The Festival of the Reformation 2024

October 27, 2024

I met a man in Mansfeld last week. He’s an old man. He lived through the horrors of the national socialists and the second world war. And then the communists devastated the former East Germany. He was happy to meet some “Old Lutherans” from America. That’s what we in the Missouri Synod are known as in Germany: Old Lutherans. The ones that hold the traditional teachings.

He recounted what happened to the “Confessing Church” in Mansfeld. The “Confessing Church” rejected so-called German Christianity. The “German Christians” turned the church into an arm of the state. A portrait of the Führer was put on church altars, and baptisms were performed in the name of the Führer and of the Volk and of the Land. In Mansfeld, their pastor was imprisoned, and died from the sickness and starvation suffered in prison.

Monument in Torgau; inscription reads, “Here on the Elbe on April 25, 1945 the forces of the First Ukrainian Front of the Red Army linked up with American forces”

But the arrival of the Russians did not bring liberation. You could not belong to the Church and to the Communist Party. You had to choose. You know what they chose. Thirty-four years after German reunification, the church hasn’t recovered. Perhaps ten percent of Germany identifies as Christian. In the cradle of the Reformation, Christianity is gone.

Luther himself said this would happen:

Let us remember our former misery, and the darkness in which we dwelt. Germany, I am sure, has never before heard so much of God’s Word as it is hearing today; certainly we read nothing of it in history. If we let it just slip by without thanks and honor, I fear we shall suffer a still more dreadful darkness and plague. O my beloved Germans, buy while the market is at your door; gather in the harvest while there is sunshine and fair weather; make use of God’s grace and Word while it is there! For you should know that God’s Word and grace is like a passing shower of rain which does not return where it has once been. It has been with the Jews, but when it’s gone, it’s gone, and now they have nothing. Paul brought it to the Greeks; but again when it’s gone, it’s gone, and now they have the Turk. Rome and the Latins also had it; but when it’s gone, it’s gone, and now they have the pope. And you Germans need not think that you will have it forever, for ingratitude and contempt will not make it stay. Therefore, seize it and hold it fast, whoever can; for lazy hands are bound to have a lean year. [LW 45, p352]

The history in Europe is of church decline through tyrannical governments.

But the church in America has declined with only mild hostility from the state. What has caused the decline here? Americans view church membership with less loyalty than a gym, supermarket, or airline preference. Convenience and amenities triumph over doctrine. The politics of the community matter more than the confession of faith. In the middle ages, backs were whipped in penance, and we call it darkness. Today votes are whipped, and we call it democracy. This is not reformation.

We cannot celebrate the Reformation today without acknowledging the need for reformation in our own congregation, and for each of us to confess the need for reformation in his own life. What is the reformation we need? Four words leap from today’s Gospel reading: Word, Disciple, Truth, and Sin.

“Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.” Where is sin holding you captive? What thoughts enslave you? What grudges and resentments gnaw at you? What harmful actions do you keep repeating? Have they assumed control over you? You need reformation. We need reformation. We need repentance.

The true, catholic Reformation was never rebellion. It was founded in repentance. What kicked it off, on October 31, 1517, in the first of Dr. Luther’s Ninety-five Theses, was a call to the church to repent: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ He willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”

Repentance and reformation can only happen when Truth matters to us more than anything. Truth is more important than winning an argument, winning an election, getting our way, or obtaining our comfort.

Where is the Truth found? Today’s Gospel tells us: the Truth is in the Words of Jesus. We take home the Word from Church and bring it to car, kitchen, bedroom, boardroom. That Word gives us hope in tribulation and guidance in difficulty in every place we go.

Pulpit, Evangelische Kirchengemeinde, Torgau, Germany

In the Middle Ages, Bibles were rare, in a language unknown to the common man, and often literally chained to a desk in a library. Now the Bible is unchained, available to anyone with a few taps on a black rectangle - but is reading it treated as treasure, or chore?

“If you abide in My Word, you are My disciples indeed.” A disciple is disciplined. The greatest complaint of Reformation-era pastors is that once the people had liberty, they chose licentiousness. Is it better in our day? No. We too need a reformation in discipline.

We need a reformation in repentance; we need a reformation in the place of the Word in our daily life; we need a reformation in discipline. Such a reformation is not bondage. It is true freedom.

For Christ our Lord sets you free. Dear friends, your sins are forgiven. You are free. The Reformation lives wherever two or three gather in repentance around the Word.

The Lutheran Reformation still speaks to us who live in a different time on a different continent speaking a different language. For the sixteenth-century reformers simply dusted off and proclaimed anew what we heard in Romans today: “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.”

You are a sinner, it’s true. But the Reformation message is not that by reforming your life, you’ll be saved. The Reformation message says, “Repent and look to your crucified Jesus. In Him is justification, in Him is righteousness. It’s free, it’s a gift, more valuable than all the things you’ve been wasting your time and worrying over.“

The Reformation we need is right in front of us. Reformation happens now as the Jesus who justifies you joins Himself to you in His body and blood. Reformation keeps on happening as your life is shaped by this eucharist. So rejoice and be glad. The reformation is not dead, but lives on. Jesus is still Lord of the Church, and your Lord. He forgives you, He is reforming you, even transforming you, “your soul into righteousness, your body into immortality.” Let us cling to Christ and His Word, and pray today for reformation and renewal among us. +INJ+