October 29, 2017 (Reformation Sunday) – Matthew 22:34-46
Matthew 22:34-46
Re-formed and Re-forming
Reformation Sunday – Lectionary 30A – October 29, 2017
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Love God. Love Your Neighbour.
Friends, that is why we are here.
It might be Reformation Sunday, but that is why we are here.
It might be the 500th Anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation,
but that is nevertheless why we are here.
To love God and love our neighbour.
Every single Sunday, every single day, that is our purpose: to love God, and love our neighbour.
I would say that 500 years ago, when Luther began the reformation of the church,
his sole purpose was to cultivate a love of God and a love of neighbour.
The church needed to be re-formed so that it could love God and love neighbour better.
And it always needs to be.
500 years ago, it needed to be.
Luther found he could not love the God that he and so many believed in.
An all-powerful God of anger and wrath who judged his (yes, “his”) children
harshly for their sins and who would punish them for it.
People feared this God – Luther feared this God – and could not love this God.
Who could?
But through his study of the Bible and his focus on Jesus,
Luther came to see that our God is above all a God of love.
A God who loves us unconditionally through no merit of our own.
A God who loves to forgive, whose pleasure is loving us so that we might become more loving.
This was so different a God than what he had been taught and had grown up with.
But the thing is: many people today still feel tortured by – and believe in – this all-powerful
judging God.
A God who punishes us by doing things to us that cause us to suffer.
As a pastor, I hear many who wonder: why is God doing this to me?
What have I done to deserve this from God?
Why doesn’t God stop all the suffering?
That God is the God Luther believed in as a young man – this is the God Luther couldn’t love –
and this is the God Luther came to see doesn’t exist.
Luther looked to Jesus to give us the fullest, most complete revelation of God.
And in Jesus we see a God who is not all-powerful, and who doesn’t cause suffering.
Rather, we see a God who suffers the violence of the world – and loves anyway.
A God who suffers the violence of the world – and forgives, hoping for a change of heart.
Here we see a God who joins God’s self to the suffering.
Here we see a God who is very closely identified with the poor.
In Matthew we will hear Christ say at the end of time: when you fed the hungry,
clothed the naked, and gave the thirsty a drink, you were doing these things to me.
As Luther wrote, “God says, ‘I do not choose to come to you in my majesty . . . but in the guise of a poor beggar asking for bread.’” (Harvesting Martin Luther’s Reflections on Theology, Ethics, and the Church, p. 136)
This God, the God who suffers with us, this God who forgives rather than condemns,
this is a God Luther could love.
And so Luther set out to re-form people’s ideas of who God is,
so God could be loved for who God is, the God most fully known in Jesus of Nazareth.
And then too, following directly from this, Luther sought to re-form
the church’s purpose and identity.
The church exists for the welfare of people in the world.
The purpose of the church is not to get or secure a place for its members in heaven:
God’s promise in baptism is that we are beloved children and God will never let us go.
Our relationship with God is secure: live in that promise!
In a strange way, salvation is at the beginning of our relationship with God rather than at the end.
And so, said Luther, rather than looking inward and worrying about the status of
your relationship with God, who is all love and compassion,
look outward to your neighbour in need.
Look to your neighbour, and see Jesus there.
For when you love your neighbour, you love God.
Look to your neighbour and look to your neighbour’s needs.
Care for them, not in order to do good works to get into heaven.
But care for them simply because they are human beings in need of care.
That is how you best love this loving God.
In response to the question this morning about which is the greatest commandment,
Jesus says, “Love God.”
But then he adds right away, “A second is like it.”
Only what he says is more akin to, “A second is exactly the same as it: love your neighbour.”
In Jesus’ mind, these are exactly the same thing:
loving God and loving your neighbour are exactly the same thing.
In First John we will hear the writer say it this way:
you cannot say you love God while hating or not caring for your neighbour.
And so Luther set out to re-form the way the church of his day cared for the poor.
Luther said it was the responsibility of Christians to care for the vulnerable.
To that end he put in place measures by which the suffering of the vulnerable could be alleviated.
In his own church he instituted the Common Chest, where people brought offerings of
money and food – these were placed before the altar during worship and
then taken by members after worship and distributed to the hungry.
This is why we at First Lutheran also have a common chest –
your gifts of money and food come in, are placed before the altar and
dedicated to a Godly purpose, and then taken out into the community for
the welfare of our neighbours.
It is God’s love flowing through you for the love of neighbour.
And so Luther sought to re-form what the church is for.
It is not an institution for getting into heaven.
It is a movement for the welfare of creation.
The purpose of the church is to participate in God’s mission to love, bless, heal, feed and
set free this whole world and every person in it.
And when you were baptized, you were baptized into this mission.
When you were baptized, you became a priest, a minister of this God.
That is your purpose as a church, as a community of priests.
To love God by loving your neighbour.
That is why we are here:
to receive love, and to give love expressed in actions that
benefit human and environmental well-being.
To be a community of priests who love God by loving our neighbours,
whether that neighbour is sitting in the pew next to you,
whether that neighbour is a resident of the West End,
whether that neighbour is a family member or a stranger,
a person at work or a person at school.
Our purpose is to figure out ways of being blessing,
to figure out ways of actually being good news to and for those around us.
to figure out ways of being the Gospel as a community that has been filled with
the Spirit of Christ.
Our purpose is to continually re-form ourselves so that we might be better and better at
being good news in word and deed to those around us.
This re-formation – this Reformation – will never end.
It will never be perfect, for we can always love God by loving our neighbour better.
I have some hesitation in bringing out the trumpets for this 500th anniversary of the Reformation.
I have nothing but respect and admiration for Luther and the other reformers.
But here’s the thing: Luther did his best in his time and place and he did some amazing things –
But make no mistake, he was also a very flawed human being.
Nevertheless, he did his best to re-form the church into the Good News it was meant to be.
But now, he’s dead. And he’s passed the torch to us.
There is no merit in simply belonging to this church that was re-formed 500 years ago.
The legacy of the Reformation is that we must continually re-form ourselves and
our understanding of who we are and what we’re for and how we can be Good News
in this time and in this place at Sargent and Victor in Winnipeg Manitoba in 2017.
The Good News is that God will never stop loving us, so God’s love will never stop
being able to flow through us for the welfare of our community.
As Luther wrote long ago in words that we need so dearly to hang onto today:
From Christ the good things have flowed and are flowing into us. . . . From us they flow on to those who have need of them. . . .” (ibid, p. 137)
Reformation is all about re-forming ourselves as a church so that this might happen.
So that more of Christ’s good things – love, healing, inclusion, forgiveness, food, compassion,
Solidarity – in a word, grace – so that more of Christ’s good things can flow through us
to one another and to all in any need.
To love God by loving our neighbour better and better and better.
This is what re-formation – Reformation – is all about.
So let’s keep doing it! We have been doing it and we have been doing it well.
It’s what we are called to do and it is what we have done.
Through food banks, through community meals, through Christmas hampers, through hats for the homeless, through free kids summer drop ins, through refugee sponsorships and through unconditional welcome – in all these ways and many others God’s grace is flowing through you into the world.
You have been re-formed and are continuing to re-form that you might
better and better love God by loving our neighbour.
So together, with Luther and all the reformers of the church, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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