Sermon Archive

Reformation Sunday—the last Sunday in October, the day we set our clocks back and also take our minds back to the sixteenth century and the origins of Protestant Christianity. For it was on October 31, 1517, that an Augustinian friar and university professor named Martin Luther posted on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany, his ninety-five theses questioning various teachings and practices of the pope. The chain of events following this act led in 1521 to Luther’s being excommunicated by Pope Leo X andshortly thereafter to the Reformation that saw Western Christianity split into Protestants and Catholics.

Two of the main branches of Protestant Christianity that developed in the sixteenth century were the Evangelical churches of Germany and Scandinavia, for whom Luther was the spiritual ancestor, and the Reformed churches of Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, and Scotland, for whom the French lawyer and theologian John Calvin, based in Geneva, Switzerland, was the spiritual ancestor.

Beginning in the seventeenth century, large numbers of Protestants started to emigrate to this continent, many of them in search of religious freedom. As a result, virtually all of the Protestant groups in Europe took root here as well.

Our own denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), was founded by Scots of the Reformed tradition, who traced their spiritual lineage back to a Scottish follower of Calvin named John Knox. So our denomination began as a group of Scottish immigrants, many coming by way of Ireland. But over time we’ve expanded to include the full racial and ethnic diversity of our nation. The most recent congregations to become part of the Presbytery of New York City are composed of second-generation Koreans and immigrants from Ghana. And eight other immigrant congregations are planning to join us over the next several years—parishioners whose ethnic roots lie in Taiwan, Thailand, Pakistan, India, Congo, Colombia, and several other Latin American nations.

But let’s return to the 16th century. One of the issues at the heart of the debates between Protestant and Catholic theologians was this: What roles do salvation and good works play relative to each other? Does good works play some role in qualifying us for salvation? That is, does God welcome us into the company of the saints at least in part because of our record of good deeds? Or is salvation given to us not because we deserve it but only because God is merciful? And are we then, after having been saved, better able to do good works because God is at work within us? That is, does God’s gracious embrace of us somehow change us so that we can now more regularly choose the good?

Actually, debate on this topic has been going on ever since the days of Jesus himself, as we can see in today’s gospel lesson from Luke.

Here Jesus tells a parable in which he contrasts two men. One is a Pharisee, a member of a group revered by other Jews, for Pharisees were laymen who avidly studied the teachings of God and actively practiced an intense form of religious piety. The other man in the story is a tax collector, a member of a group despised by other Jews, for tax-collectors served Rome, the occupying power, and severely abused their own people, the Jews. They extorted from the populace as much money and as many goods as possible, resorting often to brutal means.

In Jesus’s parable, the Pharisee prays to God with confidence, convinced that his good works of fasting and tithing and praying have earned him the right to stand in God’s presence as one who is worthy.

But the tax collector prays to God with great remorse, mindful that his many sins warrant God’s condemnation and that he is able to stand in God’s presence only as one who’s in need of great mercy.

Yet, as Jesus tells it, it is the man of wicked deeds and not the man of pious deeds who goes home that day saved, or “justified.” For in Jesus’s understanding, everyone—tax collector and Pharisee alike—sins and falls short of God’s expectations, and no one can stand worthy in God’s presence save by the gift of God’s grace. But the Pharisee, who is contemptuous of other people’s behavior, is blind to his own need for God’s mercy. He has enough religion to be virtuous but not enough to be humble—with the result that his love of God has curved back on itself, producing in him an idolatry of self-love.

In summary, Jesus conveys through this parable these teachings: first, a person can stand in God’s presence as one who’s worthy only by God’s grace, and not by one’s record of good works; and second, God’s grace will be received and accepted only by persons who acknowledge their need of it.

“But,” you may be saying, “if it was the man of wicked deeds who went home justified, and not the man of righteous deeds, then why should anyone heed God’s commandments and do good works? Of what use is it to say the words of this morning’s 1st Lesson?

‘Oh [God], how I love your law!
It is my meditation all day long.…
I hold back my feet from every evil way,
in order to keep your word.’”

The teaching of the Reformed Christian churchesis stated clearly, I believe, by the apostle Paul and his followers in the first century and again by John Calvin in the sixteenth century. The teaching of the Reformed Christian Churches is this: good works are not the basis for salvation, for salvation comes to us as an unmerited gift from God, a gift that we are called upon to accept by faith. And as we by faith accept the gift of God’s mercy, the Holy Spirit begins to work within us, empowering us to mature in our faith and to produce as the fruit of our faith more and more works of love. And this is the importance of our works of love: they become another means by which God’s love is extended to others.

