Jeremiah 31:31-34; Romans 3:19-28; John 8:31-36
There is a
television program called “This is Us” which has become quite popular in the
past couple of years, but until recently I had never watched any of its
episodes. Lately, however, curiosity has had me watching the first couple of
seasons through a streaming app. This week I watched an episode in which one of
the characters talks about the first time he got glasses with corrective lenses
in them.
Before he could
get the glasses of course, came the exam with what he calls the “Better Machine.”
Anyone who has
had optical refraction is familiar with that machine. (Refraction is what they
call it when they check to see how much – or how little correction your eyes
might need to attain your best possible vision).
So, the “best
machine” is the one where the doctor or optical technician flicks through combinations
of varying strengths of lenses on a machine that you look through to read the
chart on the wall. As lenses are changed, the patient is asked over and over, “Which
is better, one or two?” click, click, “now which is better – one or two?”
click, click, “two or one?”
The patient goes
through a series of trial lenses in this way, while the world goes from blurry
to clear and back to blurry again, until you finally arrive at the combination
that provides the best correction you can attain to see the world.
I remember
walking out of the optician’s office with my first pair of glasses when I was
in fourth or fifth grade. I was amazed that the grassy lawn contained millions
of individual blades of grass – and
was not just the sea of green I had become accustomed to seeing. That’s what I
remember most of that first step out into a vision-corrected world – individual
blades of grass.
Today we commemorate
Reformation Sunday, when we remember with gratitude the work of Martin Luther
and the rest of the reformers, who gave us a clearer vision of God’s grace through
their work with the Scriptures. We celebrate how, through the Reformation, our
faith came to contain millions of beautiful blades of grass as we see God’s
presence throughout our world, no longer a simple one-or-two-dimensional sea of
green.
Luther and his
friends never intended to split the church, or to create a new denomination in the
Christian faith. They simply wished to share with the masses what they, through
the power of the Holy Spirit, had come to understand more clearly; that what
God has done in Jesus Christ, on the cross, is to pour our grace sufficient for
new life for us all.
They wanted to
devise better ways to teach the faithful that God’s unmerited, perfect grace is
already accomplished for us all. They were, in a lot of ways, like the “better
machine.”
They kept
writing, studying, arguing and debating with each so that they could best understand
and then convey the truth of Christ’s Word that is life-giving and not
oppressive, as Jesus himself is life-giving and liberating.
In so doing,
they looked through a variety of lenses and asked the question over and over,
“which is clearer, one or two? two or one”? As they worked, their vision went
from blurry to clear, back to blurry again, and then clearer than ever before,
through reading Scriptures like those ones we just read.
Jesus said to
the Jews who had believed in him, “If you keep on living in my truth, you are really,
truly my disciples; and you will know the Truth, and the Truth will make you
free.”
The disciples
answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to
anyone.”
Somehow, I don’t
think the disciple are on the same page as Jesus.
·
Jesus is speaking of
spiritual truth; of eternal truth; of divine
truth. This is the truth that will outlive every human-constructed world or
cultural reality. He is speaking of
truth and freedom as infinite possibilities
that are known only through him – through God’s almighty grace.
·
They are relying on
the finite history and stories of the path trod by their ancestors.
·
Jesus is the
embodiment of God’s love and mercy to all the fallen world, but despite having recently
declared that they believe he is the Messiah, they still identify themselves through their traditional Jewish
heritage, where their identity is found in Abraham, the father of the faith. The
trouble is, in this way they give their association with Abraham priority over
their relationship with Jesus.
·
Jesus challenges them
to own their new identity as Christ-followers, saved now by God’s grace apart
from any Law that has bound them in the past, but they worry that he is equating them with slaves.
·
They associate
freedom with the physical removal of the shackles of enslavement in Egypt, while
Jesus is talking about a much more
profound and lasting liberation, where the heart itself is set free from that
which binds it so that it can grow in the new, unalienable life that God gives
us.
As Lutherans commemorate
the Reformation, we remember that freedom
was a crucial element in faith for Luther and the other Reformers. The big
question they were driven to answer was, where
and how are truth, freedom, and new life to be found? What is the truth about our salvation? What is necessary for eternal life?
Those questions
burned for those who live in the Middle Ages of Luther’s world. There was an
urgency to such understanding that is lost to those of us living in the 21st
century.
Their world was dark and dangerous,
with death from plague, starvation, disease and poverty literally just around
the corner in a way that we comfortable Americans cannot fathom; life was beyond
hard.
The desperate hope and desire of the
people therefore, was that the life that awaited them when they departed this
mortal coil would be better than the one they traveled in this life. They were desperate to know that they and the
loved ones who had passed on before them would not languish in a continual
cycle of suffering, but that they had
believed correctly or done enough
or lived a sufficiently good life to
be assured that they were heaven-bound. They desperately needed the assurance
that God would judge them worthy of a sweet eternal life after this world of infernal suffering.
As the reformers
studied and debated the Scriptures together, the core belief that God’s Word of
forgiveness and grace won through the cross of Christ alone as the ultimate
power to save us, became their battle cry against the forces of darkness.
They were
convinced that this essential truth had been lost in the medieval pietistic
teachings and indulgences of the church of their time. Determined to share the
Word that only belief in Jesus Christ
could save, that only God’s grace
could save, and that on the cross, God’s
determination of salvation was accomplished for the whole world, they
turned to passage like the ones we read today.
This Word of God
has the authority to grant perfect vision to all people by conveying to us the truth and light of God’s
steadfast love and mercy for all God’s
creation.
The world today
may be different from that of the reformers of over 500 years ago. Faith is no
longer deemed as essential to life as it used to be. The conviction that our
salvation comes from God alone has been lost to the masses – even the need for salvation by Christ is
questioned by so many people around us.
The thing that
hasn’t changed is that there is still vast suffering in the world. The past
week has exemplified this truth: children senselessly die and people are maimed
in car accidents, bombs sent through mail terrorize us, faithful worshipers and
first responders are gunned down in a worship place – a synagogue; millions of
children suffer the evil and pain of starvation in a war-torn land, and gang
violence drives thousands from their homes to seek the refuge which just a few
of them will receive in time. There are times when the dimness of our vision may
be fueled by our despair and hopelessness.
Yet, here we
gather today, by the will of the Holy Spirit. Together we confess the faith of
our baptism, the same faith that four young people will affirm during the Rite
of Confirmation.
We are so much
like the disciples – while we may not locate our identity in Abraham any
longer, our faith and our trust in Jesus’ words still need to be clarified so
that our vision of God’s grace might
be renewed, and we might be freed to live in the light of Christ.
The lenses our
world offers us can blur our vision. But God restores it. As Lutherans we
confess that we are at the same time sinner (by our response to the temptations
and pull of the world) and saint (by the sweet gift of God’s grace).
We are not saved
by our own understanding but by the mercy of a God who loves us so much that
despite our blurry understanding, despite our indistinct vision of grace,
despite our frequent blindness, God forgives us and renews us over and over
again for the sake of Jesus Christ.
Jesus makes it
possible for us to grasp the new life
we are given at baptism – the new life our confirmands claim as their own this
day.
And so today and
every day, let us offer our thanks and praise to God for the “better machine”
of our faith – for the corrective lenses that give us not perfect faith or
perfect life – only God can to that – but the best vision of which we are
capable, until that day when God perfectly restores our vision and our understanding
with the fine heavenly vision given all the saints in light. Amen.
