Adoption Papers
On October 31st, 1517 Martin Luther brought his hammer and nail with him to church. The front door of the castle church in Wittenberg also served as a community bulletin board. Luther hammered up 95 good reasons why the Pope in Rome should not raise money by selling indulgences to the poor people of Germany. There was a notorious religious huckster running around town claiming to set souls free from eternal damnation, but only if their friends and relatives chipped into the offering plate. The salesman promised, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul into heaven springs." Luther wrote his 95 Thesis in Latin, because he was trying to start an academic debate, not rile up the masses. Luther never intended to split up the One, Holy, Apostolic, Catholic Church, but sometimes the truth is even more important than unity. No one gets to buy their way into heaven.
Today is Reformation Sunday, the day we grieve the splintering of Christ’s Church that began when Martin Luther started hammering away on the Wittenberg Door. But mostly, Reformation Sunday is a day of celebration. Today we celebrate that the Good News of Jesus Christ will ultimately triumph over any attempt to domesticate it, marginalize it or contradict it. Today we celebrate that the Church really can change for the better. Today we celebrate the core of Christianity that was recovered in the Reformation: only by grace through faith are we saved.
Fifteen hundred years before Martin Luther spoke up, Jesus taught his followers that if they wanted to be free that they had to totally depend upon the grace of God. His words were about as popular as Martin Luther’s 95 Thesis’ were in Rome. These followers of Jesus placed their confidence elsewhere. They trusted in their own righteousness. They trusted in their religious pedigree. They certainly weren’t pleased to hear that we are saved by grace alone! But grace is the only way we will ever know the truth, and grace is the only way we will ever be set free. Hear the Good News.
John 8:32-36
31 Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ 33They answered him, ‘We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, “You will be made free”?’ 34 Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. 35The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. 36So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
Jesus was sitting down at the Mount of Olives and his followers gathered around him to hear what he said. Before he was done with his lesson plan, Jesus’ students told him that he was a half-breed and demon-possessed. They even chided Jesus that he was an illegitimate child! Then they picked up stones and tried to kill him! Most of us had at least one teacher we didn’t like so much, but what in the world could Jesus have said that would cause his own followers to turn on him like that? Jesus taught that we are saved by grace alone.
The Jewish people were proud of their special identity. Unlike most people conquered by the Roman Empire, the Jews maintained remarkable religious liberty. Eleazer the Priest boasted, “Long ago we determined to be slaves to neither the Romans nor anybody else!” It’s a beautiful sentiment, but not really substantiated by reality. The Jews endured Roman occupation, just as they had put up with Egyptian slavery and the Babylonian captivity. For most of its history Judea was just a pawn on the world chessboard, constantly being pushed back and forth by the great empires of the world. But because they held onto their religion, the Jews refused to believe that they were anyone’s slaves. Freedom was a part of their cultural identity, and the crowds got testy when Jesus challenged them on it.
What offended the crowd was Jesus’ line, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” Because they were Children of Abraham the Jews believed that freedom already was their special inheritance; a treasure passed down from generation to generation. Jesus wasn’t very impressed by their claims. Elsewhere Jesus had taught that Children of Abraham can go to hell[1], or that Children of Abraham can spring up from stones[2] or that Children of Abraham can start out as foreigners and strangers.[3] It was not the Jewish heritage of religious independence that was the true treasure of Israel. Their greatest heritage was God’s truth. And anyone could be set free by that very same truth…if only they believed.
This is Good News to anyone who can receive it: that we are justified neither by our bloodlines nor our religious heritage; that we are right with God neither by circumcision nor our diet; that we are saved neither by our hard work nor our good behavior. All you have to do is accept the truth that God loves you, and the truth will set you free. Anyone can become a “Child of Abraham” if they simply believe in God. All the religious orphans of the world are welcome into God’s family, if they only accept the grace that Jesus offers.
The key to receiving the grace of God is seeing yourself as an orphan. No one has a special claim on the love of God. You can’t inherit faith the way you inherit green eyes, dimpled chins or male pattern baldness. It’s always a choice to become a Child of Abraham. But this was offensive to Jesus’ students because they thought they were already covered by their long and painful history which set them apart from the rest of the world. Just imagine a natural born-child being told that if they wanted to continue to belong to the family they would have to fill out some adoption papers. Let’s acknowledge that this was hurtful talk! But the only way that grace can work for anybody, is if it has to work for everybody. We all have to see ourselves as orphans in need of a home.
Years before Martin Luther rattled the Christian world by banging on the church doors in Wittenberg, he was a simple monk. Even after as he took his oath of celibacy and hid away from the fallen world Luther was consumed with his own sin. There were days when young Martin would spend six fitful hours racking his brain, trying to remember all the ways he had sinned the day before. No matter how he tried to purge himself of sin, Luther despaired that he would ever be worthy to serve God. He writes:
Although I lived a blameless life as a monk, I felt that I was a sinner with an uneasy conscience before God. I could not believe that I pleased him with my works. Far from loving the Righteous God who punished sinners, I actually loathed him. I was a good monk, and kept my order so strictly that if ever a monk could get into heaven by monastic discipline, I was that monk. All my companions in the monastery would confirm this….And yet my conscience would not give me certainty, but I always doubted and said, “You didn’t do that right. You weren’t contrite enough. You left that out of your confession.”
Luther had reached a dead end with God. After all that good work, instead of loving God, Luther hated God. Not because he was a prodigal son, but because he was the obedient son that stayed home and did everything that was ever asked of him. No matter what he did, Luther’s best efforts could never be enough to satisfy the Almighty. As the story of Luther reminds us, even the best among us remain slaves to sin until we are adopted by grace. None of us can free ourselves by having the right heritage, or by praying without ceasing, or by doing all the right things. We are all spiritual orphans, prodigal sons and daughters, cut adrift by sin, and in need of a Heavenly Father to adopt us as his very own. And that is the promise of today’s scripture, that by grace we are no longer slaves. We have become children of God.
Earlier in the service we celebrated the baptism of Maguire Andrew Shelby Kingsley. Today, Maguire is not capable of making his own choices. Of sure, he might cry in hunger or cry to be changed, but he’s not crying out because he feels guilty before an Almighty God. Nevertheless, we welcomed young Maguire forward for the sacrament of Baptism. This too is grace. In the waters of baptism we celebrate that the curse of sin drowns in the tidal wave of God’s love. Maguire has a loving Mother and a loving Father, but today we celebrate that God is beckoning him into his loving family as well. One day Maguire will have to choose for himself if he wants to accept adoption into the family of God. We all have to make that choice for ourselves.
On February 18, 1546, the day Martin Luther died, they found a slip of abandoned paper in his pocket. Luther’s dying words were therefore written, not spoken. The last line on the Luther’s last slip of paper reads “We are all beggars.” The concluding statement of Luther’s life is that none of us can make it on our own. We all need Jesus to be our salvation.
With apologies to Martin Luther, I want to tweak his final words to conclude my sermon. “We are all orphans.” None of us has earned the love of God. Not your religious heritage, not your good works, not your great knowledge, nor the sum of your accomplishments will save you. We are all salves of sin, orphans in need of adoption. Like young Maguire, we all come to the Father needy and wholly unprepared for the magnitude of God’s grace. And yet, the adoption paperwork is all filled out, ready for you to sign on the dotted line. Can you accept that you are an orphan in need of adoption? If you can, trust in God to be your loving, adoptive Father by grace alone.
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