Sunday, October 26, 2025

Oct 26

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Psalm 46

Romans 3:19-28

John 8:31-36

This is Reformation Sunday when we step away from the regularly appointed scripture readings from the lectionary and celebrate the huge impact of Martin Luther and the other church leaders who stepped forward to hold the church accountable in the 16th Century.

The Reformation was in part about Luther’s insistence of faith over works - though works are important too. It was a time when the church struggled to determine what we stand for, what is real to us about the Bible, the life and teachings of Jesus and the doctrine of what to do in response to our connection with the Holy Spirit.

Luther made many points about this but we mostly remember that he taught that justification is not earned by any human acts or intents or merit; justification is received only as the free gift of God's grace through the believer's faith in Jesus Christ.

Luther relied on scripture for this argument. Luther considered this passage from the third chapter of Romans to be a central text for understanding salvation. You should look back over that after. This passage establishes the doctrine of justification by faith alone, apart from works of the law.

This is the foundation of Lutheranism. And it turned the world upside down.

But the Reformation is actually not, as I have said, something to be celebrated. It was a time of great division, bloodshed and strife. So, I have struggled this week on how to lead us, in these few moments, to wrap our minds around celebrating the good changes that the reformers of the 16th Century made while reminding us that we still fall into division and bloodshed and strife in our time. And we are all complicit.

When I graduated from Virginia High School, I was a part of a small circle of friends. Well, I was fortunate enough to be a part of several different groups of friends. But this one special group of friends was half and half - half of us were VA High students and the other half went to Battle High School.

In a recent article from Brene’ Brown, I was reminded about the joys of friendship. Friends, she says, stand with us and validate us when times are tough. Friends give us the space to practice vulnerability.” She also said that “friends show up to cheer for you when you are on the stage receiving accolades for some success or recognition.”

This brought a memory to my mind which made me smile. My Battle friends showed up for the graduation ceremony of the VA High half of our little circle. There was an inside joke going on with us - and we all know adolescents love inside jokes. This one was about the word “Wahoo” and no, it wasn’t about the University of Virginia cheer, it was about the fish.

There is a large game fish called a wahoo which is said to be one of the fastest fish in the ocean. One of the Battle kid’s father had caught a wahoo on a deep sea fishing trip. Her dad was really proud of that fish and not only mounted it over his mantle, he named his property after it. I think this may have been an inside joke among the adults in her family but we tried to hijack it. We started jokingly yelling “wahoo” at each other and we named our little circle of friends the “wahoo club.” There was no sense to this club except to yell “wahoo” at each other. So, my friends from that other high school sat on the back bleachers that night at the stadium and yelled, oh so loudly, “wahoo!” when one of the three or four other members of this not-really-a-club club crossed the stage to receive our diplomas.

Needless to say, my mother was mortified.

It was rude to all those gathered. It was embarrassing for those taking the formality of this old tradition, usually met with solemnity. Worst of all, most people there probably thought those who got the wahoo cheer had been accepted to and were headed to the University of Virginia. None of us in this small group had been accepted into UVA.

Worst of all, it was a real downer to my friends of other circles who were in fact headed to Charlottesville that Fall but did not receive this cheer at graduation nor did they understand the disruption.

This is what we do though, isn’t it? We join our small tribe and live in our little bubble and we rudely yell out our inside jokes ignoring the world around us. I guess you can give a small group of teenagers a break when they act that way. They’ll grow out of it. But what about adults?

That is not what Luther did. He did not challenge Pope Leo X to impress his friends or keep an inside joke. Oh, he yelled out. In his way, he yelled out to the entire church from what must have been a very lonely place. And in return, he was excommunicated and condemned an outlaw. And this was not resolved for him before his death in 1546.

What we need to celebrate is not the battle of the Reformation won, but that the reformers carried the mantle forward until protestantism was born. Luther left the Church with much to consider as the work continued to reevaluate who we are as the Church, what it means to be a Christian, how best to follow Jesus.

Luther taught that we need to pay attention to the Word of God and move back from the path the Church had gotten on at the time which overvalues law. Luther taught that we need to come together and start over and put our trust in the Lord. It is not about works and law, it’s about faith. It is not about the authority of men, it is about the authority of scripture.

And it was good. We needed this turning. And the counter-reformation eventually followed leaving the Catholic Church in much agreement. We tend to forget that part.

So, I’m not so worried about the Church on this Reformation Sunday. But I am worried about the fact that the divisions of our time are so very similar to the divisions of the 16th Century.

This passage from the Gospel of John is set in a confusing and strife filled part of the gospel story. It is a very short passage taken out of a larger debate. Jesus is debating certain Jews who are united in their opposition to Rome but are tribal about their loyalty as “descendants of Abraham.”

So Jesus offered a very succinct bit of wisdom in the middle of the mess here. He says, “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

This truth and freedom for which we still long is also still available to us in the new way of being, the new truth and freedom of following Jesus.

I found the words about this passage from the scholar of the week quite interesting. He said, “This passage, touching on truth and freedom, is as politically and religiously fraught as modern debates today, and the passage as a whole has all the vitriol of a social media flame war. (And) It culminates in an attempt to kill Jesus.” He also says that “this text and conflicted debate is an apt selection for Reformation Sunday, as it speaks directly and forcefully to the need for ongoing reformation—indeed, transformation—of the peoples of God and descendants of Abraham.”

So in the middle of this mess I am still struggling to find the ‘good news” of the coming of Jesus into our lives as well as the good changes of the Reformation.

And I think that the answer lies quietly in the psalm of the day. Because today we also have in our lectionary readings the lovely Psalm 46. This is my personal favorite bit of scripture and I often turn to it for comfort and guidance.

Let’s turn to it now as an answer to all of this pondering.

Twenty-four years ago, I had a powerful encounter with Psalm 46 which has stayed deeply with me in my own spiritual journey. This was clearly an experience with the Holy Spirit for those of us present that day.

I had been asked to lead an adult forum at the Methodist church down the street from the church I was serving in South Georgia. The leader of that little Methodist group, which was an adult Sunday School class of about a dozen middle aged couples, had sent me a curriculum they were using which had some scripture to read and outlined ways to lead a discussion on a theme. I can’t remember what that was all about. I prepared thoroughly and showed up on time. But what I found, instead of the slap happy Methodists I was expecting, was a dozen or more folks who were withdrawn and ragged looking.

You see this otherwise random Sunday took place on Sept 16, 2001.

So, just a few days after the World Trade Center and other attacks the previous Tuesday, this small group of Jesus followers were trying to show up and do church.

We were all still in shock. So I threw out the curriculum and asked those gathered to pull chairs into a circle and we just shared for the time allotted. Then, when it felt time to close, I reached randomly for some Word of God to guide us and what fell open before me, from the curriculum for that day, was Psalm 46.

I had mostly ignored this little gem in my preparations. But, I just read it.

And I read it straight through as we did a few minutes ago in this Sunday gathering. But I remember that reading differently. This is how I remember hearing this bit of Scripture in that moment twenty-four years ago.

The same verses, but in a different arrangement. I didn’t read it this way then. But I have remembered it this way ever since.