In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen

Well, it is that time of year again, Reformation Sunday, when many Lutheran churches and countless other churches including our own will be singing “A Mighty Fortress is our God”.
A day of celebration for our Protestant tradition but also perhaps a day of ambivalence as well. For in celebrating Reformation Sunday, to fix it on the calendar as the last Sunday in October, could give the false impression that we are only celebrating a historical event that took place a long time ago, 1517 in fact.

Leading us to conclude then that the job is done. Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses for debate to cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany. The Pope took exception and the rest just fell into place. Lutherans and those of us of the Reformed tradition went one way and our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters went another. As simple as that.
And yet I believe there is a great deal more to it than that.

For as Presbyterians this is our family story and it finds its foundation in Martin Luther’s great discovery. Some of you are born and bred Presbys. Others of you have come in from other denominations but as part of the Reformed tradition we also lay claim to Luther’s discovery.

So what I would like to do this morning is to talk a little bit about Martin Luther and look at the passage from Romans chapter 3- a text that served as a basis for Luther’s profound insight about what God is like, an insight that changed not just church history but world history.

Martin Luther was born in 1483, the son of German peasants who had made good. For you see Martin’s father was in the mining industry and he really wanted Martin to become a lawyer. But these best-laid plans were suddenly changed in 1505. Luther got caught in a tremendous thunderstorm. Lightning struck near by and knocked him to the ground. In fear for his life and for his soul, Luther cried out to the patron saint of miners, St. Anne, “Help me! I will become a monk!

And so in spite of father’s great disapproval Martin joined the Augustinians- one of the most severe religious orders in the church known for its strict academic and devotional standards. In his new vocation Luther spent hours in confession and self-examination, and fasted excessively.

Certainly this behavior was not unique to Luther. It was a mark of the times. God was seen as unapproachable, harsh and concerned with judgement. The church placed a great deal of emphasis on good works, praying to the saints, buying indulgences in order to appease God and contribute to one’s salvation. It was also during this period that devotions to the Virgin Mary began to develop because she was seen as much more loving than either God or Jesus Christ.

 Now the reason for this extreme behavior? For Luther-Fear, sheer unembellished fear. For Martin struggled with the burden of feeling responsible for his own salvation and the threat of eternal damnation if he didn’t measure up. Luther came to fear and hate God for he only saw God as harsh and judgmental.

Fortunately, there was a wise and kind monk in Luther’s order whose name was Von Staupitz. Von Staupitz told Martin that he had totally missed the point of the scriptures and should study them again. So Martin being an A type personality went on to become a New Testament scholar and began to teach at the new university in Wittenberg.

Ten years passed, and still Luther was tortured by uncertainty and doubts. He came once more to Paul’s letter to the Romans and he read our passage for today. And so Luther began to read; “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.”

These words confirmed what Luther has suspected; the law could only point out what you had done wrong. The law could convict but it had no power to save and there was no way that one could do enough good works to please God. This verse described Luther’s situation perfectly. All those hours of confession, hours of prayer, rigorous devotional practices had not given him any peace from his doubts and fears but had only made him aware of his sin.

But Luther read on; “But now, a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known…. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.”
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
And suddenly it was like the lights going on in a dark room.
All at once Luther understood not just intellectually but at the very core of his being.
He was not responsible for his salvation and never had been. God saved god’s people through Christ by his death on the cross. Luther did not have to make God love him through all these good works. God already did and showed that by sending Jesus Christ to redeem the world itself. Luther was not responsible for his own salvation-God had already taken care of that. All Luther required was faith-trust that this was true and even this was a gift from a gracious God.

It was a moment of deepest liberation. As though a huge weight had been lifted from Luther’s shoulders. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ. This is the heart of the Protestant tradition- the heart of the Gospel. But what does this mean for us today?

Each of us struggle with fear. Like Luther, some of us may struggle in terms of our salvation and our relationship with God. For some of us the fear may be existential in nature- fear that life has no meaning-that we are all alone. There may the fear of growing older…..

But here in our text, we see the good news. We are saved! We are made whole, freed from fear, anxiety, and worry, freed from our brokeness, our sin, by the sheer grace of God. Freed then to lives marked by a spirit of humility, service and praise. This is the good news for us. And this is what we have fought to proclaim for almost five hundred years. Freed from the bondage of good works to live lives of discipleship. We are saved by grace alone, by faith alone!

Now this does not mean that good works such as caring for the poor, proclaiming God’s justice are not important. But rather we do them as a way of saying thank you to God for all God had done for us in Christ. If you remember you catechism classes. What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever.

We are inheritors of a tradition-Reformed and Reforming. A movement based on the great discovery of one man who said the church has lost its way and spent his life trying to make it right. As heirs of this tradition our task is never done. We are called to continue to struggle, to work together, to discover once more the good news- We are saved by grace through faith, for we live in a frightened world that desperately needs to hear it.
THANKS BE TO GOD, AMEN.