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BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Show all posts
09 April 2026
A week from hell calls for Christ the excarcerator 9APR26
10 September 2016
A Sermon on Shame and the Bent-Backed Woman 23AUG16
A valuable lesson for all of us on how we treat others and especially ourselves from Rev Nadia Bolz Webber, listen to her sermon by clicking here
A Sermon on Shame and the Bent-Backed Woman
August 23, 2016 by
Click above to listen along. If you can’t see the audio player above, click here to listen to the audio.
If you follow the HBO show Game of Thrones you know that there are a lot of very disturbing and violent things that transpire on the show. But for me, the most disturbing was a scene of public shaming in which a character had her hair shaved off, was stripped naked and made to walk through the streets while people spat on her and chanted shame, shame, shame. It was a perfect external and physical depiction of what every day of Jr. High feels like if you are the fat kid, or the queer boy, or that weird bug-eyed girl.
I myself am not unfamiliar with shame of my physical body – especially as someone who suffered graves disease as a child, which set off a chain reaction of shame that for a very long time distorted my vision of the image of God in myself, something that is always being healed. This week I kept thinking about shame and the bent-backed woman. For in some way, she seems like such an embodiment of shame itself. I thought about how shameful it must have been to not be looked at in the eye, to know only the feet of those around you, to live as half a human. I wonder what bent her back to begin with? Was her injury physical or emotional or was it maybe both as it so often is. The text is silent on these things, but all week as I thought of her I thought of shame. I thought of how shame – often delivered through the words and actions of others within our homes or schools or churches –writes its own words inside us. As though shame writes its own story in our bodies and every stroke of every letter of shame pulls us down until we cannot look others in the eye. I know that so much shame has been created in you and me and many others through religion, by those who would use God’s holy name to shame us and others, but using Lord’s name to shame is is truly to use the Lord’s name in vain. Because shame does not originate from God. Shame is actually the great deceiver. And as I’ve said before I have no problem saying that I believe shame is demonic.
And it has been since the very beginning.
Like, Garden of Eden, very beginning.
See, thinking of shame embodied in the bent woman made me think of Adam and Eve and that very moment when shame was first introduced to humans and our human bodies.
Because in the beginning, in the Garden of Eden we were free and unashamed and lived in harmony with God and God’s love (you know, for like, 20 minutes…). Until deceived by the serpent into thinking that yeah, to be in harmony with God and God’s love is pretty cool, but what would be REALLY cool is to be LIKE God – which means to have the knowledge of good and evil. We were deceived into choosing knowledge of good and evil over love and inevitably, and with that came shame. Because until they ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve did not feel ashamed of their bodies and they didn’t even think to hide their nakedness…
Yet when they were hiding and God said “where are you?” and they said “we were ashamed of our nakedness and afraid of you and so we hid” and God was like, “wait. Who told you you were naked?”
Well, that would be the deceiver. See, if God says who told you you were naked then obviously the shame they felt didn’t come from God. It came from the serpent.
Because while Adam and Eve had done something wrong, what they felt wasn’t guilt. Guilt didn’t make them hide their nakedness…it was shame – which they didn’t have when they listened only to God. But having listened to a voice other than God’s tell them who they are, shame was able to write its own story in their very bodies – trying to erase the story of love written in them by their creator – replacing it instead with a story of good and bad.
When shame was introduced into Adam and Eve, I imagine them no longer standing up quite as straight. Gone was the un-self conscious poise endowed by their creator. When I picture the introduction of shame, I picture Adam and Eve slouching, hiding, becoming small.
For some reason God allows us to live in a world where alternatives to God’s voice of love exist (for instance, the serpent) and those alternatives to God’s voice of love are where shame originates and there is another term for alternatives to God’s voice and it is that which we call the demonic. Shame is demonic because shame lies about us and our value and our beauty and our worthiness to be loved. Even though it is God herself who created us and gave us value and made us beautiful and did this all in perfect love.
Which finally brings us back to the woman with the bent back.
