Messiah Lutheran Church, Auburn WA
By Gregory S. Kaurin, pastor
September 27, 2009
Texts: Psalms 19:7-14; James 5:13-20
Evangelizing Lutherans
Many of you know Garrison Keillor from the Lake Wobegon series and Prairie Home Companion on National Public Radio. On Saturday, December 6 of 2003 he described Lutheran Air. Have any of you taken a Lutheran Air flight? “Lutheran Air, the no-frills airline—you're all in the same boat on Lutheran Air… There is no First Class on any Lutheran Air flight. Meals are potluck. Rows 1-6, bring rolls, 7-15 bring a salad, 16-21 a main dish, and 22-30 a dessert. Basses and tenors please sit in the rear of the aircraft. …All fares are by freewill offering and the plane will not land until the budget is met. And now your flight attendant Britta will acquaint you with the safety system aboard this Lutheran Air 599-----
“SS: Okay then. Listen up, I'm only gonna say this once. In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, I am frankly going to be real surprised and so will Captain Olson because we fly right at around 2000 feet, …and I wouldn't bother with these little masks on the rubber tubes, you're gonna have bigger things to worry about than that. Just stuff those back up in their little holes. Probably the masks fell out because of turbulence which, to be honest with you, we're going to have quite a bit of it at 2000 feet, sort of like driving across a plowed field, but after awhile you get used to it. …The use of cellphones on the plane is strictly forbidden, not because they may interfere with the plane's navigational system—which is seat of the pants all the way—no, it's because cellphones are a pain in the wazoo and if God meant you to use a cellphone, He would've put your mouth on the side of your head. We're going to start lunch right about noon and it's buffet style and the coffee pot is up front and then we'll have the hymn sing—hymnals in the seat pocket in front of you, and don't take yours with you when you go or I am going to be real upset and I am not kidding, and right now I'll say grace: God is great and God is good, and we thank Him for the Food, Father Son and Holy Ghost, May we land in New York or at least pretty close. Amen.” (click to hear/view full script.)
Oh, dem Lutherans. I love Garrison Keillor, and I love laughing a little over our assumed Lutheran heritage, but I think we sometimes miss a bit of the satirical edge in Garrison’s humor. He uses the characters in his small-town, Scandinavian-American Lutheranism in a way that suggests that the town folk know little else. His satire carries a lot of truth about some of our communities, but it also ironically points to the fact that Lutheranism—the message, experience and people—is a lot wider than Lake Wobegon.
There are almost 70 million Lutherans worldwide. Of that, the United States has more than 7 and half million Lutherans, more than 10%, which seems like quite a few, but the continent of Africa has just over 17 million Lutherans and is growing.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has 4.7 million Lutherans, but that is just above the 4.6 million in Tanzania and just after the 4.8 million Lutherans in Ethiopia. Granted, the population of Asia is huge, so it may be less surprising that there are 8.4 million Asian Lutherans. If it ever was homogenous, which I doubt, Lutheranism has a much different face now. (click for stats)
And we lose track of what it means to call something or someone Lutheran… which is not just a heritage, not an ethnicity or culture, not a style of music, or liturgy. It is something much simpler and more important than that. It is what we believe saves us, how we are saved, what it took and what it takes. We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Much of the rest, is gray matter.
Last week, we began this series on what it means to be called the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Some might wonder about the timing of this series from a political standpoint, but we are speaking, not about the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as an institution, but as description and mission. What does it mean to be evangelical, Lutheran, a Church and in America?
Last week, Pastor Jon talked about what it means to be Evangelical. In clear examples and experiences, he showed that “evangelism” is not about debating theology or present convincing arguments. Evangelism, he said, is simply relaying what you’ve seen and heard, where you’ve seen and heard Jesus Christ.
How we’ve seen him in others… That is probably what set Martin Luther off, and his part in the Reformation. He started to see Jesus, not in the Church as an institution—but in the people that the church had been abusing. The church had back-tracked into the old covenant, demanding sacrifices, sacrificial actions and giving, trying to sell and earn what God was giving for free. Teaching them to think that this was how to get saved, how to earn God’s good graces and love.
Let’s watch this two-minute clip from the recent movie titled, Luther. In this clip, you’ll see Luther visiting Rome as a young priest in 1510 purchasing an indulgence and climbing the 28 Lateran steps on his knees with the other pilgrims. These steps are still there in Rome, except that they’re narrower and enclosed. They were believed to the same steps Pontius Pilate climbed to wash his hands of Christ’s crucifixion. Then, in the 4th Century they miraculously transported from Jerusalem to Rome. Others say Constantine’s mother had them shipped over. The church was telling folks that, by making a sacrificial gift and praying the Lord’s Prayer on each step, they could spring a relative from purgatory to heaven. You can find this described in Heiko Oberman’s 1982 biography of Martin Luther. Let’s watch this…
[Show 00:11.02 – 00:13.17 from Luther, the movie.]
