Eternal Return

Propers: Reformation Sunday, AD 2020 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

These days it seems as though everyone believes in freedom, yet no-one believes in truth. One then is left to wonder what exactly our freedoms are for.

The life of the Church is made up of rhythms, of eternal returns, as is the life of any living creature: the breathing of the lungs, the beating of the heart, patterns of sleep, generations of life. In and out, down and up—this is what makes us alive. In the Church we have multiyear cycles of readings, yearly cycles of seasons, monthly cycles of Psalms, weekly cycles of worship, and daily cycles of prayer.

Like the air in our lungs, we are drawn in and sent out. Like the blood in our veins, we are empowered, depleted, and replenished. All in a pattern. All in a rhythm. Like music. Like dancing. Like life. And the greatest of these patterns—which is to say, the longest of these cycles—appears to be that of Church reformation.

Every few centuries, it seems, the Church undergoes a great reform, when we take stock of the state of our faith, bring out of our household treasures both old and new, shake off the encumbrances of the centuries, and return to the vital center of our religion: that is, the person and the Spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Reform doesn’t mean a reset. It doesn’t mean that we have to pretend as though it’s the sixteenth century again—or the eleventh, or even the first. Rather, reform means that Christ is alive, here and now, and that His own eternal truth is what gives life to Christianity and to we who are His Body the Church.

So yes, Christianity does change. It evolves, like any living thing; because the eternal, unchanging truth of God’s Word must be interpreted and translated anew in every generation—which is simply to say that the Word must become flesh. The incarnation of Jesus Christ must continue in us, in we who call ourselves Christians, who are given Jesus’ living Holy Spirit as well as His Body and Blood.

This means taking seriously new discoveries, in science, philosophy, history, academia. And it means taking seriously the needs and necessities of our own day and age. They say that Lutherans have fantastic answers to sixteenth century questions. Our task now is not to pretend that the world is that same as it was 500 years ago, but to take the truths made known in the Protestant Reformations and to bear them anew for this Year of Our Lord Two-Thousand Twenty.

For as Christians we believe that Truth is not simply affirming some set of proposals. It isn’t an equation or a philosophical proof or an authoritative text of ironclad answers. Truth, for us, is a person. Truth is Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. And while it’s wonderful to celebrate the accomplishments of the historic Christian Church—and necessary to confess the Church’s very real sins—our real life, our Spirit, our Body and our Blood, are found in returning to Jesus Christ alone.

We put such faith in Baptism because Jesus meets us in those waters. We gather every week at the Table of our Lord because it is Jesus who gives us this foretaste of His own eternal wedding feast to come. We read and study the Bible together because the Bible is the story of our Lord, of His love for His people and for all of His Creation; and by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, these dead words become for us a living encounter with Christ.

And we confess our sins, and believe that we are forgiven, not because the pastor says so—not because it’s written in our hymnals—but because it is the promise of Immanuel, of God-With-Us, and God does not break promises.

It’s all about Jesus. Everything is about Jesus. The Word, the Sacraments, the liturgy, the holidays, the prayers, the life of this community, it all gives to us Jesus. And that’s where our true freedom lies. That’s our reformation. We are free to look at all the things that make us Christian, and if they give us Jesus, great! Shout them from the rooftops. Cherish them in your hearts. Live them in your lives. And if they don’t give us Jesus, then out they go, back into the dustbin of history, to be forgotten in the moldy pages of books that only pastors ever read.

The freedom given in Jesus Christ is eternal and unchanging. It is the Good News that Jesus loves you, He forgives you, and He will never let you go; indeed, that He will raise you up to a new life and new glory unlike any that we could imagine. But what does that look like for us today? What do we need to be freed from—we, who have never been slaves to anyone (or so we’d like to say)?

We live in a world that idolizes choice. We can be anything, we’re told, so long as we’re willing to pay for it. Everything has a price tag, including what’s left of our souls. And so we’re taught that we are what we buy: our clothes, our cars, our jobs, our houses. Nay, more than this, our muscle tone, our hair color, our Instagram accounts, our vacation photos. In a world where we can be anything, we have to be the best.

What else gives us value? Where else can we find self-worth? If you’re unhappy, if you’re lonely, if you’re fat, if you’re poor—well, then, that’s your fault. You made your choices, made your purchases. And you chose wrong.

So we’re always running around, hither and yon, trying to fill that hole within us, trying to dam up the ocean of our insecurities with stuff, with tech, with diets, with entertainment, with anything and everything except what makes us whole.

We are in the business of busyness—because ultimately the message of consumerism is that you of right ought to be your own sovereign god, exercising your will howsoever you please. But we’re not gods, no matter how much stuff we buy. We’re not millionaires and movie stars and American idols. And that, we’re told, is our own fault. You should’ve been a god. Instead you’re just a loser.

But thanks be to God, who comes to us as Jesus Christ, and shows us all the Truth: that life is more than what you buy or what you wear or what you eat; that love runs deeper than lust and value far deeper than coin. You are not your bank account. You are not your khakis. You are not your job. You are not the people who love you, nor the people who can’t. You are the beloved child of God, no matter how rich or poor, no matter how weak or strong.

You are loved, you are forgiven, and you are free. Not free in the American sense: free to do whatever you want, shoot whatever you want, buy whatever you want. Rather, you are free from always trying to keep up with the Joneses; free from never feeling like you could ever be enough; free from being unable to enjoy the gifts that you have because you’re thinking about getting the ones that you don’t.

We’re all stressed out and miserable and divided and scared, and the question is, cui bono—who benefits? Who gains from our inability to ever be truly satisfied with who we are and what we have? I think you damn well know.

Our modern commodified notions of freedom aren’t truly freedom at all. They’re slavery: slavery to our passions, to our egos, to our lusts, and to our debts. A strong man might be able to throw off an external slave master, but only Jesus can liberate us from this spiritual slavery deep within our souls.

I know it looks like the Church is in bad shape these days—at least here in the West, where consumerism is the new and dominant religion. But sooner or later the bill is going to come due. Sooner or later people are going to realize the emptiness of all the promises made about us being able to buy our way to happiness.

Sooner or later we’ll have bought all the products, watched all the media, eaten all the food, burned the last rainforest—and we’ll all stop and look at how miserable it’s made us, the desolation it hath wrought. Then will we cry out to the Lord for our liberation, even if we can no longer quite recall His name.

And the Church will be there, clinging to Jesus, clinging to salvation by grace through faith alone. And He will do what He has always done, from eternity throughout all time: He will forgive us our sins, heal our wounds, and raise us up from the dead. And then He will send us out, that through us, through the sinners He makes His saints, Jesus Christ will save us all.

And all the world shall be reformed in Him.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.