Jesus sees her. He knows that the shame that binds her is from Satan and not from God. So Jesus again defeats the deceiver. He touches her. And the Greek word isn’t the word for Healed but more like the word for “freed’ or “released from bondage.” That shame which Satan has written inside of her –is scattered as her spine is unfurled by love. She stands up straight, her shoulders back, her chin raised, her eyes available to give and receive light and love and recognition. She stands among them with the full dignity afforded her by her creator. And what was the response of the religious leaders who witnessed this miracle. Was it love? No. It was knowledge of good and evil.
They responded to Jesus by saying that how dare he do the work of healing on the Sabbath and in turn Jesus was like, you want to be ashamed of something – then be ashamed of THAT. Be ashamed of choosing knowledge of good and evil over knowledge of God and God’s love.
Jesus puts to shame: shame itself.
As I thought of all this, I thought that if the body is the place where Satan sews shame then how amazing is it that a human body is also what God chose to take on to be with us?
That God would, as we say, slip into skin and walk among us…choosing to make God’s home in an actual human body – in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
All of this is to say, let’s not forget that the body matters. Your body is holy and beautiful to God. Your young, old, fit, fat, cis, transitioning, queer, disabled, strong body. Because the body may have been where the devil put shame in the very beginning but also it is the body that God will resurrect on the last day. Now, I know that really actually believing in a literal resurrection of the body or even the actual physical resurrection of Christ’s body three days after his burial is not something a lot of liberals tend to confess. It’s intellectually suspicious to admit to believing such fantastical stuff. But the fact is, that the Gospels are almost disturbingly physical in nature. Jesus is born in a barn amongst straw and animals, he was accused of being a glutton and a drunk, he touched people deemed unclean and was flogged and even spat upon.
So given the physical reality of the Gospel, this Christianity thing just has to be more than ideas for your head, it must also be salvation for your body. For after all, it is the human body in which God placed God’s image, the imago dei. I might piss off some of you outdoorsy nature freaks – but God could have chosen to place the imago dei – the image of God in the mountains, but instead she put it in our bodies. Bodies created in the image of their creator. We might experience the awesomeness of God in the mountains…but we see the image of God in the human body in all its perfectly glorious diversity.
I just can’t overstate the significance of this. Because while shame might be demonic and might pull us low with bent back, it is still no match for a God who goes to the cross, takes profound humiliation and insult into his body and responds with only forgiveness and love and then three days later defeats sin, death AND the devil by rising from the dead.
So beloved of God, let us put shame to shame as our Lord taught us. Because we are embodied souls. God slipped into human skin because God saves us in our bodies, not from our bodies. God saves us from the sin of believing our bodies are evil and need to be destroyed, or disciplined, or ignored. We have a body that comes from God. We are part of the larger body of Christ and we are saved through a body on the cross and at the table. The body of Christ broken for us so that we may know God’s love in our own broken bodies.
So as you come today to receive this body and blood of Christ, stand up straight as you are able. Do not be deceived by shame…Stand with the dignity and beauty afforded you by your creator. For you were meant do stand straight.
Amen.
About Nadia Bolz Weber
I am the founding Pastor at House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado. We are an urban liturgical community with a progressive yet deeply rooted theological imagination. Learn more atwww.houseforall.org
10 May 2013
Sermon on mermaids, enemies, and the 23rd Psalm 21APR13
THE week starting 14 APR 13 was a bad week for the nation with the Boston Marathon bombing, and the huge fire and explosion in West, TX, and poison being sent to Pres Obama and other politicians and judges. LISTEN to this sermon from Rev Nadia Bolz-Weber about the week. This sermon is why I love her preaching, because she applies the gospel and lesson to herself as well as the rest of us, because she shares her feelings and failures and victories, and because she always reminds us and herself to hold on to our faith.
Sermon on mermaids, enemies, and the 23rd Psalm
April 22, 2013 By
2013-04-21 NBW Sermon <—-as always, I encourage you to listen along. Especially this week. Just click here. It may take 2 minutes more than just reading it.
