“The Festival of the Reformation is at once a day of Christmas and of Easter and of Pentecost, in our Church year; a day of birth, a day of resurrection, a day of the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.” So writes Charles Porterfield Krauth, an American Lutheran who lived around the same time as C.F.W. Walther, who fought for the Lutheran church in America to remain faithful to the Lutheran Confessions and not to go astray in this new land.

Krauth’s aim is to stress the importance of the message of the Reformation, and that we keep the Gospel message alive by continuing to celebrate Reformation Sunday in remembrance of the work of the reformers. I agree with Krauth, but I think I’d use a slightly different analogy for us. Reformation Day is probably better equated, for us Americans at least, to our own civil celebration of Independence Day — the 4th of July. That day is a celebration of our release and freedom from political tyranny. And especially on Reformation Day we rejoice and celebrate that we are free. Humanity has been set free by God’s wonderful work for us in Jesus Christ, our savior from Sin.

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Back in the Garden of Eden, mankind was free. Adam and Eve were made by God in His image, they were given dominion over the fish of the sea and the bird of the air and over every thing that moves upon the land and creeps upon the earth. Every tree in the Garden was given to them for food, with one exception.

What happened to that freedom? Satan tempted, and the woman took from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – the one exception – and ate. And she gave it to the man and he ate. And their eyes were opened, and they knew good and evil. They tried to make things right. They covered themselves up. They hid. They tried to self-justify.

God freed them, right then and there. He promised the Messiah, right then and there. Adam and Eve passed on that promise. Then Noah came along, and all the world was wicked and opposed to the Lord, and He was grieved. He preserved believing Noah and his family, eight souls in all, through the flood. They came out of the ark on dry ground and God preserved their freedom, right then and there, promising never again to destroy all life by a flood. He gave the rainbow as a sign of His favor and the freedom that we have in Him and His promises.

He freed Israel from their bondage and slavery. He brought them through the Red Sea on dry ground and drowned hard-hearted Pharaoh and all his host in the waters. Right then and there, God freed His people, promising them that He was their God and they were His people.

This is God’s ongoing action for all of mankind: He sets us free. Not because of our own doing, but as a gracious and loving gift.

This is what Jesus is talking about in our Gospel reading: ”If the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Jesus, the Son of God, is sent by the Father to free us from sin and from sin’s bondage. The long-ago-promised, long-hoped-for seed of the woman came and was bruised for our transgressions and pierced for our iniquities. By His stripes we are healed, by His blood we are washed clean, by His death we are set free from our slavery to sin, by His paying our sin-debt we are ransomed from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God. Christ Jesus does this for the whole world, for all mankind. Jesus sets the world free in His death and resurrection.

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It’s far easier to acknowledge that the whole world needs Jesus, than to confess that you yourself need Jesus. We must not be like those Jews who were believing in Jesus, who are then scandalized by His promise to set them free and say to Him, ”We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone.” After all, Jesus says, ”everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.”

Think about it: when you are caught in a transgression, what’s your first instinct, what are you first moved to do? To play it down? To justify yourself? To dismiss it? Do you take more pleasure in acknowledging others’ sins and others’ need for Jesus, instead of confessing your sin and your need for Jesus? I imagine it comes and goes; probably depends on the day. But the fact that it comes and goes is enough to convict you and me. In our sin we are slaves; we need to be liberated, set free.

So do you see that you need Jesus? Do you see that you need the true freedom that Jesus gives you? You will not free yourself by justifying what you think, say, and do. You will not be free by breaking your own chains. Only in the blood and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ will you be free indeed.

The Reformation was and still is about making this saving truth crystal clear: Christ’s death is all-sufficient to make you not guilty in God’s sight; the guilt of your sin was laid on Jesus and His righteousness is given to you, a blessed exchange.

This is the freedom that Luther longed for: he was burdened by his sins, tormented in his conscience by them. He could not find certainty of salvation in himself or in what he did. But He found freedom – “rediscovered” freedom – in the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified for the sins of the world, whose righteousness is given to us as a free gift by a loving and merciful God.

