our permission, freedom to let change unfold all around us as we stay centered and held together at this [bowl] well of welcome.

Siblings, friends in Christ, we are freed by grace, and so we go, as God’s church, to love and serve the world, to love our enemies, to welcome the outcast, feed the sick, clothe the naked, accompany the downtrodden, and care for our own bodies and the broken body of this earth.  Let’s go sing the story of God’s love!  
    We are freed by grace. We can’t help ourselves. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ.  AMEN.