Happy Good Shepherd Sunday. It’s not really a festival day of the church, like Christ the King or Transfiguration Sunday are…it’s just that every year, on the 4th Sunday of Easter, the assigned readings are all about Jesus as the Good Shepherd and the Psalm for the day is the 23rd Psalm. About 10 years ago on Good Shepherd Sunday, when our daughter Harper was 4, my husband Matthew was giving the children’s sermon at his church, he had gathered all the little kids around and was going to have them sing that song, “I just wanna be a sheep baa baa baa baa” and he asked the children the leading question: “Ok kids, what do you want to be? And all the kids say “a sheep!” except our daughter Harper, who says “a mermaid!”.
In the spirit of full-disclosure, that is a cute story, and it happened on Good Shepherd Sunday but it’s apropos of absolutely nothing in connection to the rest of the sermon.
It’s just that, in the midst of such a horrific week, I thought a cute little kid in church story might feel nice. Since, well… everything else kinda feels like crap.
This week I posted something on Facebook that said I was sick of “preaching challenges”. And I am. I’m sick of bad things happening – things that knock the breath out of us. And I’m tired of then having to figure out what to say about movie theater slaughters and school shootings and vehicular homicide and marathon bombings and crippling explosions. Preachers and pastors are supposed to provide some sort of explanation for things, right? I mean some kind of bland reassurance in the form of platitudes that, like supermarket sheetcake – are so sweet in the moment it makes your fillings hurt and then 10 minutes later, totally forgettable.
Aren’t preachers supposed to be able to help make sense of the senselessness around us? Aren’t we supposed to be able to give meaning to meaninglessness and comfort in times of chaos?
Well, I just didn’t have it in me this week. I just felt…well, tired. Tired of event after event demanding my reaction and ripping at my heart and daring me to come up with some kind of good news. So it’s just a lousy week to be a preacher. But it’s a lousy week to be a lot of things: a Bostonian, a person who loves Bostonians, a Muslim American, a Serbian, A cop, a marathon runner, a West Texan, Barack Obama, a Shepherd of a flock.
My dad is a little old fashioned and is for sure the only one in my life who refers to me as a shepherd. Sometimes he calls you guys my flock. Which of course is hilarious. He’ll say “How’s your flock” to which I sometimes will answer “oh you know, disobedient and a little smelly”. It’s an old fashioned thing, calling a preacher a shepherd and their congregation their flock and it’s one of many aspects of being a clergy person I want nothing to do with, but never more so than this week. Because I’m no shepherd.
I heard of the bombing in Boston and then the explosion in Texas and the attempted poisoning of the president and I knew for sure, I’m no shepherd. I don’t know where the Hell to lead you in all of this, because like you I am scared and unsure and honestly a little numb. I am tired of the evil and danger and the-CNN-created enemies that increasingly surround us. I just am no shepherd.
But, in all fairness, I think no one else is either. Who is going to lead us and what is going to really protect us? This week in the media I heard many possibilities. Our patriotism will protect us. Cynicism about the government will protect us. Tighter immigration laws will protect us. Looser immigration laws will protect us. Unfettered access to firearms will to protect us. Tighter gun control will to protect us. The swirling chaos of never-ending news cycles is going to protect us. Ignoring it all and numbing ourselves out with food or booze or sex or Netflix streaming is going to protect us. Or maybe the next earnest meme on facebook is going to protect us. Save us. Lead us. Shepherd us.
And Oh My God do we choose some terrible Shepherds.
But like sheep we really do need something to come along that will finally make us feel safe and loved and knowing we are going in the right direction and will be looked after.
And all I know is that a sermon isn’t going to make you guys feel like little safe and cared for sheep. Which is why in the wake of this week’s events, I thought that I just can’t be a shepherd when I need so desperately to be shepherded myself.
