In the sixteenth century, a German man named Martin Luther was about to be ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church and to celebrate his first mass. Like many of us facing major turning points in our lives, he was anxious; in fact, he was terrified. He was scared because he was not sure that he was righteous enough to say mass. He was afraid that there was some sin in him that might make the mass invalid, and might endanger his very soul. It’s a kind of thinking that doesn’t necessarily resonate with our understanding of these things today, and part of the reason for that shift in understanding is Martin Luther himself.
Later, as he studied the scriptures, Martin was struck by a verse in the letter to the Romans that reads much like one from the letter to the Ephesians we hear this morning. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God–not the result of works, so that no one may boast. This assertion struck him like a bolt of lightning. In a flash, the deep fear he felt at the time of his ordination and continued to struggle with as his ministry unfolded was transformed by the revelation that everything is a gift. With all the fervor of the newly enlightened, he set about trying to reform the Church, to restore the free and unmerited grace of God to its rightful place. He wanted to reform the bureaucracy of grace in the church which often seemed to emphasize works over faith…even to the point of selling indulgences, a kind of coupon to pay off some of our debt to God for the sins we’ve committed. He fought hard against the ledger mentality which had infected the faith and practice of the Church.
But the Roman Catholic Church, like the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church and the Baptist Church…like all religious institutions that often seem more interested in self-preservation than faithfulness, proved very resistant to reform. And the Lutheran Church came to be in response to that resistance. Martin Luther helped all of us recover and reclaim the wonder of the grace of God. He helped us connect with God the gift-giver in new and life-giving ways.
You know, in spite of Martin’s best efforts human beings still cling to works as the way to make it through this life and toward the life to come. We continue to believe that if we want something, we somehow have to earn it. So we try to earn the love of family and friends, to earn the respect of neighbors and co-workers, to earn the gratitude of others for the contributions we make. And the flip side of these efforts is that we sometimes we even distrust what we don’t feel we have properly earned. You know what I mean. When someone makes a kind remark or offers a compliment we wonder, “What’s he up to?” When we are presented with a generous gift, we get suspicious and wonder, “What does she want from me?” You and I really tend to distrust that which we do not earn, that which we do not feel we deserve.
The pertinent verse in the letter to the Ephesians we heard a few minutes ago reads: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. It is the gift of God. There is nothing we can do to earn it. There is nothing we can do to deserve it. And yet we keep on trying, don’t we? The message of the culture continues to drown out the promise, the assurance of the gospel and all of scripture that everything good in this life is God’s freely given gift. All those commandments we recite as we gather on Sunday mornings during the season of Lent, and which we try to observe with varying degrees of success and failure, are not and were never meant to be efforts to earn God’s love or forgiveness. They’re simply meant to be responses, grateful responses to the gift of life and the second and third…the infinite number of chances to get life right by thoroughly loving God and one another.
Do you remember years back now when the hot political topic was welfare reform? One of the terms coined in that effort was that we try to move people from welfare to workfare. What it meant was that financial and other kinds of aid from the government to help with the basic necessities of life are intended to be temporary assistance toward self-sufficiency not a lifetime entitlement to support from the taxpayers. Welfare to workfare. It occurs to me that one of the ways you and I might understand the radical place of God’s grace in our lives is to admit that we have a tendency to place our trust in workfare, in our own efforts to secure our place with God. But truth be told, every one of us on welfare, divine welfare. Love, forgiveness, peace, our daily bread, community, life…and death, and faith itself are God’s unfailing gifts.
Martin Luther came to this revelation four centuries ago in a way that profoundly changed his own life and eventually changed the church…including the Roman Catholic Church. I have a sneaking suspicion that each of us need to experience that same revelation, some of us over and over again. To know in our gut what we often all too lightly confess with our lips is a gift worth asking of God, and one that God yearns to give us when we’re open to receiving it.