OUR TAKE ON GOD. Two weeks ago the following by the columnist Nicholas D. Kristof appeared in

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1 OUR TAKE ON GOD Jer. 31:31-34; Romans 3:19-38; John 8:31-36 Two weeks ago the following by the columnist Nicholas D. Kristof appeared in the editorial pages of the New York Times. Islam sometimes comes across in the awareness of the West as the path of medieval fanatics wielding swords and wearing explosive vests. Western doubts are bolstered when the pope accuses Islam of violence and fundamentalists protest by killing a nun. But the public images of Islam we sometimes see the violence in the name of God, the intolerance, the obsession with the past represent only some stones in a complex mosaic. And those images can t explain why Islam appears to be in percentage terms the fastest-growing major religion in the world today. Islam is on the rise for many of the same reasons evangelical Christianity is surging: they provide a firm moral code, spiritual reassurance and orderliness to people vexed by chaos and immorality around them, and they offer dignity to the poor. While the thread of fundamentalism is real in Islam, so is the thread of reform. The 21 st century may become to Islam what the 16 th was to Christianity, for even in hardline states like Iran you meet Martin Luther s who are pushing for an Islamic Reformation. (10/15/06) I hope Kristof is right.

2 Luther s great revolt against the Medieval church began as a desperate attempt to follow the church s teaching. He had entered the monastery in order to make peace with God, to overcome a sometimes overwhelming sense of unworthiness. Luther was oppressed by his sense of imperfection before God toward whom he was both attracted and repelled. How could he ever stand before the majesty of God? How could he, a sinner, ever confront divine holiness? Luther trembled before the justice of God. He studied what St. Paul said about God s justice and in the course of his study found that the word for justice in the Greek of the New Testament can also mean justification. Luther understood justice to be the strict enforcement of the law, as when a judge pronounces sentence on a convicted prisoner. Justification, on the other hand, was the suspension of the convicted s sentence by a judge who is merciful. In Luther s own words, Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and this statement that the just shall live by his faith. Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through the doors into paradise. (Bainton, Here I Stand, p. 49) It was the passage from the Letter to the Romans that is today s Epistle that provoked this transformation in Luther s thinking and put him on the road that would place him at the center of the 16 th century Reformation of the church. Luther came to understand that the Christian life consists not of trying to win God s favor but of responding to the favor of God which is freely bestowed on all. God is not a fierce judge who guards the law and calls for perfect obedience. Rather God is like a parent who for love s sake accepts and cherishes the lives of her/his children.

3 Thus, our lives are justified by the grace of God, which is freely given by God and accepted in faith. But why believe that this is how God is? Because this is how God appears in the life and teachings of Jesus, in the Christian gospel, which by faith comes to be seen as the right presentation of God, the true presentation. The response of the Christian life is thereby the response of love for love, grace for grace. The result of this response is that the Christian lives as Christ to her/his neighbors. That we are justified by grace through faith is, then, according to Luther, the fundamental truth about God that is at the heart of the Christian faith, and to know this truth is to be set free from the grip of all that oppresses the human spirit. It is often noted by historians that Luther stood with one foot in the dying world of Medieval Europe and the other in the Modern Western world that was about to be born. An example of Luther s medievalism would be his acceptance of the authority of the German princes to rule the German people. These princes came to their power by inheritance, and Luther believed that they were in this way destined by God to rule. On the other hand, Luther was a modern man in his democratic impulses, such that he strongly endorsed universal education, including education for women, and believed that every Christian should have the means to decide for her/his faith independently of priests and the hierarchy of the church, and furthermore, that no office, whether in the church or in society at large, made the person who held that office better or more holy than anyone else in the sight of God. Some of Luther s thinking supported the medieval structures of his society. Some of his thinking challenged those structures and pointed toward structures that would become the basis for modern Western society.

4 The point I am driving for here is that the Reformation was a development in the history of Christianity, an awakening to the need for change and an advance. This development, like all developments in religion, took place in the face of the resistance of those who believe their religion is absolute truth, fixed and final, once and for all. But this view has to be wrong. Religions are human institutions and inevitably limited responses to God. It is God who is true. Religions are takes on God, perspectives on God, which may be inspired and inspiring or may be dreadful or may be something inbetween. And what is it that makes for a true take on God? Jesus says, If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. That is, religion that is true is religion that frees the human soul from all that would oppress it or cause it to be a source of oppression. False religion binds and narrows the human soul. The Lutheran Reformation was about the freedom of the Christian, whom Luther saw and saw correctly, as constrained and oppressed by some of the teaching of the Roman Church of his day. The revelation that it is grace that saves and that it is by grace that we live was understood by Luther as a message of liberation. That is how he received it. That is how he taught it to the church. And it was the power of the message to liberate that counted for its truth. Did Luther see the whole truth and nothing but the truth of Christ? Of course not! Luther had his limitations as do we all, and there were occasions when Luther betrayed the liberating message of the gospel and proved to be more Medieval than Modern. But when he was at his best, he was a great advocate for the freedom of the Christian, and this was what was true about the Lutheran Reformation.

5 What is true about Islam is to be found in its capacity to liberate the human spirit, to enlighten and to enlarge human experience. Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Shirin Ebadi from Iran, has said, Islam, like any religion, is subject to interpretation. It can be interpreted to oppress women or to liberate them. As can, of course, Christianity. A true Islam will liberate as will a true Christianity. The two faiths will meet in the telling of the truth that frees the spirit for fullness of life in the world; they will meet in the spirit that is grace and mercy and peace. At this stage in history, it seems to me that Islam could use a Luther or many Luther s. For that matter, though, seeing what too often passes for Christian faith in our own nation these days, it seems to me that we, too, could stand to have another Luther ourselves. As God s grace is boundless, so is the progress of human liberation. We have a long way yet to go Christians, Muslims, all of us. Amen. Reformation Sunday, October 29, 2006 Emanuel Lutheran Church

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