I’m in good company though. I’ve often heard Lutheran preachers say that they are really grateful that communion comes after the sermon…because it takes the pressure off. If they somehow screw up preaching the Gospel…they know people will at least get it at the table.
And I’ve never felt that more than today. See, we think we know the 23rd Psalm really well…I mean what other Psalm do you hear during TV show funerals and what other Psalm is printed on coffee cups. But I heard something new in it this week. A week of fear and evil and enemies – See, in the 23rd Psalm God does a counter intuitive thing when it comes to our very real fear of enemies. God doesn’t say “Let’s go smite them” and God doesn’t say “Let’s analyze the data ” God says “let’s eat!”
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
I don’t know what to tell you this week. And I’m too scared to be anyone’s shepherd. I can’t lead you anywhere, But I can gather with you around this table – a table God has set in the presence of everything that attempts to snatch away our peace. A table set in the presence of enemies and fear and evil. I have nothing to say. There is no clever theology or social commentary that can take away the sting of this last week. But I can gather with you around this table and I can tell you the story. I have no stories of my own (just that one mermaid one…), but around this table I can again tell you the story of how God has come to dwell with us, to make us people of God. I can tell you of how the God of Israel protected his people and walked among them. I can tell you how this same God took on flesh and was born in a time as violent and faithless and terrifying as our own and this Jesus of Nazareth was so full of grace and truth and love for his enemies that he was killed by those he came to save. And I can tell you how on the night before he died he gathered around another table with some real screw-ups and held up bread and said it was his body given for forgiveness and how he held up a cup and said it was for salvation and that when we eat this bread and drink this cup we do so in remembrance of him. And I can tell you that even from the cross on which he was hung he did not stop loving the enemy – even those who nailed him to it and I can tell you that despite human fear and violence, death did not have the final word and that after 3 days Jesus defeated death itself and then he again gathered his friends around a table from which he fed them breakfast and then he said for them to feed his sheep. And as his sheep, it is at this table where he desires we be fed. Fed by his story and his body so that we can be the people of God who know that not even death can separate us from the love of God, and thus we can fearlessly face this world’s valleys of the shadow of death knowing that there is a love stronger than the grave.
Knowing that Love conquers hate and that death has no sting and Forgiveness is more powerful than violence and that despite it all it is always always worth it to love God and love people and to continue to gather around the tables God has set – so that we can behold who we really are and become what we receive in a world that like us, so desperately needs to be loved – and not feared. AMEN.
10 November 2012
Sermon on Why the Gospel is More Wizard of Oz-y than the Law 28NOV12
THIS is a powerful sermon, don't just read it, listen to it by clicking the link.....
10-28-2012 NBW Sermon <—-click here to listen along. The difference between listening to a sermon and reading a sermon is the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing a bullet.
Happy Reformation Sunday, or as I like to call it: Lutheran Pridefulness Sunday, a day in the liturgical year where we celebrate the protestant reformation and there is indeed a lot to celebrate. We’ve come a long way Baby. For instance: We Protestants are no longer under the Pope. Our clergy can marry. We let people read the Bible for themselves. Not only that, but many denominations now ordain the ladies and the gays. That is to say, we are not nearly as ignorant as our forebears and so today we celebrate ourselves.
Yet what do the texts assigned for today talk about? Sin. What we get on Reformation Day is not a victory parade for the Protestant Reformation, but a lot of talk about sin and law. All sin and fall short of the glory of God and all who sin are slaves to sin and that through the law comes knowledge of sin. Sin, sin, sin. Obviously the people who decide what the readings are for things like, Reformation Sunday, didn’t get the memo that what we are really celebrating is our own awesomeness and how much more clever we modern Christians are than those who came before us who naively believed in things like sin and Law.
Plus, in an age of self-care and therapy and high self esteem and especially in so-called progressive Christianity, sin is not such a popular topic. As a matter of fact, in the Lutheran church planting business these days, there is a trend toward eliminating the confession and absolution at the beginning of our liturgies. Why? Because it’s a downer and people don’t want to hear they are sinners.
