Reformation: How to Get into the "Good Place."

Sermon 10-28-18 Reformation Sunday

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

501 years ago, on a church door in Wittenburg, Germany, a monk named Marin Luther hammered 95 complaints about institutional religion… and changed the world forever. At least, that’s what we tend to say about Reformation Sunday every… single… year… “Martin Luther changed the world,” “Martin Luther reformed the Christian Church,” “Martin Luther this…” “Martin Luther that…” 501 years later, though… it just might be time to say: what does the Reformation really matter to us NOW? Why should we care about something that happened on another continent, before there was even wifi? 

I mean besides the fact that our denomination happens to be named after the guy… which, by the way, was intended as an insult, and Luther hated it that we are now identified as “Lutherans.”

There are some ways that the Reformation has added to our world for the worse… some of Luther’s writings were used as an excuse for religious wars all over Europe in the centuries that followed. And Hitler cited Luther’s anti-Semitic writings as inspiration for the treatment of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany. The ELCA has made a clear statement that rejects these writings, but it does not erase the damage that has been done, and the damage that continues to occur, as evidenced by the events of yesterday at the synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Did the Reformation do any Good? Sure. Thanks to Luther, we can read the Bible and experience worship in a language we understand. Thanks to Luther, we have choices about what denomination we want to be a part of – for better or for worse. Thanks to Luther, we believe that everyone has a calling and can serve God in any aspect of their lives. And we no longer belong to a system where we have to earn our way into eternal life – either through money or through doing good things.

That last statement, though, is a hard one to shake off. One pastor colleague recently shared an experience she had while teaching confirmation. She asked her class, “how do you know you will get into heaven?” One of her students responded – “because I am a good person.”

Luther would have been aghast at this response, as this pastor was. But we really should not be so surprised… everyone around us tells us that if we are just good ENOUGH…we’re fine.

In fact, there is an entire Netflix show that explores this… it’s called The Good Place. This show, the “good place” and the “bad place” exists, and at the end of your life, a point system determines which place you go. For example, things like:

-         Installed solar panels gets you +1994.49 points

-         Every time you sing to a child: +0.69 points

-         Gave out full-size candy bars at Halloween: +633.59 points

Conversely:

-         Buy a trashy magazine will set you back: -0.75

-         One incident of sexual harassment is: -731.26

-         Poison a river: -4015.55

But not just anyone gets into the “Good Place” - only the very best people, with the highest point values in the POSITIVE get in. Not just the Good Enough. EVERYONE ELSE gets a one-way ticket on the train to “The Bad Place.” Now, this is all hypothetical of course, and exists purely with the fiction of the show. But it DOES make you wonder, doesn’t it?

What if my pastor friend asked YOU the question, “How do you know that you’re going to heaven?” How would you answer?

I feel like most days I am a pretty good person… I don’t steal, I don’t murder, I don’t bear false witness, I don’t mistreat my parents. I use my blinker in traffic, I pay my taxes, I donate my time and money to charity, I post on Facebook about injustices happening around the world. I must be doing ok… right?

Except that I’m really not. I’m not a good person… I actively participate in an economy that enslaves people in other countries in making my clothes, shoes, and electronics, and grow and harvest my food. I have benefited from systems that privileges my skin color over others. I have not spoken up and fought for the human rights of others even as my government has actively tried to make certain types of “unacceptable” people disappear or at least like them away and separate them from their families. If such a point system actually existed, this is a lot of “negative points” …. More negative points than I could ever earn back through being a good person in other ways.

Thanks to Luther, we also know that we are still in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves by any amount of “good point values,” but that is not the END of the story.

And yet… also thanks to Luther… I believe that I do have a place in “The Good Place” … Why? because – Jesus! Jesus frees me from worrying about being Good Enough and trying to earn God’s love. Through my baptism, God has chosen me as God’s beloved child, loved and given a place in this Family of Faith forever. The GOOD THING for US is that we do not need to worry about raking up points to get into THIS Good Place, and this is the Wild Idea that Luther latched on to, and idea that changed the course of history and sparked the Reformation. Jesus frees us. We can’t do it. That’s it. End of story.

In our confession, sometimes we say – “we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.” In martin Luther’s time, sin was a hot topic, but now we Lutherans at least don’t talk about it much. A hint can be found in our baptismal liturgy.  Right before we say the Apostles Creed, we renounce – or turn our backs on - the devil, the forces that defy God, the powers of this world that rebel against God, and the ways of sin that draws us from God.” In a nutshell, our understanding of sin is basically anything that draws us from God.

Anything? Anything…. Anything that draw us from God.

Even too much of a good thing. Even the good works that Jesus DOES call us to do – spoiler alert, Luther also says “God doesn’t need your good works… but your neighbor does!” So, if SOME Good Works for our neighbor is good… then doing TONS of good works should make us EXTRA awesome disciples Right? God loves schedules that are fuller and busier, right?

The people of God have become so good at cluttering up the Gospel, and that’s why we needed the reformation. The first one being when Jesus arrived on the scene. The Pharisees cluttered the good news by thinking that God required purity and preached too many rules to follow to be loved by God. And this is not the truth.

Martin Luther’s time needed a reformation because the religious leaders cluttered the good news by thinking that a person could pay to get into The Good Place, and so preached “when a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.” And this is not the truth.

WE, right now, need a reformation because we clutter the good news by thinking that God requires busyness to prove our faith, and so preach that a good Christian is a tired Christian, and a vibrant church is a busy church. And this is still not the truth.

The truth is, we don’t have to be GOOD ENOUGH… we ARE ENOUGH.

The truth is, the reformation is not over, because the church tends to drift off course after a while. But where there is confession, there is always forgiveness, there is always time to start anew. In fact, Luther reminds us that we are raised with Christ as a new person EVERY SINGLE DAY. The good news is that God is always reforming us, God is always reforming God’s church. Our God is a reforming God and will continued to be faithful in THIS reformation, starting right now. Thanks be to God. Amen.