Boo!

Happy Halloween everyone!

But if you're a Lutheran, the 31st of October has other meanings, you know.  It's the day when someone knocked on a door, with a hammer, and instead of getting candy, he brought down the corruption of the church.  The moment that Dr. Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church was a big moment.  It was the moment which began the reformation, but it was not the be all and end all of the movement.  What you need to know is that Dr. Luther did not go out of his way to start anything known as a reformation that day.  Do you know what he came to do? He came to dispute about the sale of indulgences.  

Go ahead and read all 95 of the theses.  I'll wait.  Most people, of course, haven't read them, and there's a good reason why not, which is the same reason that most of us don't read the book of Leviticus that often either - because it deals with something that is not so much of a pressing concern for us these days at all.  Luther's theses are there to dispute about indulgences and the sales thereof.  This seems like a minor issue, of course, since the last time you heard anyone talk about the sale of indulgences was probably 365 days ago.  But Dr. Luther, in nailing the theses to the door actually did something far more profound than just nailing a document or getting the sale of indulgences stopped.

The point that I have made before is that you can't pop part of a balloon.  If you blow a balloon up nice and big, then stick a pin in it, the whole thing blows out.  You don't just lose part of it.  In the same way, what Dr. Luther did was to poke a hole into one particular part of church teaching; the sale of indulgences.  What that did was to pop the whole thing.  He did so by nailing the theses to the balloon of church teaching, understanding that these people worshiped God with their lips, but their hearts were far from him. This wasn't really about the sale of indulgences, though it first appeared to be, rather it was about where the church gets its teachings and authority from.

In the Gospel reading, we heard from Jesus saying to those who were around him that if they would continue in his word, they would know the truth, and the truth would set them free.  Now, they fought him on that one, refusing to just say that his word was truth.  Instead, they fought him, pushed back, insisted that they didn't have to follow his word, and that, you know, their own rules were probably just as important as the word of God.  That happens so fast, and so regularly, that we almost don't even notice anymore.  Think of who it was who opposed Jesus the harshest, and realize that it was the Pharisees, the chief priests, the scribes and the teachers of the law.  In other words, the people who should have known the word of God the best. If you skip ahead to those who opposed Dr. Luther the most, it wasn't the Turks, you know . It was the Catholic church of the day, the Bishops, the Pope, the curates who all had the scriptures, and who all in theory should have known better.  Which they did not.  They did what people tend to do, which is to worship God with their lips, but to have their hearts far from him.  They value the traditions of men instead of the laws of God.  This is why the Jews in the New Testament opposed Christ, who is God in flesh.  They did so because Jesus was leading them back to the old morality, the old morality that didn't change ever.  But they kicked against him.  Do you remember the time where he made mud and placed it on the blind man's eyes?  He was immediately targeted by the Pharisees for having not kept the sabbath.  What did Jesus do to break the Sabbath?  Like a rogue, he combined solid and liquid ingredients which is very much not allowed according to the Mishna, which is the oral law.  And once you start having oral laws, you can have the position that although you follow God and his commands, well, you can only understand them through the lens of human rules which all of a sudden override the word of God.  Things like how on the sabbath you can't combine solid and liquid ingredients, or pluck a strawberry.  You can't pick up your bed and walk, you can't start or extinguish a fire.   

And you can't get married as a priest.  And you can't read the Bible in your own language.  

Stop me if you've heard this one, but this seems a lot like history repeating itself.  When Dr. Martin went to the Wittenberg Castle Church, it wasn't to start a new branch of the faith, or even to inaugurate the reformation.  But he essentially had to, because his position was going to lead there anyway.  His position of saying that the faith of the church had to follow what Jesus says in John 8, that we have to continue in the word to know the truth, and the truth will set us free.  But that isn't new.  It's old.  But our desire to veer away from it comes up every 500 years, you know.  You're on the same cycle you've always been on.  There are reasons why there are dozens of denominations out there who all claim some modicum of spiritual truth, but who say vastly different things. How is that possible? Some consult the word, others do not.  That's how they veered away from the truth 200 years ago, 500 years ago, and today.  But the injunction of Jesus stands.  If you continue in his word, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.