I personally think that’s a shame, but I should confess that, at the age of 26 — a decade after leaving my conservative Christian upbringing — when first I experienced the confession and absolution in a Lutheran liturgy, I thought it was hogwash. I hated the part where everyone in church stood up and said what bad people they are, and the pastor, from the distance of the chancel and the purity of their white robe said, “God forgives you”—Why should I care if someone says to me that some God I may or may not really believe in has erased the check marks against me for things I may or may not even think are so-called “sins?”
And my suspicion is that this was because when I heard “you are a sinner” what I really heard is, “you are a bad, immoral person” and hey, if I am someone who doesn’t cheat on their taxes or their spouse and doesn’t murder or steal then I don’t really want to spend my Sunday mornings having someone in a white robe imply that I do.
But Martin Luther had a way of talking about sin that makes a whole lot more sense to me now. He reminds us that sin is bigger than simple immorality. Sin, according to Luther, is being curved in on self without a thought for God or the neighbor. In that case, sin is missing the mark and it’s all the ways we put our selves in the place of God. It can be alcoholism or passive aggression. It can be the hateful things we think but never say or it can be adultery or it can be that feeling of superiority when we are helping others. Sin is the fact that my ideals and values are never enough to make me always do what I should, feel what I should, think what I should. And anything that reveals those “shoulds” to me is what we call The Law, the Law being the very thing Paul in his letter to the Romans said reveals sin. The “shoulds” in our lives are the things that make us see how far off the mark we are.
No matter what we think the “shoulds” are – personal morality and family values and niceness and conservative political convictions or inclusivity and recycling and eating local and progressive political convictions…there is always always, no matter how hard we try, a gap between our ideal self and our actual self.
And usually no one but us knows just HOW short we fall from the glory of God. But we know; and in those moments alone when again we are beating ourselves up or trying to deny it or again making promises of self-improvement, in those solitary moments we know.
It looks like every feminist who in secret hates her body and every televangelist who’s really addicted to porn and every social worker who doesn’t actually look into the eyes of the homeless man they pass every day on the corner. They all know what the law can do to us. How cruel the distance between our ideal self and out actual self can feel. And that feeling of not ever really hitting the mark, whatever mark that is, is the feeling of the Law convicting you.
Martin Luther knew what it felt like for the Law to convict him, accuse him, leave him with nowhere to rest. And if you want to know what really sparked the Protestant Reformation it is the fact that feeling this way, Luther read that passage we just heard from Romans since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24they are now justified by his grace as a gift
And he believed it to be true and because he believed that God’s grace is a gift he no longer accepted what the church had for so long taught: that we are really saved by the works of the Law. The medieval church had pawned off Law as Gospel and Luther dared to know the difference and then he become a preacher of Grace and that changed everything. But here’s the thing: pawning off Law as Gospel isn’t a medieval thing and it’s not a Catholic thing. It’s a human thing and we do it all the time. The church does is, we do it, society does it. It’s like a disease.
So, in celebration of Reformation Sunday I offer you a way to spot the difference between Law and Gospel: You can tell the Law because it is almost always and if-then proposition – If you follow all the rules in the Bible God then will love you and you will be happy. If you lose 20 pounds then you will be worthy to be loved. If you live a perfectly righteous Green eco lifestyle then you will be worthy of taking up space in the planet. If you never have a racist or sexist or homophobic thought then you will be worthy of calling other people out on their racism and sexism and homophobia. The Law is always conditional and it is never anything anyone can do perfectly. When we treat Law as Gospel there can never be life and happiness and worthiness. Under the Law there are only 2 options: pride and despair. When fulfilling the “shoulds” is the only thing that determines our worthiness we are either prideful about our ability to follow the rules compared to others or we despair at our inability to perfectly do anything. Either way, it’s still bondage.