Do you long for freedom? Freedom from the command to be better, to do more? Freedom from your conscience which is burdened with every thing that you’ve done or have left undone? Freedom from the harassment of the devil, who wants nothing more than again to enslave you and drag you into hell and eternal separation from God?

The true and only freedom is found in Jesus Christ. Jesus says, ”If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Paul writes, ”For 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…”

Jesus has set you free on His cross. God put Jesus on the cross to shed his blood, as a propitiation–an atoning sacrifice–for your sins. Christ’s life given there on Calvary pays the ransom to free you forever from your wretched master, Sin.

Jesus has set you free in the font. Jesus baptized you, bringing you with Him into His grave and into His resurrection. ”For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Sons remain in the house forever. And that’s what you are now: sons, heirs according to promise. You will dwell in the house of the Lord forever as free and righteous children.

Jesus sets you free here, now, today. Even as you find yourself enslaved again, hear the words which are the very heart and soul of the Christian Church and the thing which matters most about the Reformation; the words that are the chief thing which we celebrate today and forever.

”Christ Jesus is the one who died–more than that, who was raised–who is at the right hand of God.” And He has called me here to this place as His man to announce to you that, In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus has set you free.

+INJ+

Note: A beloved 14-year-old member of the congregation, +Adam Mitchell Clack+, died suddenly in his sleep earlier in the week.

The author, playwright, and Christian, Dorothy Sayers, wrote in 1939 an essay entitled “Strong Meat” (the title from some words in the King James translation of Hebrews 5) which contains a somewhat tongue-in-cheek catechism-like set of questions and answers. Sayers writes the question, “What is the doctrine of the Trinity?” And her answer? “The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the whole thing incomprehensible.”

Though intended as hyperbole, Sayers nails down the reality of God: incomprehensible. I suppose she’s in some way paraphrasing what St. Paul writes about God in Holy Scripture: ”Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”

And this week we are confronted with just how deep, just how inscrutable, just how much beyond us our Lord truly is. The Lord says, ”my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

When we face death – the death of whomever, but especially a death of someone young like Adam that is so sudden and unexpected – then the inscrutableness, the not-our-thoughts-and-not-our-ways-ness of the Lord is right here in front of us, unavoidable, demanding us to pay attention to it. We can’t escape it. God is God, we are His creatures and subject to Him and His will; and that can be a terrifying and mournful – even infuriating! – place to be.

But God does not leave us without comfort. He does not leave us stuck insofar as His thoughts and ways are higher than ours. He reveals Himself to us in the Scriptures and tells us what we need to know; He gives to us what we need to receive.

He comforts us with these things which will truly comfort us, because they deliver to us His Holy Spirit, the Comforter; because they give to us peace and joy, even amidst our mourning and weeping; because they fill our ears, eyes, hearts, and bodies with Jesus Christ our Lord. Jesus, who has conquered death; Jesus, who has won the victory; Jesus, who has taken our sins upon Himself and paid for every last one of them with His holy precious blood and by His innocent suffering and death.

We need this comfort. We cannot live without this comfort. And so there are two places we’re going to go for Christ’s comfort this morning. We’re going to go to two of the places where Christ gives to us His forgiveness which He won for us on the cross. These are tangible, real, physical places with tangible, real, physical things that God uses to give us forgiveness and life. God gives to us the comfort of knowing that He loves us and He has accomplished all the work of saving us from death and from our sins.

First we’re going to look to the Baptismal Font for comfort. Jesus tells Nicodemus that ”unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Of course, this means that one enters the kingdom of God through the new birth of water and the Spirit. Jesus is talking about Holy Baptism.

