Sermon: Reformation Sunday, John 8:31-36, October 30, 2022

Faith Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Today is Reformation Sunday when we remember the historical circumstances in the church that birthed what would become the Lutheran tradition. Today commemorates Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses which got the Reformation ball rolling.

One of the hallmarks of our Lutheran heritage is encapsulated in the Latin phrase, sola scriptura, scripture alone. That rallying cry reveals that Lutherans take God’s scriptural word very seriously. So seriously that we pay close attention to all of scripture even to the point of not overlooking individual key words in passages from the bible.

Martin Luther, after all was a scholar and professor of the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures. It was his careful, painstaking attention to biblical study that resulted in his aha moment of discovery in seeing certain key passages as if for the first time. This rediscovery of the centrality of God’s grace via close reading of the Bible was the driving force in the revolution in his own life of faith. And this rediscovered insight, too, became the impetus for the whole Reformation – which all began with a return to the importance of the biblical word, sola scriptura.

One of the key passages for Luther, by the way, is today’s second reading from Romans 3 – “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.” (Romans 3:22b-25a) This passage is a basis for the teaching of justification by grace, the centerpiece of Lutheran theology. And this leads to two other Reformation rallying cries: sola fide (faith alone) and sola gratia (grace alone)!

This passage from Romans also offers a framework through which to view today’s reading from John’s gospel which zeros in on other essential theological and existential words, namely: freedom, truth, and a key word in John in the original Greek that translates ‘continue’ or to ‘have a place to dwell,’ ‘remain,’ or ‘abide.’ Freedom. Truth. Abiding. Three words to zero in on.

When doing bible study, it’s important to consider words that writers use repeatedly. That’s the case in today’s passage from John in which forms of the word freedom appear 4 times a few verses, and truth occurs 3 times and the Greek word for continuing or having a place appears 3 times.

This repetition suggests the importance of these words for the gospel writer, John. Each word is like a seed that germinates to reveal the fruit of rich meaning and insight. So, let’s take up these words, each in turn, first considering their common usage and how they’re misunderstood and abused in popular culture and then focusing on their biblical and theological meanings which are authoritative for us in our life together.

Explorations of the common words freedom, truth, and abiding reveal the bad news of many of the ills of our current society. But theologically and biblically these same words carry the power of the gospel, the good news, for our well-being and ultimate salvation.

First, there’s freedom… We hear a lot about freedom these days, and a lot of this in reaction to mask mandates during the more acute phases of the pandemic. Many invoked the theme of freedom to resist or refuse to wear masks to protect themselves and others. That stance speaks volumes about their view of freedom. It’s a freedom from restraint, from rules, regulations, a freedom from responsibility and accountability. It’s an understanding of freedom that asserts that I can do anything I want, and you cannot tell me otherwise.

My friends in Christ, I daresay, this view of freedom is more about licentiousness or lawlessness than it is about true freedom, especially in a Christian sense. And this understanding of freedom played a role in the significant extent to which our nation suffered more than it needed to because of the coronavirus in terms of high rates of serious illness, hospitalization, and death. There’s got to be a better way and a more life-giving view of freedom.

Martin Luther, whose insights we celebrate today, had a very different sense of freedom from that which is popular today. One of his most important treatises is entitled, “Freedom of a Christian.” If you want an excellent summary of Luther’s and Lutheran thought, I recommend you read or re-read this treatise. Google it; you’ll find it easily.

In “Freedom of a Christian,” Luther offers a paradox, and here it is: “a Christian is a perfectly free sovereign, subject to none; and at the same time, a Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant, subject to all.” In Christ, in other words, we have perfect freedom because we are saved by grace as a gift. So it is that John reports Jesus as having concluded: “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

But then true freedom in Christ is ultimately a freedom for, not a freedom from. It’s a freedom for serving others and having highest regard for their well-being.

Thus it is that Luther says we are perfectly dutiful servants of all, subject to all. Such freedom means wearing masks when the virus is severe enough to warrant protecting vulnerable others.

So, these explorations give you a taste of how the word freedom is both corrupted by sinful humans in pop culture, but then in Christ redeemed for faithful understandings. Now, let’s take up the word truth, another much abused concept these days in need of conceptual redemption.

We live in an age when the popular epistemology – how we understand something to be true – goes basically like this: “if I feel it and I have a strong opinion about it, it is true.” It’s my truth and it may not be yours. Then there are as many truths as there are people with strong feelings and opinions. This puts us on very shaky ground and gives room for demagogues to come in and interfere with notions of truth such that there is increasingly no consensus in our society on what is true. This is a dangerous stance that is wreaking havoc all over the place.

We Christians have a very different view of truth. Which brings us to another one of the Reformation era’s rallying cries: solus Christus, that is, “Christ alone.” Elsewhere in John, Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Thus, Christian truth from a biblical and Lutheran perspective is personal. Truth is a person, Jesus Christ. Truth is not an abstraction or a principle. Nor is truth an opinion or feeling.

So it is that Jesus says in John, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” The Greek word translated know is not abstract knowledge, but the kind of knowledge that derives from experience in personal relationship with another, namely, Jesus Christ.

It is knowing Jesus as truth that makes for our freedom. Truth is not about my opinions or feelings, but it comes from outside of ourselves in the person of Jesus and our existential encounters with him.

So, how do we come to know this Jesus, this truth that gives us freedom? This question brings us to the third and final word we wish to explore today. Again, in Greek, it’s a single word, but appears in today’s passage from John as “continue” and having to do with having a permanent place in the household, a place there forever.

The Greek word has to do with remaining, dwelling, living with, staying put, lingering in intimate connection. Elsewhere in John, it’s translated abide. “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” (John 15:4)

It is this deep dwelling or intimate abiding that makes possible our knowing Jesus Christ as the way, the truth and the life. And it is this truth personified that sets us free with a freedom to be for others as Christ was and is for all of us.

Such dwelling with Christ enacts a reality akin to that which Jeremiah described in talking about a promised new covenant in today’s first reading: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord.” (Jeremiah 31:33b-34a)

But like the words freedom and truth, even the sense of dwelling or staying put is corrupted by our culture’s preoccupation with busyness and innovation and forever being on the move, flitting from one thing to the next without really paying attention to anything long enough to know anything about it.

So, what are the ways we can dwell with Christ, the truth, for our freedom, especially since Christ is not present today the way he was with the original followers? Well, once again, we practice this dwelling with Christ here every Sunday. (I end up extolling the virtues of our Sunday assembly every time I preach, don’t I? That’s because what we do here routinely is anything but routine and thus it bears repeating again and again!)

As we come here, Christ dwells with us and we with him in word and sacraments, where we share in his death and resurrection, and all the blessings that are Christ. Christ himself is present to us via the Word and in the breaking of the bread, such an intimate knowing that we take his very presence, his very body into our own bodies. That’s the ultimate in dwelling with Christ and he with us. Thus it is we come to know Christ in existential ways, right here in this place, becoming little Christs for the world, as Luther was known to have said.

Here in this place, our faith is generated and regenerated Sunday after Sunday so that the truth who is Christ may free us anew to enact the true and faithful version of freedom, namely a freedom for others, a freedom to give ourselves away to them and to the world for the well-being of all creation. Thus, we leave this place full of truth, full of Christ, in freedom so that we can proclaim the truth of Christ in word and deed to the world so that God in Christ may set it free from its captivity.

In brief, and to conclude: Christ is the truth that sets us all free as Christ makes a home, a dwelling place with us always and forever. Thus, I finish with a final rallying cry of the Reformation era: soli deo gloria, to God alone be the glory. Amen.