Reformation Sunday
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VII Cycle C
Theme For The Day
We are saved by a new covenant of grace and what Jesus did for us on the cross. We continually need reforming.
Old Testament Lesson
Jeremiah 31:31-34
A New Covenant
This important teaching of Jeremiah is sometimes called the gospel before the gospel. It is the height of the Old Testament. It is quoted in Hebrews 10:16-17 and is the foundation of the words Jesus spoke at the Last Supper (1 Corinthians 11:25; Luke 22:20). It is responsible for our speaking today of the Old Testament and the New Testament. It's not the giving of a new law but rather a new reason to keep the law. Because we have forgiveness of our sins and relationships with God, we have a different incentive to keep the law.
The Interpreter's Bible says of this passage that there are "... three provisions in the new covenant and these three steps leading to it.
1. ... a desperate move, for it is the way to the deeper homecoming.
2. ... a difficult move, which consists in not remembering the former things. And
3. ... is forgiveness, and behind forgiveness is love" (pp. 1037-1039).
This whole thing seems to me close to Ezekiel's idea of the new heart (Ezekiel 11:9, 18:31, and 36:26).
Verse 33b is the basis of the covenant. Yahweh is Israel's God and Israel is Yahweh's people.
New Testament Lesson
Romans 3:19-28
Justified By Faith
This passage complements the Old Testament Lesson as in it we learn of a new covenant. Here we have the conditions of that covenant: All who believe have not their own, but God's righteousness through Jesus Christ; all of us have sinned and are justified by God's grace; Jesus' sacrifice on the cross worked atonement for us; and, the really big one for Reformation Sunday, it is by our faith and not by any works laid out in the law which makes justification possible. This all began with Paul's letter to the Galatians (2:16) and became a fundamental part of Paul's understanding of the Gospel. It is the linchpin of Martin Luther's Reformation theology as well.
The Gospel
John 8:31-36
True Disciples
It is only when we set aside all the previous preconceptions -- prejudice, our own wants and drives -- can we see the whole picture, the real truth. Especially the truth about ourselves. Verse 35 tells us that a son or daughter is always free but a slave cannot get free by him/herself. In verse 36 John uses the Greek hyios which he only uses in relation to God for Christ.
In this reading one can detect a debate taking place, with Jesus addressing the two points of the Jew's argument: Freedom and their lineage from Abraham. On the latter Jesus confronts them on the basis of their actions. The question is whether the Jews will accept that they are from the same inheritance as Jesus. Abraham is ancestor of both.
Preaching Possibilities
A. It's a rare Sunday when all three readings so fit together and build on each other. No doubt with Luther's emphasis on "scripture alone" our foremothers and forefathers selected these texts, all three being central to their author's works. If we use all three, an outline could go like this:
1. Introduction: Perhaps a story from Luther's life and times. Luther's insistence on the authority of the scripture.
2. Move one: Jeremiah tells us of a new covenant. And we really needed one, for we just couldn't keep all the rules so that God would remain our God.
3. Move two: Paul gets to the heart of it as he tells us if we have faith we can have God's righteousness. We all have sinned but we also have forgiveness from a grace-filled God.
4. Move three: John tells us what Jesus taught him. It's that we have a certain freedom and it comes from learning the truth from God. We learn the truth about ourselves, our God, and our ability to save ourselves.
5. Relate what these truths in these three readings mean to you personally and what you think they mean to those who hear your sermon today.
6. Return to your opening story about Luther's life and times and frame your sermon.
Of course any of the three lessons will stand alone.
B. The Jeremiah account can be a sermon on "Our deal with God." Because we have forgiveness and a new relationship with God, we know a different godly love for us.
C. The Romans 3 account begs for a textual sermon on verses 23 and 24 on "Justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ." You have your three points:
1. Justified, what does it mean?
2. Grace, how do we deserve it?
3. Jesus Christ, how did he do it?
D. The John account also is rich. We have the distinction between slavery to sin and daughter and son-ship of God. We could talk of freedom from what? It could be freedom from sin and freedom to discipleship.