And that’s why the Gospel is different. The Gospel is not an if-then proposition. It’s more Wizard of Oz than that. The Gospel is a because because because because proposition. Because God is our creator and because we rebel against the idea of being created beings and insist on trying to be God for ourselves and because God will not play by our rules and because in the fullness of time when God had had quite enough of all of that God became human in Jesus Christ to show us who God really is and because when God came to God’s own and we received him not, and because God would not be deterred God went so far as to hang from the cross we built and did not even lift a finger to condemn but said forgive them they know not what they are doing and because Jesus Christ defeated even death and the grave and rose on the 3rd day and because we all sin and fall short and are forever turned in on ourselves and forget that we belong to God and that none of our success guarantee this and none of our failures exclude this and because God loves God’s creation God refuses for our sin and brokenness and inability to always do the right things to be the last word because God came to save and not to judge and therefore…therefore you are saved by grace as a gift and not by the works of the law and this truth will set you free like no self-help plan or healthy living or social justice work “shoulds” can ever do.
This, is why we will never get rid of the confession and absolution in the liturgy. It’s Law that puts us in the position of hearing Gospel. It is a moment when truth is spoken, without apology and without heistation and perhaps for the only time all week, and it will crush you and then put you back together. It re-forms us. It’s re-formation. And this is most certainly true. Amen.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/10/sermon-on-why-the-gospel-is-more-wizard-of-oz-y-than-the-law/
10-28-2012 NBW Sermon <—-click here to listen along. The difference between listening to a sermon and reading a sermon is the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing a bullet.
Happy Reformation Sunday, or as I like to call it: Lutheran Pridefulness Sunday, a day in the liturgical year where we celebrate the protestant reformation and there is indeed a lot to celebrate. We’ve come a long way Baby. For instance: We Protestants are no longer under the Pope. Our clergy can marry. We let people read the Bible for themselves. Not only that, but many denominations now ordain the ladies and the gays. That is to say, we are not nearly as ignorant as our forebears and so today we celebrate ourselves.
Yet what do the texts assigned for today talk about? Sin. What we get on Reformation Day is not a victory parade for the Protestant Reformation, but a lot of talk about sin and law. All sin and fall short of the glory of God and all who sin are slaves to sin and that through the law comes knowledge of sin. Sin, sin, sin. Obviously the people who decide what the readings are for things like, Reformation Sunday, didn’t get the memo that what we are really celebrating is our own awesomeness and how much more clever we modern Christians are than those who came before us who naively believed in things like sin and Law.
Plus, in an age of self-care and therapy and high self esteem and especially in so-called progressive Christianity, sin is not such a popular topic. As a matter of fact, in the Lutheran church planting business these days, there is a trend toward eliminating the confession and absolution at the beginning of our liturgies. Why? Because it’s a downer and people don’t want to hear they are sinners.
I personally think that’s a shame, but I should confess that, at the age of 26 — a decade after leaving my conservative Christian upbringing — when first I experienced the confession and absolution in a Lutheran liturgy, I thought it was hogwash. I hated the part where everyone in church stood up and said what bad people they are, and the pastor, from the distance of the chancel and the purity of their white robe said, “God forgives you”—Why should I care if someone says to me that some God I may or may not really believe in has erased the check marks against me for things I may or may not even think are so-called “sins?”
And my suspicion is that this was because when I heard “you are a sinner” what I really heard is, “you are a bad, immoral person” and hey, if I am someone who doesn’t cheat on their taxes or their spouse and doesn’t murder or steal then I don’t really want to spend my Sunday mornings having someone in a white robe imply that I do.
But Martin Luther had a way of talking about sin that makes a whole lot more sense to me now. He reminds us that sin is bigger than simple immorality. Sin, according to Luther, is being curved in on self without a thought for God or the neighbor. In that case, sin is missing the mark and it’s all the ways we put our selves in the place of God. It can be alcoholism or passive aggression. It can be the hateful things we think but never say or it can be adultery or it can be that feeling of superiority when we are helping others. Sin is the fact that my ideals and values are never enough to make me always do what I should, feel what I should, think what I should. And anything that reveals those “shoulds” to me is what we call The Law, the Law being the very thing Paul in his letter to the Romans said reveals sin. The “shoulds” in our lives are the things that make us see how far off the mark we are.
