Reformation Day… it is a bit of a mixed blessing. It is the anniversary of the day in which Martin Luther, a monk within the Catholic tradition, nailed the 95 theses on the door of the chapel of Wittenberg, where he was teaching at the time. This was not an uncommon practice at the time. Professors would nail the subjects for lectures and discussion on the chapel doors, in order that the students and other faculty might have time to prepare their responses or reflections. Like having an assignment to read beforehand, these theses were to form the basis of a class discussion. I am not sure Martin Luther had any idea what would happen in response to these theses. One of the core themes is the inability for us to purchase our salvation. If salvation was something humans could do, why, then, do we hear these words from Jeremiah regarding the covenant: “It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt – a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people,” going on to say, “I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”
It seems that humans have this innate incapacity to keep our promises. Israel was tempted by the gods of the regions in which they traveled. They broke the covenant with God. God, in his love for the Israelites, determined that their breaking of the covenant was not the end of it. Rather than an end, it served as a beginning. It seems like each day, health concerns and the weight of all that is going on in the world around us weigh us down, yet, because of God’s promises to us, we are able to say, “We will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult… the LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge…” and we are able to, “be still and know God.” It is those moments, when all of our efforts fail, that we turn to God. In the surrender of ourselves to God, we are able to rest in his promises and his mercy.
Though everything around us tells us that we should give up hope, and indeed we would, if we were hoping in our own capacity to save ourselves. The constant reminders of how frail we are and how frail life on this earth is remind us are all around, but we claim a strength that is not our own. We claim not our own abilities, but the ability of Christ, through whom, “we are justified by his grace as a gift, through his redemption, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.”
What does it mean that our salvation is effective through faith? Well, it depends in what we have our faith. If we have faith in ourselves, then we can only claim our own abilities to save us. If we have faith in Christ, we claim Christ’s promises, as to the thief who hung next to him on the cross: “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” This is the truth. The Word of God points us not toward ourselves, but to God, who, in His mercy, sent Christ that we may have eternal life.
We are enslaved by many things: by health concerns, by our abilities, by our desires to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. In Christ, we are no longer slaves, but we are made sons and daughters of God. We are not confined by our circumstances; we are claimed by the cross of Christ. Indeed, God has made a promise, a covenant, with us, and it is not a covenant that is dependent upon human strength. It is a covenant that is dependent on the strength of God, who is wiser than human wisdom. God’s covenant is written on our hearts, inspiring our longing for his kingdom. So, we come to the table, hungry, not for what humans can do, but hungry for what God has done through Christ.
In Christ, God has taken our mourning and turned it into joy, he has taken our tears and turned them into laughter, he has taken our fear and turned it into faith, he has taken our weakness and turned it into boasting not for our own sakes, but for the sake of Christ. With God, nothing is ever as it appears: it is far better than that. God has written his covenant on our hearts; it is not a covenant that depends upon our abilities to perfectly keep the law or the commandments, but a covenant that has as its goal our salvation. We cannot buy it, and we cannot earn it. It is a gift, though Christ Jesus. It is this promise in which we place our hope, that at our final breath, we take the hand of our savior and are led into eternal life, into God’s kingdom, which will have no end.
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