Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Reformation, some 500 years since Luther famously nailed his 95 Theses on the doors of the Wittenberg Castle Church, protesting against the abusive teachings and practices of the church. The church taught that a person could be OK with God by their performance. God’s favour could be earned by certain behaviours and spiritual practices, like praying a certain number of times as they walked up the steps of St Peter’s Basilica, or gazing at religious artefacts thought to be holy.
It was believed that those who had died were stuck in a place of torment between this life and heaven, called Purgatory. Pope Leo, who had drained the treasury on self-indulgent acts, then had no money left to fund the rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica. He came up with an ingenious scheme: anyone making a financial donation to the Cathedral would be granted an ‘indulgence letter’—basically a cash payment for the forgiveness of sins. Travelling preachers commissioned by the Pope toured the country, proclaiming that the souls of loved ones could be freed from Purgatory by buying an ‘indulgence letter’. Preachers like Yohann Tetzel bellowed: “Buy an indulgence from the Holy Roman Church! As soon as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul flies out of Purgatory!”
As the years rolled on from that day in 1517 when a young Doctor of Theology took his Theses to the church doors in Wittenberg, perhaps we have lost something of the sense of the importance and relevance of the Reformation for our life as God’s people today. Let’s picture the societal context. The indulgence scheme was great for those who still wanted to live with their sinful lifestyle but thought they could have God’s blessing at the same time, like the priests who frequented the brothels. They could simply leave the premises and purchase an indulgence letter, and go on their merry way.
But what about those who couldn’t afford to pay?
Midway through the 14th Century, the Bubonic Plague, or ‘Black death’ had swept through the medieval world. The decimation of Europe’s population was at an unprecedented level. The impact was still very much felt in Germany when Luther posted his Theses on the doors of the church at Wittenberg. There was widespread sickness, death and poverty. This meant that literacy among the common people was low. Of those who could read, most people couldn’t read the bible, because it was in Latin, the language of the mother Roman church, not the language of the people. No one had any idea of what was being said in worship, because it was all in Latin.
The Pope was deemed to be the highest authority in the church and his decrees seen as more authoritative than Scripture. The people didn’t have the tools or capacity to be able to challenge the papacy, and if they did, they would likely be excommunicated from the church, which was understood to mean being destined for hell.
Many people couldn’t afford an indulgence letter. Some gave their last coins even though it would mean not being able to feed their own children. It was a terrible—and terrifying—decision many people were forced to make. Their consciences were burdened as they lived with crippling fear. The indulgence letters were beyond the reach of the most vulnerable in society and worth nothing. The good works demanded were not good enough to climb the ladder into heaven. Faced with the misery of the reality around them on the one hand—and the cold comfort the church offered on the other—suicide rates escalated sharply.
If only the people could be free!
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus says: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
These words were part of Jesus’ discourse to the Pharisees in chapter 8 of John. The Pharisees and scribes were like the Papacy at the time of the Reformation. They were the religious authorities, issuing decrees that obscured God’s own word. They shared the same idea that God’s favour and blessing depended on a person’s performance. They established 610 man-made rules which they thought would keep them holy and preserve the religious community’s morality and righteousness. The chapter begins with them bringing a woman to Jesus. They said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” Jesus said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And after they all went away one by one, Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” (From John 8:4-11).
That is the gospel. To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” This was the issue at the heart of the Reformation: the rediscovery of the gospel by Luther and the Reformers that brought such impassioned appeals and protests for change. It was a desire for the people to know the truth of Jesus that sets people free—free from sin, free from condemnation, free from expectation and performing to earn the approval of others.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus teaches us just how much we need freedom. The Jews misunderstood, thinking in a literal earthly sense: “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”
But Jesus is speaking of spiritual realities. Everyone who sins is a slave to sin—our individual sins, no matter how minor they might seem to us, show that we have a sinful nature. Like a servant is bound to their master, in our natural state we are in slavery to sin from which we cannot free ourselves. No performance or effort on our part can free us—in fact, only enslaves us further. No earthly authority or teaching or tradition can save us. If anyone could get close to the perfect morality required to be a part of God’s family it would have been the Pharisees. But close is not close enough. So Jesus teaches them that all they had to do to be pleasing to God was—nothing…other than trust in his promise.
That is why in his great love God sent his Son to redeem the world by his holy and precious blood—to make us free.
In the words of Horatius Bonar’s hymn “Thy works, not mine O Christ”:
Thy righteousness, O Christ/Alone can cover me;
No righteousness avails/Save that which is of thee.
To whom but thee,
Who can alone for sin atone/Lord, shall I flee?
Now the modern idea of freedom is freedom to do whatever we like, freedom from any responsibility, answerable to no one but ourselves. But that is not true freedom. Freedom is always being freed from something, and being freed for something. Luther summed it up beautifully in his Small Catechism explanation to the second article of the Creed:
I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, Son of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord. At great cost he has purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.”
When people heard this Good News at the time of the Reformation—that they were saved by grace because of what Christ has done for all people, freed from sin, death and hell—they were overjoyed. They were freed from their fear. Freed from their anxiety, and troubled consciences, freed from their slavery to try do something to be pleasing to God. Freed to hold to the words of Christ; to the truth of God’s word—which is the basis for all teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness—not things of human imagining or reasoning (2 Timothy 3:16).
Jesus says to us today: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
This is good news for us today. Although there is not the same fear of God in society today as at the time of the Reformation, we still live in times with great fear. The fear of not being loved, the fear of failure, the fear of being shamed if our past was ever exposed. The fear of not being pleasing to God, or others. Local and International events cause us to fear what the future might bring. Wars and climate irregularities cause us to be fearful of the end of the earth, and whether we are doing enough to save it. Perhaps as we enter the sunsets of our lives there is an increased fear of dying.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus said: “Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever.” A servant who is hired in the family home is neither born into the family nor will remain in it, for when their time of service is complete, they will be released. A son, however, is part of the family always.
Through faith alone in Jesus, God the Father has made you children of God who are a part of his family. Jesus invites you to pray with him: “Our Father in heaven…” But here Jesus says you are even more than children. You are sons. Sons in the culture of the day (particularly the eldest son) had the legal right and entitlement to the family inheritance. Jesus is meaning that, through faith in him, you all share in his inheritance in heaven, which is eternal life in glory forever. It is as if you are the eldest son—the only son—Jesus himself, with all the rights and privileges of his Father in Heaven…your Father in heaven. Although the grass withers and the flowers fade, the word of the Lord will stand forever. Through faith in Christ alone, your place in God’s family is for all eternity, long after the earth will pass away.
And so the good news for you today, brothers and sisters, is that your relationship with God, your identity, value and worth, your dignity and purpose, your righteousness and holiness is not based on your performance, your efforts, achievements or failings—your worth and identity before your Father in Heaven is simply bound up in Christ, who has ransomed you with his holy and precious blood to belong to him. All of the benefits of his saving work on the Cross for the world he has brought to you at the font, where the heavens opened and the Father said of you: “You are my son, you are my daughter with whom I am well pleased.
There, by water and the word, the Son has set you free, so that you are free indeed. Amen!
