Reformation 2025

The Festival of the Reformation
 
The Reformation was all about certainty.  Did you want to know that grandma was in heaven?  No one could know.  Had she enumerated every last sin before breathing her last?  Had enough merits of the saints been given to her to spring her soul from purgatory?  No one could know.  For all you knew she was to languish there until you purchased an indulgence, paid for a Mass on her behalf or saw another relic for her.  And what about you?  Sure, your Baptism started your heavenward journey, but did you love God enough?  Did you give enough?  Did you confess well enough?  Were you really forgiven?  Could you ever be forgiven?  No one could know.  There was no certainty, no one who would point you to the full cross and empty tomb and water of the font and name of the Triune God.  The result?  Fear of God, and not the good kind.  It was terror of judgment and hell.  There was no love of God, no eye that dared look to Him for good.  The lack of certainty drove men to despair.  Surely you all know about Luther’s struggle with hatred of God, terror of His eyes seeing him.  If he had certainty about anything it was that God hated him and was eager for any attempt to torture him. 
 
But the God who uses man’s evil for good took man’s corruption of the word and the terror it brought to bring Luther to Wittenberg to teach Scripture, beginning with the Psalms, at the university.  By his assignment to pore over every word of Scripture slowly and carefully Luther eventually found that His confidence in God’s wrath and love of judgment was misplaced.  He found that God’s will was not destruction of mankind, but man’s salvation, and that this desired salvation was not purchased or worked its way into but was given undeservedly and received as a gift.  Luther began to preach this and the world was changed.  Men found certainty of their salvation in Christ, in their Baptism, in the Absolution, and in the Supper, as it was supposed to be.  They rejoiced in those words of St. Paul that we heard a short time ago: “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the Law.”  But none of this teaching, be it Paul or Luther, is a feeling or wish, but certainty.  That’s what Paul’s word” conclude” means.  It is a Greek word used in study, in legal or scientific investigation.  It is the conviction that the conclusion reached is beyond reasonable doubt true and certain.  It cannot by any means be proven wrong.  Man is justified, that is, declared entirely free from sin, released from death and the devil, entirely by the obedience, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, delivered by Baptism, received by faith created by the hearing of the Word of God, even by deaf ears  and infant minds unable yet to comprehend.  This certainty, obscured by satanic lies, was restored to brilliance in the Reformation as the Word of God was returned to the fore.  That is why today we give thanks to God: We have complete confidence in our salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
 
Luther looms large on this day and in the history of the Church, but it’s really not about Luther; he was merely the instrument God used in the sixteenth century.  Luther wasn’t the first to contend for the Gospel against its adversaries and he certainly was not the last.  We heard Jesus’ own word: “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence.”  Satan rages against the Christ.  He wants us to listen to him again like our parents in Eden.  He wants us to abandon free salvation for earned salvation, making the crucifixion of no effect.  He is why Jeremiah gave us our commission to implore God’s protection for His Church until the descent of the new Jerusalem out of heaven when there will be no more satanic attacks of false doctrine.  We are to give God no peace until that happens.  In other words, hold God to His Word, but also say to Satan what is certain: you are defeated.  Christ is victorious, His Word endures forever, and because I have His Holy Spirit you cannot lay a finger on me.
 
That certainty, that unwavering conviction of your forgiveness of every sin you have committed and every sin you will commit is what Reformation Day is about.  You don’t need to fret about your works, if you did enough, if your departed loved ones did enough, if you were really repentant enough, or any other if you can come up with.  You have certainty in Christ, given to you in Word and in Sacrament, received by faith created in you by something as ordinary as hearing.  With salvation this simple, all worked by the triune God, the only thing you can possibly have besides certainty is thanksgiving.