No matter what we think the “shoulds” are – personal morality and family values and niceness and conservative political convictions or inclusivity and recycling and eating local and progressive political convictions…there is always always, no matter how hard we try, a gap between our ideal self and our actual self.
And usually no one but us knows just HOW short we fall from the glory of God. But we know; and in those moments alone when again we are beating ourselves up or trying to deny it or again making promises of self-improvement, in those solitary moments we know.
It looks like every feminist who in secret hates her body and every televangelist who’s really addicted to porn and every social worker who doesn’t actually look into the eyes of the homeless man they pass every day on the corner. They all know what the law can do to us. How cruel the distance between our ideal self and out actual self can feel. And that feeling of not ever really hitting the mark, whatever mark that is, is the feeling of the Law convicting you.
Martin Luther knew what it felt like for the Law to convict him, accuse him, leave him with nowhere to rest. And if you want to know what really sparked the Protestant Reformation it is the fact that feeling this way, Luther read that passage we just heard from Romans since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24they are now justified by his grace as a gift
And he believed it to be true and because he believed that God’s grace is a gift he no longer accepted what the church had for so long taught: that we are really saved by the works of the Law. The medieval church had pawned off Law as Gospel and Luther dared to know the difference and then he become a preacher of Grace and that changed everything. But here’s the thing: pawning off Law as Gospel isn’t a medieval thing and it’s not a Catholic thing. It’s a human thing and we do it all the time. The church does is, we do it, society does it. It’s like a disease.
So, in celebration of Reformation Sunday I offer you a way to spot the difference between Law and Gospel: You can tell the Law because it is almost always and if-then proposition – If you follow all the rules in the Bible God then will love you and you will be happy. If you lose 20 pounds then you will be worthy to be loved. If you live a perfectly righteous Green eco lifestyle then you will be worthy of taking up space in the planet. If you never have a racist or sexist or homophobic thought then you will be worthy of calling other people out on their racism and sexism and homophobia. The Law is always conditional and it is never anything anyone can do perfectly. When we treat Law as Gospel there can never be life and happiness and worthiness. Under the Law there are only 2 options: pride and despair. When fulfilling the “shoulds” is the only thing that determines our worthiness we are either prideful about our ability to follow the rules compared to others or we despair at our inability to perfectly do anything. Either way, it’s still bondage.
And that’s why the Gospel is different. The Gospel is not an if-then proposition. It’s more Wizard of Oz than that. The Gospel is a because because because because proposition. Because God is our creator and because we rebel against the idea of being created beings and insist on trying to be God for ourselves and because God will not play by our rules and because in the fullness of time when God had had quite enough of all of that God became human in Jesus Christ to show us who God really is and because when God came to God’s own and we received him not, and because God would not be deterred God went so far as to hang from the cross we built and did not even lift a finger to condemn but said forgive them they know not what they are doing and because Jesus Christ defeated even death and the grave and rose on the 3rd day and because we all sin and fall short and are forever turned in on ourselves and forget that we belong to God and that none of our success guarantee this and none of our failures exclude this and because God loves God’s creation God refuses for our sin and brokenness and inability to always do the right things to be the last word because God came to save and not to judge and therefore…therefore you are saved by grace as a gift and not by the works of the law and this truth will set you free like no self-help plan or healthy living or social justice work “shoulds” can ever do.
This, is why we will never get rid of the confession and absolution in the liturgy. It’s Law that puts us in the position of hearing Gospel. It is a moment when truth is spoken, without apology and without heistation and perhaps for the only time all week, and it will crush you and then put you back together. It re-forms us. It’s re-formation. And this is most certainly true. Amen.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/10/sermon-on-why-the-gospel-is-more-wizard-of-oz-y-than-the-law/
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