This weekend is our first time worshiping in-person in the church building since March 15. Since we’re back in-person (with physical distancing measures in place), the videos are of the Scripture readings and sermon only, not the whole service.
Note also that there is no sermon from me for Holy Trinity Sunday on June 7, as I shared a sermon provided by ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton.
This week’s Scripture is Exodus 19:2-8a and Romans 5:1-8, and we’re looking at God’s grace – the foundation for everything we do as Lutheran Christians.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
How many of you were confirmed in a Lutheran church?
A pastor I follow on Twitter has recently been asking what’s unique about various Christian denominations, what contributions different traditions bring to the wider church.
For instance, this week she asked “What has the Orthodox tradition gifted the larger Church?” and got answers like their connection to history, their appreciation for mystery, and using icons in worship.
Or for the Assemblies of God tradition, their emphasis on the Holy Spirit’s activity around us, and their energy in worship. Episcopalians and other Anglicans have a sense of holy awe in worship.
Quakers bring a particular passion for social justice, equality, and peace. The Reformed tradition emphasizes solid, deeply studied, logical theology.
She hasn’t asked about Lutherans yet, but I’ve been thinking about how to answer. What do Lutherans have to offer?
What does our branch of the Church contribute? Have you ever thought about that?
A number of Lutheran distinctives might make for an interesting study or series, but when you boil it down, the biggest Lutheran contribution to the wider Church has to be our emphasis on grace.
One of our denomination’s taglines is: “We are the church that shares a living, daring confidence in God’s grace.” I think that’s accurate.
There’s a lot happening in the world around us that we could talk about in church. But it’s been a while since I’ve seen most of you, and today, I want to go back to the basics.
Lutheranism 101 is that we are saved by grace, not by works. We don’t earn our way to God or climb a ladder to heaven; God always comes to us.
God loves you because God loves you, not because of anything you do or because you’re so lovable. We understand that God’s grace is not something we earn or deserve; it’s a free gift from God.
I hope you’ve all heard that before; otherwise I and all your other Lutheran pastors have miserably failed you.
Our understanding of grace comes from Scripture passages like we just read from Romans 5. Paul writes, “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
In the chapters right before this, Paul’s been laying out what he means by faith. Faith is trusting in God, not trusting in anything we do. It’s not trusting in whether or not you’re circumcised, or whether you’re a descendant of Abraham, as some of the believers thought. It’s not whether you’ve followed the law well enough—two chapters earlier Paul quotes from Psalms 14 and 53 to say that no one is righteous; every single person is sinful.
That’s a Lutheran understanding too, by the way, that all of us are sinners and we are incapable of stopping our sinful ways.
But, says Paul, our salvation, our right relationship with God, our justification in the eyes of the Lord all comes from faith, from trusting and believing in God’s forgiveness. We don’t have to do the work of making ourselves right, which is good, because we can’t. Jesus has done it all. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Of course, other Christians believe in God’s grace too, but Lutherans stake everything on it as the heart of the gospel. We’re terrified of what we call “works righteousness” – anything that looks like we might be trying to do something to earn our way to heaven, because it might mean we’re rejecting God’s grace.
Unfortunately, Lutherans sometimes misunderstand grace and somehow think it means we’re supposed to avoid doing good works.
One of our weaknesses is our tendency to sometimes even be afraid to talk about our faith, because it might look like we’re boasting about something we did, or like we’re trying to get God to approve of us.
But the opposite ought to be true. Knowing we’re saved by grace isn’t supposed to paralyze us; it’s supposed to set us free to do good works in Jesus’ name.
We can care about others, we can serve and love our neighbors as ourselves because we understand how much God loves us. We start with what Jesus has done for us. When we look at the cross, at Jesus giving his life for us, we see the proof of God’s love.
It doesn’t use the words faith or grace, but today’s Gospel reading has another picture of depending on God. Jesus sends his disciples out to work, but tells them to take nothing with them, no gold, silver, or copper money, no bag or spare clothing, nothing you’d normally pack for a journey.
