The Augsburg Confession: Level Ground
Pastor Mathew Magera – 7/23/17 – Sermon 237
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Have you ever customized
something? Something in which you were given the model or standard and you had
the opportunity in which to customize it to your liking? Cars, homes, golf
clubs, clothes, hamburgers. I’m sure you’ve customized something at some point
in your life. A family member of mine recently bought an RV. In the initial stages of the
purchase it was presented as a model that she could customize in certain ways.
From the paint, to the number of televisions, to the option of a back-up
camera, many options were customizable to make it her own, to make her feel
comfortable, to suit her needs for how she was going to use it. We like to
customize things. From the standard we aim to make changes that will make us
feel the most comfort and satisfaction. So, just like we can do with just about
anything, we even do it to other things without even knowing it. Even the Bible
itself.
The Bible is a gift to us,
perhaps the greatest gift given to us other than Jesus Christ himself. The
Bible is a standard. It was given to us to contain the very revelation of God.
It was given to read, to study, to guide us in our faith. But, what's happened
along the way? We've grown tired of it. There are parts of it we don't care
for. We start asking questions and we begin to doubt the authority of that
standard and we begin to customize it, to make it comfortable, to make it
acceptable, to make it my way.
How much authority does
Scripture have over our lives? How much do we allow it to work in our lives to
let it change us? How much do we try to change it? Welcome to another argument
during the time of the Reformation. As
we go through the Augsburg Confession and get closer to the end, the topics
become a bit more abstract. In our eyes, maybe, but for the reformers, they
were just getting specific to their day. They were now really beginning to
address the specific values and beliefs that were distancing the Roman
Catholics from the Bible. The three articles of the Augsburg Confession that we
mention today seem very un-relatable to us, but they all share this common
theme retreating from the authority of the Bible. I mean, if you've taken time
to read the brief descriptions about these articles already in your bulletin
you might really be wondering what the connection is here? I mean, we don't
worship saints. We offer both bread and wine at Holy Communion and we allow our
pastors to get married. So, what's the connection? It's the authority of
Scripture. The authority of the Bible. Is it the standard for our living or is
it customizable to our benefit?
* * *
In the book of Revelation,
John receives several visions of the end of the world and of heaven. He gets
removed from the very timeline of human existence and gets a glimpse into the
very throne room of God. In Revelation 19, John is so overwhelmed with joy in
receiving this vision of God and heaven that he wants to fall down to worship
the angel who is guiding him through it. The angel immediately stops him
saying, "Don't do that! I am a fellow servant with you and with your
brothers and sisters who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God!"
With this in mind, we get article 21 considering the worship of the saints or
elevating certain ancestors as intercessors between us and God for particular
things.
It was a practice that had
been around since the 3rd or 4th century. People said, well if Christ can
intercede for us and he was good, what's to say that someone else who was
nearly as good could not intercede for us? And so people began praying to these
good people who were then called saints. The reformers now were seeing that
this contradicts the instructions given to us in the Holy Scriptures. Nobody
apart from Jesus is capable of receiving our prayers. Worship God alone! As the
angel told John, we are all servants who hold to the testimony of Jesus, not of
anyone else. All of our brothers and sisters in Christ together, past, present
and future are all on level ground here. Jesus is the one who is above us.
Jesus is the only one who receives our prayers. Jesus is the only one who can
bring our prayers before the Father. Because of the cross, we have access to
God now through Jesus Christ, not through works of the Law but through Jesus
himself. We don't have to nor can we get to God by any other way. Jesus is the
way.
In our second reading this
morning, Paul is talking with the Corinthians about their practice of the
Lord's Supper. Because Corinth is a port city it is full of people from many
different places and is home to many different religions. When Christianity
developed, many of the converts from other religions practiced Christianity
while keeping some of their previous religious traditions. This impacted how
they celebrated the Lord's Supper. They did it in the way they wanted to. What
I'm concerned about in this passage comes in Paul's conclusion to what is
taking place. He says, "As a result, one person remains hungry and another
gets drunk." When we think of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion, one
should not be walking away hungry, nor should one be walking away having had
too much. The Lord's Supper is to be just enough. So, for the reformers 1500
years later to be discussing this, they have the Bible on their side.
A practice had developed in
the Roman Catholic Church in which the ordinary person would receive the bread
but not the cup. Only the priests would be able to take the cup. The simple
reason behind this practice was that there was great fear that the ordinary
person had a higher chance of spilling the wine and thus desecrating the
Sacrament. Therefore, it was withheld from the common person. It was as if the
Catholic Church was saying that you are too clumsy to take the cup, so we just
won't give it to you. Forget what Jesus said, the Sacrament will be more holy
if you aren't allowed to have it. In a different context it might sound like,
you are too much of a sinner, you'll misuse God's grace so I'm just not going
to give it to you. I mean, if someone came in and asked for directions to Grand
Rapids and I said, sure of course, you just take this road west out of town.
Thanks for asking. They're not going to get to Grand Rapids on those
directions, they're not complete. Receiving the bread and not being allowed to
receive the wine was contrary to what Jesus says in Matthew 26, "Drink
from it, all of you." Not just some of you. Not just those who are careful
with it, but everyone. We are all on level ground. Jesus is for everyone, all
the grace, all the love, all the forgiveness.
Lastly, article 23 concerns
the marriage of the priests. The Catholic Church wanted the priests to be
committed to the ministry saying that marriage would cause a distraction to
this higher calling. Yet, because of this restriction on priests, you can
imagine what might happen. If priests were to suppress their sexual desires,
they would either have to marry, going against their vows or to commit
adultery. Can you even imagine the scandals that would come from this? Now,
today, marriage has lost much of the value that was placed on it from long ago,
and that's another sermon, but restricting a priest, or anyone for that matter,
from marriage is, you probably guessed it, contrary to scripture. The reformers
expressed this in many different ways. For instance, after God instituted
marriage in the Garden of Eden, what did he institute next? Procreation. What's
procreation if you can't marry? It's not going to happen. In Matthew 19, Jesus
talks about marriage. When someone asks him if it is better not to marry Jesus
says that not everyone can manage a single life. Even Paul affirms marriage,
saying that while it is good to remain unmarried, marriage is where you need to
go if you have less than self-control, for it is better to relieve that sexual
stress in marriage than to commit adultery. So, when the Catholic Church
restricted priests from marrying, they were giving them greater temptation to
sin than to be holy.
* * *
Now again, what does all of
this have to do with us? We don't worship the saints, we don't restrict Holy
Communion, and I'm obviously married. The point is that in even these
non-relatable examples, we must remember that we are all on level ground and
that we are all sinners. Though we don't worship or pray to the saints we still
succumb to temptations to worship false gods. We have our own saint worship
that we give into. We are told to worship God and what do we do? We worship
money. We worship sex. We worship power. We worship medication. We hope that
they will save us or give us the satisfaction that we desire. Doing this we
still fall into the same boat as those who pray to the saints. We still
practice idolatry and we still find ourselves as sinners.
Though we don't abuse the
Lord's Supper by distributing only the bread there are still other ways that we
disregard the Word of God and restrict God's grace. There are still ways in
which we try to avoid God's instructions for us. There are still places in the
Bible that we inherently pick and choose to honor or reject. We still have
those temptations and they walk with us every day. The same can be said on
restricting priests to marry. While it was given for the sole purpose of making
the work of the priest more holy, it actually made it worse. There are things
we do and practices we might put into place in our lives, in our homes, in our
town, and even in our church that seem like good ideas on the outside but may
have negative implications on the sharing of God's grace. We even have marriage
all screwed up. Children before marriage, living together before marriage. We are
not immune to re-writing the standard for our best interests.
We are no better than the
very people and institution that the reformers went up against 500 years ago.
The temptation to customize scripture is just as real as the temptation to
customize our big macs ad McDonald's. We're all on level ground at the foot of the
cross, sinners. But that also means that we are all on level ground as
receivers of God's abundant grace through Jesus Christ. Though we try to
customize the Bible, it doesn't take away the truth that still lies within it
that Christ died for you. Our changes can't mask the message that is still
written on the pages.
Jesus is that perfection
that we need and he gives to us that perfection at no cost. This gives us the
comfort that even though we are daily sinners, we are at the same time daily
redeemed by that promise. Each and every day God's grace is new for us. It's
that good news that gives us the ability to be Christ's disciples in the world
each week. It's that good news that can wake us up in the morning and give us
purpose. It's that good news that can re-identify who we are in the world.
Aside from these three
articles of the Augsburg Confession teaching us the ways in which we are
seeking to customize our own religion we might not see the more important side
of these articles, showing us how Bible is telling us all the ways in which
Jesus wants to break into our lives and be our savior. Point to a way in your
life in which you have failed as a Christian and I can point you to Jesus who
overcame that very sin on the cross. Point to a way in which you broke down and
I'll point you to a savior who was broken for you. Point to a way in which you
fell and I'll point you to a savior who was raised for you. And that's what the
reformers were trying to do, remember. They weren't trying to start some new
ideas but rather go back to the old ones that had been slowly customized over
time. They were trying to remind everyone of that Gospel message.
Having been renewed by
Jesus, we are now free to be new examples of God's love, to raise up the sinner
for Jesus' sake with that good news and to give them new life according to the
Word he has given us. We are free to keep hold of that saving word that he has
for us and for everyone. We are free to be examples and encouragers, life
givers and opportunity makers as we point people to him. May you leave all of
those failures at the foot of the cross and put on that very freedom that he
gave to you. Receive everything he has to offer you and take that into this
week as the fuel you need to change lives because of Him who changed yours. To
God be the glory, now and always. Amen.