I’m back from parental leave! I’m so grateful to have had eight weeks to spend with family after Jonah’s birth. For this first Sunday back, I’ve reworked my sermon from June 28, 2020 (in the height of the pandemic!).
Here’s a message about the problem with Lutherans and with forgiveness in general. Today is the 5th Sunday after Pentecost and our Scripture readings are Romans 6:12-23 and Matthew 10:40-42
Here’s the worship livestream and sermon audio from Christ the King.
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Do you know the problem with Lutherans?
Sounds like the setup to a joke, but it’s not. There really is a problem with the Lutheran tradition. Well, there are many problems with the Lutheran tradition, but there’s one primary problem I want to talk about today.
Here’s the problem: We Lutherans have too much grace.
It’s true! Christin and I have worshiped at four different Lutheran churches while I’ve been on parental leave, and every one of them has talked about grace and forgiveness. Maybe—hopefully—you heard something about that here too.
We Lutherans are certainly not the only ones who believe in forgiveness, but if Lutheran-flavored Christians have anything to offer, it’s our emphasis on God’s grace above all else. “We are the church that shares a living, daring confidence in God’s grace.”
We believe there is nothing we can do to get to God; we are totally dependent on God coming to us.
Maybe you remember the wording from Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, in his explanation of the third part of the Apostle’s Creed, the article of the Holy Spirit.
“I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith.”
I cannot by my own understanding or strength believe in Jesus or come to him.
Our church doesn’t do altar calls or challenge you to find Jesus and invite him into your heart because we don’t believe you can make a decision for Christ. We don’t have that high of an opinion of ourselves.
The only way any of us can be saved is by God working in us through the Holy Spirit. We’re too messed up, too broken, too sinful to make our own way to heaven. We are saved by God’s grace through faith.
That’s Lutheranism 101, the fundamental basis for how Lutherans understand God. God’s action towards us always comes before our response towards God. Everything depends on God’s grace.
Focusing on God’s grace is good and right and biblical and faithful. But there’s a big problem with putting everything on God’s grace, a problem Paul brings up in today’s reading from Romans 6.
Now, Paul has just been talking about how great God’s grace is. In verse 8 of chapter 5, Paul wrote, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”
He talked about God’s grace being a free gift, where the more we sin, the more God forgives. We’re here today because of God’s grace, because God doesn’t give up on us no matter what we do.
But Paul sees the problem his theology brings up, the problem with grace, and he brings it up in today’s reading.
Verse 15: “What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace?”
Earlier, in verse 1, he asked, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?”
The problem is that if the law is what motivate us to follow God, if the punishments of the law are what keep us from sinning, and then suddenly Jesus comes along and sets us free from the burden of following the law, well, then what?
We might as well just keep sinning since we know we’ll be forgiven anyway! More sin, more grace, right?
There are a whole bunch of sins I’ve never tried, and you know what? Some of them sound like a lot of fun! So, why not go try them, since God will forgive me anyway?!
You see how grace could be a problem? And it’s not just that committing sins doesn’t seem as bad when we know God forgives it; it’s also about what we don’t do, sinning by omission.
Why bother making the effort to do anything good, if it’s all up to God, not us?
Jesus talks in the gospel about the reward of giving a cup of cold water to someone who’s thirsty—well, if there’s forgiveness and grace, why even worry about it?
After all, people can get upset if you follow Jesus and stand up for justice or work for peace. So why bother rocking the boat by challenging sin if God’s grace is just going to fix everything anyway? Might as well stay quiet and not bother anyone and let God sort it out.
And this has been one of the criticisms of Lutherans: Because we believe God’s grace makes doing good works unnecessary, we don’t actually get anything done.
Historically, we’ve sometimes erred on the side of staying quiet in the face of injustice rather than speaking up, rather than acting.
Romans 6 is the answer to that problem. Listen to Paul: “What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” Absolutely not! Remember, without God’s grace, you’re a slave to sin. You’re a sinner. You can’t stop sinning.
But God has forgiven you. Your chains are gone. You don’t have to stay in bondage to sin anymore; you are welcomed inside to God’s kingdom, to the banquet God has prepared. Jesus has set you free; so quit letting sin be in control of your life.
As Bob Dylan in his Christian phase once sang, “You gotta serve somebody.”
Your actions reveal whether or not you actually believe in grace. The Holy Spirit doesn’t just bring us to Jesus, it builds faith in us and keeps us in the church, in the body of Christ, serving our neighbors…doing good works.
Jesus has given you freedom, not just the earthly, political freedom we celebrate this week, but true, eternal freedom. That’s amazing grace.
The question is, who will you serve with that freedom?
Will you use your freedom to go back into sin, go back into under the law?
You’re free to do that. God will keep pursuing you, keep searching for you and calling you to repent and return, but you do have the option to continue running away from grace.
But if you choose to go that route, you should know where it leads. It’s the last verse of the reading: The wages of sin is death. The definition of sin is going against God, separating yourself from God, and that means death.
Lutherans believe God freely gives grace, and we also believe you can choose to reject that grace. You can choose to run away from the Holy Spirit’s work in you.
The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. That eternal life isn’t only for after you die and go to heaven; eternal life starts now. Eternal life begins from the empty tomb.
The problem with the Lutheran tradition, really the problem with grace is that we are no longer required to do good works to earn God’s favor, yet if we understand the grace God has shown to us, the inevitable, unavoidable result of our faith is doing good works, serving Jesus.
Listen to the way Eugene Peterson paraphrases this passage in The Message. He writes:
“So, since we’re out from under the old tyranny, does that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we’re free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind? Hardly.
You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom.
Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it’s your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you’ve let sin tell you what to do.
But thank God you’ve started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!
I’m using this freedom language because it’s easy to picture. You can readily recall, can’t you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse your life became and the less freedom you had?
And how much different is it now as you live in God’s freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness?
As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter.
But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end.
But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way!
Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.”
Pretty good paraphrase, isn’t it?
Beloved of God, remember who you are. Remember what God has done for you.
Jesus has died to give you life. You are forgiven and set free from your captivity to sin, and you are set free to live for God, set free to live a life of meaning, purpose, and hope, made welcome at the banquet in God’s kingdom.
There’s no such thing as too much grace. But what will you do with your freedom?
May all of our words and deeds reflect God’s love for you and for the world.
Amen. Thanks be to God.