What else does God promise us about Holy Baptism? Christ teaches us that ”Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved…” As we heard last week in Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, in Holy Baptism you receive ”the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Elsewhere our Lord promises you through Peter that ”Baptism now saves you”; that Baptism is ”an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Paul assures us about the comforting gift of Holy Baptism in Romans chapter 6. We’ll hear this again and talk about it again tomorrow, but we need to hear it today, too: ”Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

The giving into death of Jesus and the belief in Jesus and the life in Jesus is all given to you in your baptism. Behold how God loves you and reveals His mysteries to you there. ”For God loved the world in this way” – and have no doubt, that you are included when Jesus says “the world.” ”For God loved the world in this way, that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that all who believe in him would not perish but have eternal life.”

The second place at which we will seek God’s comfort today is here at His altar and at the rail where we receive from Him the Sacrament of the Altar; or another name for it is the Holy Communion.

Here at the Altar, Christ gives us His Body and Blood. His true Body and Blood, the real thing, the same which hung on the cross of Calvary, laid in the tomb, and was raised on the Third Day.

Jesus wants us to eat and drink – he wants us to receive His flesh and blood – because with this meal comes His gift of the forgiveness of your sins. Again, just like in Holy Baptism, Christ gives to you the forgiveness of your sins. He promises this: ”Take, eat; this is my Body which is given for you. This do in remembrance of me. Drink of it, all of you. This cup is the new testament in my blood which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.”

In the Divine Service the Pastor, after speaking Christ’s words, then adds the promise and blessing, ”The peace of the Lord be with you always.” That’s because these holy things of God – the Body and Blood of Christ – are taken from the altar and touched to your lips in order to make you clean. You are able to confidently stand in God’s presence, able to assuredly know that when the Lord calls you to Himself you will go with no debt, no transgressions, no corruption, but instead you are ransomed, righteous, and holy. You are no longer God’s enemy, no longer opposed to Him. Instead, God is reconciled to you through Jesus, and that reconciliation is given to you in the Body and Blood of Christ.

Now the forgiveness is comforting enough, but there’s more than just forgiveness in the Sacrament of the Altar. Especially now, when we mourn and grieve the loss of one member from our presence; this is when we need the other comforting part of this Sacrament: it’s what we’re describing when we talk about it as Holy Communion.

When we eat and drink the Body and Blood of Christ, we are made one with Jesus. And just as while you and I eat we are made one with Jesus, we also are made one with one another and with the whole Christian Church on earth…and with all the believers in heaven. This is why the Pastor prays in the Proper Preface ”with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven…”

We are joined into the entire timeless majesty of the eternal worship of Christ when we come to the Altar and feast on the Lord’s Supper. And we do it alongside one another who are here and alongside everyone who has died in Christ and now rests from their labors, waiting for the resurrection of the body on the Last Day.

So come to this altar today and be united with one another, and also with Adam, Wilma, Kenne, Irma, Jimmy, John, Charles, Woody, Tom, Peg, Eugene, George, Isaac, Elijah, Bobby, Pastor Martin, James, Elizabeth… When you come to eat and drink today you come and share in the everlasting feast of victory with all believers in Christ.

What comfort our Lord has for us today:

”He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.”

“Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

Thanks be to God in the name of Christ Jesus our Lord. He loves the world. He loves you.

+INJ+

Today is the day when we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation. Or at least, the 500th anniversary of when Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on indulgences at the Castle Church in Wittenberg; maybe he nailed to the door, maybe he glued them. Luther also mailed a copy of those 95 Theses to Bishop Albert of Brandenburg, which history shows is truly the action that got the attention of the Roman Catholic leadership, and then of course everything else happened that happened.

It’s all fine and good to remember this, and even to celebrate a bit, but the temptation is to put all our attention on Luther and take our eyes off of Jesus. And that is a betrayal of what the Reformation was all about. When we lose sight of Jesus – when we spend all our time talking about, celebrating, rejoicing in, feeling triumphant about everything but Jesus Christ crucified for the forgiveness of the sin of the world – then we cease to be Christians and we’re as guilty as the medieval Roman Catholic church that Luther spent much of his lifetime correcting.