To introduce you to the theological language that lies at the heart of the Reformation, the gift of God’s grace that saves us from sin and restores us to God’s favor is called “justification,” and the gift of God’s transforming Spirit that lifts us from the way of sin and sets us on the way of God is called “sanctification.”

In today’s lesson from the Second Letter to Timothy, we learn that when by faith in Christ we accept the gift of God’s salvation and are justified by God, the Holy Spirit uses the inspired words of Scripture to help sanctify us—that is, to correct our wrong deeds, to write on our hearts the will of God, and to train us in right living, thereby equipping us for every good work.

Yes, one of the ways in which the Holy Spirit works to sanctify us is to transform our lives through repeated encounters with the inspired words of Scripture, the words of God’s torah, God’s teaching, God’s commandments—those teachings about which Psalm 119:103 says,

“How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!”

It was our own spiritual ancestor, the reformer John Calvin, who taught that for those in whose hearts, by God’s grace, the Spirit flourishes, for those whom God has justified and is now at work sanctifying, the commandments of God serve as a spur and a stimulus that encourage us to conform ourselves to God and God’s ways by following the path that Calvin calls “self-denial.”

Self-denial is not the path of personal pride, the path of the man in Jesus’s parable who prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.”

Nor is it the path of “self-denial” the path of national pride, the path of many of us Americans who pray, whether consciously or unconsciously, “God, we thank you that we are not like other peoples: poor, illiterate, duped by propaganda, unpersuaded by our values.”

No, the path of sanctification that Calvin calls “self-denial” is the path of the tax collector who in humility confessed himself a sinner and then—at least in my imagination—went home to practice love.

You see, although Luke doesn’t say so explicitly, I’ve always believed that Luke intended for this parable in Chapter 18 about a penitent tax collector to find its fulfillment in the narrative Luke gives us in Chapter 19, the narrative about a specific tax collector named Zacchaeus, whose life is turned around 180° by God, whose life, after he meets Jesus, gets “equipped for every good work.” The story of Zacchaeus is the gospel reading for next Sunday.

Now, a question that’s still haunting the minds of many New Yorkers who escaped death on September 11th is this one: “Why is it that others died on that day, but not me?” Survivor's guilt, if you will.

Quite candidly, I have no answer for that question.

But there is something that I want to suggest to all those who’re wondering, “Why did I not die?” And that something is this.

It will be much better for us to shift our focus away from that question and onto a different question. Instead of asking, “Why not me,” which is really unanswerable, it will be more helpful for us to ask, “Since it wasn’t me, why am I still alive? What does God want me to be doing?” And that’s a question for which I know there is an answer.

I believe that what all of us who are still alive need to be doing is this: We need to stand before God and acknowledge that we have sinned and strayed from God’s ways. We need to trust that God is a God of grace, who forgives us, who bids us now, having been justified through Christ, to stand tall and worthy and humble. And then we need to open ourselves to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, encountered in prayer, in the sacraments, and in Scripture, so that God can equip us for every good work, so that, with God’s help, our lives, from hereon out, may count for love and may bring the reality of God’s grace and love into the lives of many others.

Although we Americans from hereon out will experience a greater vulnerability to evil than most of us have heretofore known, if we trust that we are saved for all eternity in God’s loving embrace and if we trust that the Holy Spirit is at work in us, equipping us for every good work of love, then in the face of evil we will neither hunker down in fear nor lash out in anger.

Rather, in the face of evil we will stand tall and humble, free from fear and certain that neither death, nor evil powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38–39).

And free from all fear, we can then live our lives at risk, finding ways to invest ourselves in the well-being of all those around us, finding ways to love even our enemies.

It is the will of God that, sinners though we be, we should all be justified, we should all experience the joy and freedom of salvation, which comes to us as a gift from God and can be accepted by us through faith in Christ.

And it is also the will of God that, redeemed sinners though we be, we should all be sanctified, we should all be freed from fear and opened to love by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, so that God may equip us for every good work of love.

This is the heart of our Reformation faith. Thanks be to God!

Let us pray: