![Oh, The Places You’ll Go…Or Not [OR God Transforms Unholy Places] Romans 3:19-28 and John 8:31-36 Reformation Sunday](https://caitlintrussell.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/rPlace-Canvas-as-of-April-3-2017.a-reddit-public-art-experiment-one-pixel-at-a-time-672x372.jpg){kind=tracking}
**sermon art: /r/Place canvas as of April 3, 2017 Place is a collaborative canvas that any registered reddit user could ‘draw’ on one pixel at a time. In order to draw another pixel on the canvas there was a 5 minute wait time. ‘Individually you can create something. Together you can create something more,’ is Place’s motto. https://twistedsifter.com/2017/04/what-is-reddit-place/
Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on October 25, 2020
[sermon begins after two Bible readings]
Romans 3:19-28 Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20For “no human being will be justified in his sight” by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
21But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, 22the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, 23since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; 26it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.
27Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.
John 8:31-36 Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” 33They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”
34Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. 35The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. 36So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
[sermon begins]
Oh, the places you’ll go…or not go, depending on who else is there, whether or not masks are required, and how much or how little you need to see people. As those things get figured out, “place” takes on new meaning in our lives. Our favorite places usually qualify as favorites because they’re fun or beautiful or peaceful or sacred or we find our favorite people there. These days, the places we go are often necessary and cannot be avoided, or meaningful and we bend to accommodate them. Adjustments have also been made to meaningful places like the way we worshiped under a tent in the courtyard over the last few months. Last week, place was also shifted for our Confirmation students who were affirming their baptismal promises in the Rite of Confirmation. Annually celebrated on Reformation Sunday, we held a brief ritual with the youth and their families and recorded it to be celebrated with all of us here in online worship. It was a unique Confirmation, as the few of us who gathered together represented the fullness of the congregation in the Sanctuary, our community’s sacred place.
Place is important to what Jesus is saying in the Gospel of John reading as he says that, “the son has a place [in the household] forever; so if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” Jesus’ place brings freedom that cannot be created on our own. This is good news if you don’t like the new place in which you find yourself, feeling displaced by a pandemic.[1] Jesus’ freedom can also sound like good news if you’ve been displaced or excluded by other people for reasons like income, disability, skin color, or education level.
The 16th century Reformation took place in complicated socio-political times that parallel our own. Martin Luther was not the first reformer of his day, but he was the first reformer that lived long enough to disrupt the systems of church and state applying pressure to both the pope who controlled the church and the princes who controlled the city-states of their time. While Luther condemned the institutional church for its extortion of the poor and manipulation of the faithful; he also challenged the princes against exploitation of the peasants. Luther and other Reformation preachers were adamant that princes and leaders address systemic issues.[2] Luther wrote, ““For so to help a man that he does not need to become a beggar is just as much of a good work and a virtue as to give alms to a man who has already become a beggar.”[3] Lutheranism has long since preached justice-oriented community engagement on behalf of our neighbors alongside the grace of salvation “by faith apart from works.”[4] In fairness though, this grace-and-justice preaching had its place long before Luther.
In the Romans reading, check out verse 25. The execution of Jesus at the hands of the Romans gets flipped into the language of sacrifice.[5] The 1st century listener would have been like, “Whaaaat?!!” Everybody knew that sacrifices offered to God meant specific animals, killed in the temple, by a priest. No one would have equated a Roman execution of a Galilean rabbi, on a hill outside of town, with sacrifice. More specifically, the Greek word “hilasterion,” translated here as “sacrifice of atonement,” is more accurately translated “mercy seat.” The early listeners in Greek would have heard that “the redemption in Christ Jesus” was put forward by God as a “mercy seat through faith in his blood.”[6] This is BIG, so hang with me here. The mercy seat was known to be in the Holy of Holies in the Jewish Temple where the high priest entered once a year to sprinkle blood over it on Yom Kippur for the atonement of all of Israel.[7] This section of the Romans reading transforms the unholy place of the cross into the Holy of Holies, the center of God’s reconciling grace; the place where the unholy, non-Jewish Gentiles are transformed into holy Christ believers and God’s servants. These verses claim that God transforms the unholy place into a place of holy transformation. Transforming the unholy into the holy. Put a place-holder there, we’re going to come back to it.
Another dilemma in the English is that the word for justice and righteousness is the same word in Greek – dikaiosyne. 1st century listeners would have heard this word to simultaneously mean “righteousness (right relationship with God) and justice (right relationship with one’s neighbor).”[8] There was no choice needed to be made about meaning like there is in English. The place of justice for our neighbor IS the place of righteousness with God. There are many people who celebrate the Reformation solely as an event in history that revealed God’s reconciling grace within each individual believer. What often gets missed, is that it was simultaneously an event that turned the believer away from self towards the neighbor. This reading from Romans is the perfect place to open up God’s word in the fullness of the Reformation and to allow it to open us up as God’s word finds a place in us.
Grace was at the heart of the 16th century Reformation and love of neighbor completed the freedom granted by Christ’s grace. Luther also wrote, ““Poverty, I say, is not to be recommended, chosen, or taught; for there is always enough of that by itself, as [Jesus] says (John 12:8): ‘The poor you always have with you,’ just as you will have all other evils. But constant care should be taken that, since these evils are always in evidence, they are always opposed.”[9]
I’m going to let you in on a well-kept secret…we have an election coming up. Democracy and voting would have been inconceivable to Luther and his peers, not to mention to our 1st Century siblings in Christ, but they all would have understood justice and neighbor-love as required by God.[10] We’ve spent the whole last church year in the book of Matthew in which Jesus lifts up the vulnerable and oppressed as our faithful priority. And just around the corner in Advent, we’ll hear Mary sing about lifting the lowly, filling the hungry, and sending the rich away empty.[11] Voting is one more place to help our neighbor as we examine ballot issues, judges, and elected leaders. Remember to pray for yourself and each other as we vote.
Remember also that the mercy seat of Christ dwells within you by the power of the Holy Spirit in your baptism. When we were baptized into Christ, we were baptized into his death, and into the mercy seat of God.[12] The unholy places in you are the very places that God redeems and makes holy for your sake in God’s righteousness and for your neighbor’s sake in God’s justice. Today on Reformation Sunday, we celebrate that everyone has a place in the household because Christ is the mercy seat through which God redeems us and sends us in freedom to love and serve our neighbor. Thanks be to God and amen.
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[1] Pastor Margot Wright, Lord of the Hills Lutheran Church, Centenniel, CO. Metro East Preacher’s Text Study, Rocky Mountain Synod (ELCA), on October 20, 2020.
[2] Carter Lindberg and Paul Wee (Eds.). The Forgotten Luther: Reclaiming the Social-Economic Dimension of the Reformation. (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2016), 24.
[3] Ibid., 19.
[4] Romans 3:28
[5] This section of the sermon relies heavily on this work of Jane Lancaster Patterson, Associate Professor of New Testament, Seminary of the Southwest, Austin, TX. Commentary on Romans 3:19-28 for October 25, 2020 on WorkingPreacher.org. https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4605
[6] Patterson, Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Lindberg and Wee, Ibid.
[10] Micah 6:8 “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
[11] Luke 1:46-55
[12] Romans 6:3-11
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