Now I’m not seeking to be a grouchy-pants about all this. I love history, I love Luther, I love our Lutheran theology. I hope you do, too; Or as long as God grants that you have to put up with me, that you’ll spend that time growing to love history and Luther and Lutheran theology just as much as me, if not more. Nevertheless, I want this day to be just as much a sabbath for you as any other, and that means we must make use of God’s Word today, which makes this day and your life and even your very heart holy and perfect in God’s sight. Luther’s concern, and mine, is that we remain focused on the Word of God which reveals to us, give to us, brings to us, faith and trust in our Lord Jesus Christ. We’d be wrong if today was all about Luther. We’re likewise wrong when any day is about something other than Jesus Christ setting us free from our sins so that we are holy before God by grace through faith in Christ, and therefore free to serve our neighbor in love.

Which, of course, is precisely what Jesus is teaching us in today’s Gospel reading. ”Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin,” Jesus says. He’s talking about you. You sin. Therefore you are a slave to sin. It must be noted that this doesn’t just mean that you sin merely by accident, or unknowingly, or out of weakness. You sin by design, too. Your conscience tries to speak up and say “No, don’t do it,” and yet you do it anyway. Full knowledge, on purpose, repeatedly.

Your new man speaks in your conscience and in your mind to stop gossiping or that what you’re saying isn’t exactly true and it’s going to hurt someone, and then we notice how everyone really is interested in what we’re saying or is finally paying attention to us and so we think, “why not?” And out it comes, out of our mouths, those words which murder the reputations of our neighbors.

Or you’re on your computer and a racy ad comes up and suddenly your new man is warning your sinful flesh to look away, don’t click, don’t search for those images, and yet that familiar rush has come over you and you remember how exciting it will be, even for a few minutes, and you go ahead and do it.

This isn’t accidental. Perhaps the initial temptation was accidental, but then your sinful, corrupted will figured out that you can just do this and then ask for forgiveness again and Jesus will give it, because He’s always willing to forgive. The Pastor will stand up here again on Sunday and announce to you that your sin is forgiven again. And of course it really is.

The fact is, if you are ruled by sin, if you can’t help yourself, then you don’t have fellowship with Christ. ”Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.” That’s the harsh truth that Luther faced. He saw that his sin kept working at him, that he’d give in, that he’d slip up and be right back in the muck and mire again. And again. And again.

And that sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Isn’t that how it goes for you. It goes that way for me. Paul writes in Romans 7, ”For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” See, you are the latest in a long line whose conscience is guided by the forgiveness of your sins and the will of God which on the one hand you want to keep and yet…here you find yourself sinning again, falling back into that bondage and slavery. Paul sees it in himself and he cries out to God, ”Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death!”

The thing to celebrate about the Reformation is that Luther rediscovered, and he and his fellow workers reintroduced through writing, preaching, and teaching, the emancipating fact that Jesus doesn’t leave you in your bondage to sin. Jesus doesn’t leave you despairing that you’re lost forever. Jesus doesn’t leave you thinking that you have to make amends with God.

Jesus says, ”If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Paul writes, ”For 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…”

Jesus has set you free on His cross. There, God put him forward to shed his blood, as a propitiation–an atoning sacrifice–for your sins. Christ’s life given there on Calvary pays the ransom to free you forever from your wretched master, Sin.

Jesus has set you free in the font. Jesus baptized you, bringing you with Him into His grave and into His resurrection. ”For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” Sons remain in the house forever. And that’s what you are now: sons, heirs according to promise. Your dwelling place is not in death but is instead in life, with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in eternity.

Jesus sets you free here, now. Even as you again find yourself enslaved again, hear these words which are the very heart of soul of the Christian Church and the things which matters most about the Reformation, the chief thing which we celebrate today and forever: ”Christ Jesus is the one who died–more than that, who was raised–who is at the right hand of God.” And He has called me here to this place as His man to announce to you that, In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. You are free.

+INJ+