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Reformation Sunday October 28, 2007
“Handing on the Dream”
Jeremiah 31:31-34
& John 8:31-36 Preached at By Pastor Dennis R.
King The Grace and Mercy of the Lord, Jesus Christ, be
with you all. This is Reformation Sunday. Some of you remember this day as a very
special day. You may even be celebrating an anniversary of your confirmation
today. It is a personal day for you. It is day when you affirmed your faith
again and remember when you first received the blessings of the church. You
are Lutheran to your very core and you rejoice in lifting the Reformation
truths. For some of you who know your history it is a reminder of an event
that took place in the 1500’s that drastically changed not just the church
but the world. To others it
doesn’t mean a whole lot. Maybe you didn’t grow up Lutheran or even if you
did, the significance of the Reformation just didn’t stick. But the truth is
that Reformation Sunday is always a day to affirm our faith and again hear
the Reformation truths. One of the Scripture lessons for this day is always
Jeremiah 31:31-34. It is one of the
most beloved passages of Old Testament scripture. It has a way of opening up our hearts.
Especially the verses that say, “I will put my law in their minds and write
it on their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be my people. No
longer will it be necessary to admonish one another to know the Lord for they
will all know me, from the greatest to the smallest. Jeremiah says that this is God’s hope. It becomes
Jeremiah’s dream that all people may have God’s law and God’s love written on
their hearts. However, we know that many people are like the stock market
performance of recent years. Sometimes
they reach up toward God and sometimes they plunge downward away from God.
The dream of Jeremiah was that all people would love the Lord all the time. Many
years after Jeremiah, God sent Jesus to rekindle this hope. Jesus kept the
dream alive. Jesus passed this great hope to the Church. The early Church had the passion of
Jeremiah and of Jesus. They had a passion for God. They had a passion that
all people might know and love God and pursue justice and love for all. In
the 1500’s Martin Luther and other reformers became increasingly aware that
the Church had lost this dream…this passion. The Reformation is generally
thought to have started when the monk, Luther, nailed a document to the door
of the So
why do we after all these years still observe Reformation? It certainly is a
time to give thanks for the courageous people like Martin Luther who brought
incredibly needed reform to the Church that is such a gift in our Lutheran
tradition. Martin Luther helped to keep alive the dream of Jeremiah and Jesus. Pastor
Jerry Nelson has said that he owes his life to the Reformation. In the 1500’s an ancestor of his was a
priest in the Church in Today
we hang on to the observance of the Reformation because we are called to be a
re-forming and re-shaping Church at all times and in all ages. Reformation Sunday
gives us again the opportunity to ask questions like, “Are we holding true to
the heritage of ongoing reform in ways that please God and reach all people
with the Gospel of Jesus Christ?” We can ask again, “Have we fallen into
traditions and forms that can mean more to us than our love of the Lord?”
Again we ask “Is our greatest passion to keep things as they are…or is our
greater passion to bring all people to the Gospel? Jeremiah’s
dream…Jesus’ dream…Luther’s dream…May it be our dream…that all people will
have God’s love written on their hearts and that all people will know of
God’s unrelenting grace. In
all honesty, what is it that really shapes our world today? Is it terrorism?
Is it the fear that nuclear weapons are in the hands of more nations? Is it
blood shed and violence that seems to continue in so many places in our
world? Is it an economy that sputters around us? Is it poverty and hunger
that never goes away? Or is it the worry and anxieties and fears that keep
arising in all of our lives? Are we are losing ground in this world? Is there more rudeness? More lack of self-control? More anger then ever before? Yet
the Church keeps trying. We thank God
for this place! It is a shelter for us and for our youth. It is to be a place
where we can be drawn safely into the arms of Jesus. This place helps us and encourages us to
keep the dream alive that we might know God’s love and live restored and
joyful in our daily lives. What a joy it is to look around this congregation
and see all of the people who are trying to live in God’s way and it gives hope We are God’s hope to keep the dream alive so
that all may know Him. In
the Gospel for today there is that marvelous promise. It is found in John 8:31
and it reads like this, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my
disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Freedom. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could be!
Free from all anxiety. Free from all worry. Free from all illness. Free from all financial concerns.
Free from all oppressive people. But
we aren’t free from all those things, are we? We have down days. We do get
worn out. We sometimes want to give up. We get discouraged. We do worry about
many things. Illness can threaten so much of what we hold dear. The truly great
miracle is that in the midst of these realities of life, in the midst of
turmoil and worry, in the midst of so much about the future that is
unknowable…we can be set free. We can pray that we might be a decent and
acceptable servant and disciple of Jesus.
Maybe even an outstanding disciple.
That is the one thing that keeps on setting us free from the darkness
that reaches out to us. Reformation
involves re-forming and changing our attitude, our heart, and even our soul.
Jesus brought radical reformation. Jesus changed not only the church but the
world. Jesus did things like including women in the broad circle of
disciples. He ignored the rule that
rabbis could not speak to women in public places. He ministered to people
considered outside of the Jewish boundaries.
He opened the faith to us Gentiles. He ended the sacrificial rituals
with his own sacrifice. Think
of the changes for good brought about by the reformers. They changed the
language of the church from Latin to the language of the people. They brought
singing by the people into the church. The wine in the sacrament, the blood
of Christ, was returned to the people. The Scripture was made available to
all people. Priests could marry and have families. What
we can learn from the Reformation is that reforming and reshaping need to be
constant in the life of the Church. We
are called to the freedom to be open to the ever new winds of the Spirit so
that the Church might be truly relevant in our daily lives and that we might
retain our youth and young families for the Gospel. They we might keep alive
the dream of God which he handed on to Jeremiah and Jesus and Luther and now
to us that all might know God and his love for them forever and ever. What
do we have to pass on to our children and the children of this
generation? The only gift to pass on
that really matters is the gift of faith. The only thing to pass on to others
that really matters is the faith…is God’s dream. There is nothing else that is eternal. Let us be reformers today and do our part
to hand the dream on. When we think like
this then we are brothers and sisters of Jesus. We are sons and daughters of the reformers.
Amen. |
