Reformation Sunday 2019

Matthew 11:12-19

October 27, 2019

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

“He who has ears, let him hear.”  Whenever our Lord speaks these words, it is to reveal important truths and so we ought to sit up and pay attention. In the case of the Gospel reading for today, His words strike the conscience of Christendom like a hammer on this anniversary service of the day, when 502 years ago, Luther’s hammer struck on the doors of the Christian church.  It is a hammer blow that is still echoing throughout the world.

On this Reformation day, we do not merely look back to long-gone years of the Lutheran Church. Our celebration of the Reformation isn’t about what happened 500 years ago as much as what happened 2000 years ago.  This Gospel reading takes us back to the good old days, the greatest days in the world, when the Kingdom of Heaven broke into this world in the person of Jesus, God in the flesh. All the law and prophets of old up to John had been preparing for that very moment. And then John the Baptist, the greatest of all men born of women, proclaimed this coming kingdom and the king who had arrived. 

God has come in a way to reign that will not look right to normal human perception. Of course, there is power in the reign of Christ, but it power for those who repent and believe, not power to overthrow violent men.  Make no mistake, there is violence when it comes to the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom suffers violence, Jesus says. The Old Testament prophets knew this all too well.  Being a prophet in the Old Testament times was not for people pleasers.  Christ Himself suffered a gruesome death upon the cross.  11 of the 12 disciples died a martyr’s death. Countless Christians in the early church were martyred. Luther had a death sentence upon his head for speaking against the evil of indulgences, of buying and selling forgiveness. Christianity today is still the most persecuted religion in the world.   

But the real violence, the most dangerous violence, is that done to the Word.  It is the violence done to Christian’s soul when it is starved of the pure Gospel.  When false prophets, antichrists, and liars twist God’s Word into something different. There’s good reason that Jesus warns against those who will come in His name but who have not been sent by Him, nor represent Him, nor speak His Word. don’t usually think about differences in doctrine to be that big of deal, but it is.  This isn’t some attempt to say I’m right and you’re wrong, or to win an argument, or to say Lutheranism is better than everything else, but it has everything to do with proclaiming Jesus. For violence done to the Word is violence done to He who is the Word of God in the flesh. 

And that is really the very heart of the matter, and the heart of the Reformation, isn’t it?  It’s not about Luther, nor the sound of the hammer on the church door in Wittenberg. It’s about Jesus crucified for the forgiveness of your sins.  The One who takes the violence of all the sin in the world, and the very wrath of God, upon Himself.  It’s about the Gospel. It’s about people hearing and believing the Word of God, and that people are justified in the sight of God for Jesus’s sake. It is that good news that your sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, and where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.

Thus the Reformation as we know it was started by Martin Luther, who was attempting to reform the Catholic Church back to what the Apostles and early church Fathers understood and taught from Holy Scripture.  And so the Reformation teaching of, and insistence upon, salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone is not a history lesson. It is a contemporary issue. It is your life today in Jesus. Your life is a reformation, a re-forming of your heart, mind, and body in the image of God. It is a life lived in light of the Gospel of Christ, that the Lord Himself has violently broken into this world, suffered violence against Himself, and drives you out of the wilderness of your sins and into the kingdom of God as heirs of the heavenly Father.  It is a life marked by repentance over your sin, faith in Christ and in His forgiveness, and the new life lived with the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

The purpose of the Reformation is to thank and praise God for the blessings He gives. The kingdom of heaven has not departed, for the King still lives and reigns with the Father and Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  This is the message of the everlasting Gospel announced by the angel in the Revelation to St. John. And this good news does violence to the kingdom of Satan. The King of kings and Lord of lords has invaded this world that He might shed His blood and destroy the work of the devil and your sinful heart. He snatches people right out the jaws of hell, where your sins would land you, just as we saw today in the baptism of these two young men.

He who has ears, let him hear.  For faith comes by hearing, hearing the word of Christ. And the Word of Christ is this: that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.  He is the propitiation, the atoning sacrificed. He is just and the justifier of all who believe in Him.  For His sake, your sins are forgiven. We celebrate the Reformation in a spirit of grateful humility that God still allows His good news of forgiveness to be preached to us and heard, and we ask that He would preserve His Church on earth for the sake of Christ so that many more might hear the pure doctrine that God forgives sinners all by grace through faith in Jesus, all while praying that He keep us in the same.