Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost/Reformation, Matt. 22:34-46

Oct. 29, 2023, Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman 

I see that many of you are wearing red today, our team colors as we give thanks for our Lutheran heritage. 

Today, of course, is Reformation Sunday when we commemorate Martin Luther having posted the 95 Theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany 506 years ago. Remember that this was not a declaration of independence from the Catholic Church of Luther’s day. Rather, posting the theses was an invitation to debate. Luther did not set out to create a new church. No. He wanted reform within the church. 

So, today is not so much Lutheran Pride Day – a different kind of Pride was last weekend! Rather, it’s a day when we seek greater visible unity within the church, that together we might rally around the central genius of the Christian tradition for the sake of our greater witness to a wider world desperately in need of good news. 

Which is to say, on Reformation Sunday we don’t celebrate Lutheranism. Rather, we celebrate the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news that we are made right with God as a gift of grace from God effective through faith, our trust in that loving grace. Our salvation does not depend on how well we do on the test when we add up the score of our lives in terms of our behavior in not breaking, but also keeping, God’s Law. 

On that score, we all fail. That is to say, we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Thus, we give thanks to God that God gives us the gift of salvation in Christ graciously without regard to our merit, our score…. By God’s grace we are freed from the requirements of God’s Law when it comes to our ultimate salvation. 

Thus, it’s a compelling juxtaposition between themes of Reformation Sunday and the focus of today’s appointed Sunday readings which really zero in on God’s Law, God’s commandments. On a day that’s about freedom from the requirements of the law, we have readings all about the law. How do we make sense of all of this? Well, let’s begin to dig into the texts.

In today’s gospel, the religious leader who was an expert in the law asked Jesus a question to test him: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 

Jesus responded by quoting the great Jewish affirmation, the Shema: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” Jesus said. And he continued, “This is the greatest and first commandment.” 

But then Jesus went on, “And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Jesus concluded by saying, “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” 

The Ten Commandments, and really all of the other commands found in the Hebrew scriptures, are elaborations on these basics: love God and love your neighbor as yourself. 

Lest you think that Luther and Lutherans set the Law, the divine commandments, aside, let me remind you that Luther’s exploration of the Ten Commandments is the first set of teachings that Luther addresses in his Small Catechism – where he goes through each of the Ten and gives his explanations about the meaning of each commandment, what it means to break the commandments, but also what it means to keep each commandment. 

Some of you may have had to memorize what Luther had to say about the Ten Commandments in confirmation class years ago. 

But it’s also important to say that for Luther, the Ten Commandments were not just teachings to learn and memorize. Luther also focused on the Ten Commandments in his devotional life, his prayer life. In a letter to his barber, “A Simple Way to Pray,” Luther described how he spiritually engaged the commandments, treating each as a “garland of four twisted strands,” that is, first, a teaching and secondly, an occasion for giving thanks to God and thirdly, a prompt to confess our sin in breaking or failing to keep the commandment, and fourthly and finally, an inspiration for prayer to God to help us do better with the commandments. Thus, each commandment is a teaching, but also an occasion for thanksgiving, confession, and prayer.

What I find most intriguing about this is that alongside each commandment as a teaching, each commandment is also an occasion for thanksgiving for Luther. Which is to say, Luther sees each commandment as a gift, an expression of grace for which we give thanks to God. 

Let’s take, for example, the command to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind – which really relates to the first commandment: “I am the Lord, your God. You shall have no other gods.” In this command is great grace, that almighty God, creator of the whole universe, deigns to be our Lord and God, and to claim us as God’s own. 

This reality is truly an occasion for us to give thanks to God with our whole heart, soul and mind! Thanks be to God! 

Indeed, each of the Ten Commandments is in its own way an expression of God’s gracious gifts to us, occasions for our giving thanks to God. 

Which is to say, with this emphasis on thanksgiving for God’s gracious gifts to us, our response to the commandments of God is not really about what we have to do, but what we get to do. Let me say that again: we’re obedient to God because we get to, not because we have to.

Since we are freed from the requirements of the Law for our salvation, we are thus also freed for living our lives in accord with God’s Law inspired by a spirit of thanksgiving, of appreciation for grace and gifts given to us. 

And it’s a heck of a lot easier to be motivated to do things because we get to rather than forcing ourselves to do things because we have to – with the threat of punishment awaiting us if we screw up. 

And screw up we will – which is why Luther also included asking forgiveness and seeking God’s help in prayer in his devotions with the commandments. 

This is the genius of the gospel message that we celebrate on Reformation Sunday – and every Sunday, really – that God’s loving grace frees us to want to do the right thing. 

And Jesus shows us the way. On the cross and in the victory of the empty tomb, Christ embodied what it means to love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind. And likewise, the cross reveals the radical extent of Christ loving neighbors to point even of dying for them. 

We’re baptized into this whole-hearted, soulful, mindful love of God in the sacramental waters of the font. We eat and drink of the love of God in Christ with all our heart, soul and mind in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. This bath and this meal give us what we need to be about keeping God’s commandments in gospel freedom – because out of thanks we want to do it and not because we have to. 

And in this freedom, we go into the world to live out specific elaborations on the basic command to love God and neighbor, as expressed in today’s reading from Leviticus – which gets very specific: “You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to those who are poor or defer to those who are great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand idly by when the blood of your neighbor is at stake: 

I am the Lord…. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” 

God, by your Holy Spirit, give us an appreciative heart, mind and soul to do this hard work in our giving of mercy to and seeking justice for our neighbors, all inspired by your love for us, as we love you and our neighbors as ourselves.

Oh, what a different presence we get to be in the world, a counter-cultural witness, the very opposite of what we see, hear and read in the news every day. 

Thus, as Paul says in today’s second reading, we are given “courage in our God to declare… the gospel of God in spite of great opposition…. just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel…. [Thus, in our deeds and words] we speak, not to please mortals but to please God…” (cf. 1 Thessalonians 2:2b-4)

Thanks be to God in Christ who by grace frees us for wanting to love God and our neighbors as ourselves – a healing witness in our ever-crazier world in need of good news and hope and love and reconciliation. This is what Reformation Sunday, and every Sunday, are all about. Amen.