This week at St. Peter Lutheran Church in Greene, Iowa, we celebrated a baptism at the 8:30 service, and had a very cold Sunday School hayride between services.
The readings for October 14, 2018, are Hebrews 4:12-16 and Mark 10:17-31. This sermon has the longest quote I’ve ever used in a sermon, from Martin Luther’s 1532 sermon on The Distinction Between the Law and the Gospel (PDF link). Here’s my sermon:
One of the life skills I have not yet mastered is neatly opening envelopes. My method of opening a letter usually involves destroying the envelope. On rare occasions it has also involved destroying the letter inside. I don’t know when I was supposed to learn to neatly open envelopes, but somehow I missed it.
As I was working on this sermon, I found the perfect pastoral solution. Did you know that you can buy the “Double Edged Sword Letter Opener” with Hebrews 4:12 engraved on it? Here it is on Amazon.
One of the things I’ve learned while working in a church are that there are some really terrible “Christian” products you can buy. Apparently slapping a Bible verse onto some junky product means you can charge more for it. You can buy things like “Wash Away Your Sins soap, air freshener, or hand sanitizer,” or “Christ is Risen” bubble blowers, or Bible verse fortune cookies. The theology is just painful.
At least the Hebrews 4:12 letter opener has something to do with what the verse is actually about, the idea of opening up and revealing what is hidden.
Listen again to the first part of the reading from Hebrews: “Indeed, the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
We Lutherans have a particular way of reading God’s word. We read all of Scripture as both law and gospel. Perhaps that’s a phrase you’re familiar with.
Law means basically what it sounds like. It’s the part of the Bible that tells us how to live in this world, like the ten commandments: Don’t kill each other. Don’t steal other people’s stuff. Do this. Don’t do that. The law is God’s commands to us.
When we don’t live up to all of God’s commandments, the law is what lets us know our error. The law points out all the ways we sin. And it judges more sharply than any human standard, because as that first verse says, “it is able to judge the thought and intentions of the heart.”
God’s word is a sharp sword piercing into our lives, revealing everything before God, even the dark parts of our lives that we hide from everyone else. “And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render and account.”
I like how the Message paraphrase puts it: “God’s powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one is impervious to God’s Word. We can’t get away from it—no matter what.”
God’s law condemns us, because we’re never good enough to follow all of it, and we can’t hide what we do wrong. That’s what we admit at the start of worship—“we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.” We have sinned against God and against each other.
But God’s word is not just law – it’s a two-edged sword. It’s both law and gospel. The word Gospel means “Good news.” Specifically, the Gospel is the good news of Jesus, the good news that God is not there to just call us out, but to give us grace and forgiveness in Jesus Christ.
Listen to how Martin Luther himself puts it in a sermon from 1532. This is a long quote, but he puts it far better than I could.
The Gospel or the faith is a doctrine or word of God that does not require our works. It does not command us to do anything. On the contrary, it bids us merely to accept the offered grace of forgiveness of sins and eternal life and let it be given to us.
It means that we do nothing; only receive, and allow ourselves to be given what has been granted to us and handed to us in the Word: that God promises and allows His servants to tell you, ‘I am giving you this and this, etc.’
For example, in Baptism, which is not my doing or my work, but God’s Word and work, God speaks to me and says: ‘Stop right here; I baptize you, I wash you from all your sins; accept it; it is for you.’ If now you let yourself be baptized, what more are you doing than receiving and accepting God’s free gift?
So this now is the difference between the Law and the Gospel. The Law presses us to do what we are supposed to do; it demands that we do our duty towards God and our neighbor. In the Gospel, on the other hand, we are summoned to a gift of alms, to a rich distribution of charity, where we are to receive and accept God’s favor and eternal salvation.
If the Law then accuses me of failing to do this or that, of being a law-breaker and a sinner in God’s record book of guilt, I have to confess that it is all true. But what it says after that, ‘Therefore you are condemned’—that I must not concede, but resist it with firm faith and say: ‘According to the Law, which reckons up my guilt, I am indeed a poor, condemned sinner. But I appeal from the Law to the Gospel; because God has given another word that is higher than the Law.’
That word is the Gospel, which gives us, as a free gift, God’s grace, the forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness, and life. It gives you pardon and absolution from your terrors and damnation; it assures me that all guilt has been paid for by the Son of God, Jesus Christ Himself.
That is why it is so necessary that we know how to handle and steer both words properly, and watch carefully that they do not become mixed up with each other.
Told you it was a long quote.
Our readings today lay out both law and gospel. In Hebrews, the law is that God’s word pierces us, lays us bare before our judge. We can’t hide from God’s justice. The gospel is that the one who judges us, the one who sees every part of us is Jesus Christ. And Jesus understands our weaknesses and our failings, because he has been tested like us.
Because our judge is Jesus, we can approach his throne—the “throne of grace”—with boldness. The one who is our judge is the same one who has died for us. We are already forgiven.
In the reading from Mark—the “Gospel” reading because it’s most directly about Jesus—we also find law and gospel. The law is what Jesus tells the disciples. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to ender the kingdom of God.”
The law is that you and I are so often like the rich man, turning wealth and possessions into idols, putting them above God. The law is that even if you keep all the commandments like this man, but lack one thing, that’s not good enough.
But there is Gospel in this story too.
When the disciples ask, “Well then, who can be saved?” Jesus responds, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”
The gospel in this story is that when Jesus looks at the rich man, he loves him. Knowing who he is, knowing his attachment to his wealth, knowing what he lacks, Jesus looks at him and loves him.
Where we can’t do enough, when we are in bondage to our sin, addicted to our wealth and comfort, where we are too selfish, too curved in on ourselves, when it is impossible for us to save ourselves, God looks at us with love and gives us grace.
The good news of the Gospel is that it’s not up to us, but to God, and for God, all things are possible.
Amen
Love it!