Instead, they’re forced to rely on God to provide. They’re forced to depend on grace rather than on themselves.
One side effect of our tradition’s emphasis on grace is that Lutherans are good at being honest about who we are. Lutherans know we’re not that great. We start just about every service with confession—not every church does that, by the way.
Confession doesn’t feel very good. I don’t like admitting I’m wrong about something. I really don’t like it when other people tell me I’m wrong. I think that’s human nature.
Try telling someone on Facebook that they’re wrong, especially about something political, and see how it goes.
But the more we understand how sinful we are, the more we understand our need for forgiveness, the more we appreciate God’s grace. The more we realize how little we can do to get to God, the more we understand the love and grace God gives to us in Jesus. Not that we’d ever admit it, but Lutherans are pretty good at humility.
Understanding God’s grace gives us a foundation for engaging the world. Once we figure out—or rather, once the Holy Spirit reveals to us—that it’s about Jesus, not about us, the pressure is off.
You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to have all the right answers for a pandemic, or for racism, or for anger, or for why bad things happen to good people.
You can take holy risks. You can love your neighbor without worrying about the cost. You are set free to do your best for God, to do your best to live as a follower of Jesus working for justice and peace, knowing you will fail, and knowing that God’s grace will still be there.
There’s a lot of freedom in the promise of Jesus knowing the worst you or I or humanity can do, yet still choosing to gives his life for us.
At the end of our reading from Exodus, God sets apart the people of Israel to be a holy people, set apart to follow God’s law, to be God’s “treasured possession.”
It says all the people answered as one: “Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.”
Guess what? They don’t do it. Their enthusiasm fades. They run into a bunch of temptations. The rest of the Old Testament is God’s chosen people over and over again failing to live up to their promise to follow God, because they’re human and they’re sinful. We can sit here today in church and say, “Ok, I’m forgiven. I’ve been fed at the Lord’s table and sent out and now I’m going to stop sinning. From here on out, I’m going to do everything God tells me.”
And it won’t work. I’m willing to bet you won’t even make it out the door. As a monk, Martin Luther famously drove his confessor nuts because as soon as he finished his confession, he’d have some kind of impure thoughts and need to start confessing again.
Trying to make it on our own is hopeless. We’re never going to do enough to be worthy of God’s love…Which is where grace comes in.
Luther eventually got out of his spiral of guilt by reading Romans, by understanding what Paul means by being justified by faith. He learned that our righteousness, our right relationship with God doesn’t come from whether we do the right things, go to the right protests, support the right people, whether we’re woke enough or conservative enough or get upset at the right things. Our righteousness comes through faith, through trusting in what Jesus has done for us.
The key verse (especially for Lutherans) is right at the end of this reading. “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” Say that with me. “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”
Right before that, “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” While we were still sinners. God didn’t wait for us to get our act together.
God didn’t wait for us to purify ourselves and banish those impure, hateful, greedy, judgmental thoughts from your mind. God came to us.
Paul says sure, it’s not unheard of for someone to give up their life for someone else. You’ve all heard stories of heroes who dive on a grenade to save their buddy, or risk their life to pull someone out of a burning building. People put their lives on the line for others all the time. Someone might actually dare to die for a good person.
What makes God’s grace amazing is that Christ knew exactly who he was dying for. He knew exactly how much we didn’t deserve it, how sinful and selfish and broken we are.
And yet he did it anyway. While we were still sinners. That’s how much God loves you.
The question isn’t whether you’re good enough for God to love you, or whether you’ve done enough. The question is what you’ll do in response to God’s love.
God already loves you. Christ has died for you. The good news is the message Jesus commissions the disciples to proclaim: “The kingdom of heaven has come near.”
So will you follow Jesus’ call? Will you, relying on God, go out to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons, whatever that looks like in our world today?
With God’s grace as the foundation, will you stand up for justice and peace, spreading the good news of God’s grace, living as a citizen of God’s kingdom?
Amen