In his own writing Luther said he got to the top and though “who knows” what that did. Oberman in his biography wrote that a skepticism overtook Luther, feeling that “God would not let himself be pinned down this way.” Can you see how, if it feels that they had your very soul in their hands, your eternal life, how you could become enslaved to the church, trying to save yourselves?
But don’t think for a second that this has changed. There are still plenty of so-called Reformed churches selling salvation, selling a relationship with God. Selling products, vials of water, modern-day relics and books promising you both salvation and the good life while you’re here, if… if… you will buy this, or follow this precise interpretation, process, or belief system… or at least avoid all those other [liberal] ideologies. God did allow himself to be nailed to the cross, but God will not let himself be pinned down again by re-instating the old covenant.
We have salvation by grace. Though faith. In Jesus. The disciples finally saw Jesus when they finally connected the dots to simple belief. From Paul something like scales—systems, and blinding rules—fell from his eyes, and then he believed and was immediately baptized before he took another step or knew a blessed ‘nother thing about Christianity. Even for him, a persecutor or murderer of the Church, salvation was by grace.
I’ve taken this walk with you before: The law can be summarized in this: we are to love God? With everything we have and are. We are to love the neighbor? As ourselves. Paul says it’s the eternal key, “I can do all things, but if I have not love, I have?” Nothing. James, the writer of our epistle calls it the “perfect law”: to love. But if I am doing that, if I’m trying to love and obey God, sacrificing to and worshiping him, or loving my neighbor, all in order to get my salvation or to try to earn his good graces, then whom am I really loving and worshiping? Myself. That makes it impossible. I can’t put God first when I feel like I’ve got to save myself, or if I don’t trust that Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection was really enough, for me. Salvation and forgiveness needs to be done by God.
That does not make salvation and grace cheap. No, not cheap, it cost God his Son, his dignity, body and life. But it is free, freely given to you. Since salvation and a relationship with God is already given to you, now can you love God? Yes. Your not trying to get anything from him. Can you love your neighbor? Yes.
All of this points, not just to some debt we might owe to God, but the effectiveness of what he did. In the old covenant, if a lamb might get you forgiveness for a specific sin or for a day, what about the mortal and immortal blood of God? It’s enough! That is why we are free from the bondage of sin. We sin, but we trust Christ’s declaration was enough to forgive all our sin. We are freed from death, because we trust God at his word that, simply by trusting Jesus, we will rise again …eternally.
Freedom! We are freed to be the kind of people God always intended since the beginning. We are not freed to do whatever the heck we want, except that if we really hear, believe and trust what we’ve just heard, then what will we want to do? What God wants. Our peace in God will produce fruits of peace, joy, and generosity. From there, we will seek and compare notes, strive, and even argue and debate with each other, because we really want to do the best, be the best kind of disciples we can, not to get or prove our salvation, but because we’re saved.
I depend on a grace that overwhelms all of my deeds and misdeeds, intelligence and lack of it. That means, a kind of humility about the rest of the denominations, and Christians at the least. One of the hallmarks of Lutheranism is our ability to worship and work beside others that I might disagree with completely on even important issues. I have enough humility to know that even on very important issues of Biblical interpretation and authority, I just might be wrong. Lutherans are not gray, as some try to claim. We have simply decided, based on the Bible, what is not gray, and that is: we are 1. saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Having been saved, now we are called to: 2. love God and 3. love the neighbor. By Jesus’ own statements, all is interpreted and seen through those three Biblical truths.
When I get to heaven—since it depends on God’ grace—I expect that I will and all of us will be surprised by what and whom we see there! And that’s why I love being a pastor, evangelizing Lutherans. I actually believe all this stuff I preach especially to people who have heard it their entire lives but need it to keep sinking in, how much God loves them, what God did for them.
And it does sink in. That is why we can have the kind of community James was talking about in his letter, a community that prays for each other, and seeks reconciliation. For the most part we’re pretty good at that, being a congregational family, to the point of weakness. At some times, in some places or groups, we can come across as a bit exclusive, intentionally or not.
Our other great strength, that, God forgive me, I am very proud of the outreach and world relationship that Lutherans uphold: here at Messiah, our weekly Food Bank, and our Community Supper, which—starting today at 2PM—will also be every week; in the national church: from chaplains and pastors in the military, hospitals and Lutheran Campus ministries to the incredibly effective work that is done by all the Lutherans churches who come together for Lutheran Disaster and Lutheran World Relief, which is ranked among the best, and above even the better known relief organizations. We are generous that way because we are a generally grateful people. We know we are already saved.
But there is this next step, or the first in our name, being evangelical, evangelizing on an individual, personal level. We tend to be shy, to leave people’s relationship with God as private. We imagine evangelism to be something it’s not because we’ve seen and experiences bad examples. But we have a basic message that people need to know, people that you work with, go to school with, live next to or meet at the coffee shop.
God loves them. Through Christ, he died for them. Though moments and events, he still shows them his love, asking them to come home, come home.
The door is called salvation. The lock is God’s grace. The key is simple faith in him. Go ahead and walk through that door again; I’m just asking you to grab a couple hands along the way. Amen.
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