Possible Outline Of Sermon Moves
A. Let's try a letter sermon today. Some suggestions would be: A letter from Katie Luther to son Paul about his dad, a letter from Katie Luther in Torgau to Pastor Buggenhagen at Wittenberg after Luther's death, a letter from Martin to Katie from the city of Worms just after he took his stand, a letter from Martin at the Wartburg during his kidnapping escapade.
B. If it is your first one, you could include the following elements:
1. The salutation and inside address.
2. The reason for the letter is to tell Paul about how his father died at Eisleben.
3. A paragraph about what his father confessed on his death bed: he still believed in faith alone, scripture alone, and the priesthood of all believers.
4. Katie's description of what she believes this means for her son Paul to live out in his own discipleship. He, too, is a priest in God's sight!
5. Some closing comments about Luther's belief on marriage and family and congregation as marital community.
6. A closing expression of endearment for her son.
Prayer For The Day
We celebrate this Reformation Sunday our heritage of living out our discipleship as freed and saved sinners. We pray we might also always be a reforming and reshaping church not resisting but encouraging change and renewal as our reformers of the sixteenth century did as well. In the name of Christ who asked for new wine skins for new wine. Amen.
Possible Metaphors And Stories
Tegucigalpa, Honduras: "A Honduran peasant has been freed after spending nineteen years in prison because penal authorities did not learn that he had been acquitted in 1976." Gusto Adolf Amador, now 57, was charged in 1975 with stealing colored pencils from a marketplace in the capital, but a court acquitted him the following year. The written release order did not arrive at Tegucigalpa central penitentiary, where Amador was held, for the next eighteen years (San Francisco Examiner, May 1, 1994).
Even though acquitted, we live as prisoners.
Pastor Helmut Hasse, who just recently retired as parish pastor after thirty years at the city church in Wittenberg, Germany, told of the day the Berlin Wall came down. During the worship service a man sat in the anteroom and listened to the radio for the news. He came out and told Hasse the wall was coming down. The pastor announced the news of new freedom to the filled church. He said they stamped their feet, cried, hugged each other, and sang, "Hallelujah." For a long time there was "no good order" in the sanctuary. Freedom at last.
In little Peace village in Sumatra they will show you a large haviara tree where the "Apostle to the Bataks," Ingwer Ludwig Nommensen, a missionary from the Rhenish Church in Germany, would buy slaves, give them freedom, and bring them into the Christian faith.
The Cathedral of Mexico City has a wire suspended from the ceiling to the floor with a plumb line weight on the end of it to show how far the building has moved and still is moving off center. I wonder if it could measure how much we move off the gospel center?
We are saved by a new covenant of grace and what Jesus did for us on the cross. We continually need reforming.
Old Testament Lesson
Jeremiah 31:31-34
A New Covenant
This important teaching of Jeremiah is sometimes called the gospel before the gospel. It is the height of the Old Testament. It is quoted in Hebrews 10:16-17 and is the foundation of the words Jesus spoke at the Last Supper (1 Corinthians 11:25; Luke 22:20). It is responsible for our speaking today of the Old Testament and the New Testament. It's not the giving of a new law but rather a new reason to keep the law. Because we have forgiveness of our sins and relationships with God, we have a different incentive to keep the law.
The Interpreter's Bible says of this passage that there are "... three provisions in the new covenant and these three steps leading to it.
1. ... a desperate move, for it is the way to the deeper homecoming.
2. ... a difficult move, which consists in not remembering the former things. And
3. ... is forgiveness, and behind forgiveness is love" (pp. 1037-1039).
This whole thing seems to me close to Ezekiel's idea of the new heart (Ezekiel 11:9, 18:31, and 36:26).
Verse 33b is the basis of the covenant. Yahweh is Israel's God and Israel is Yahweh's people.
New Testament Lesson
Romans 3:19-28
Justified By Faith
This passage complements the Old Testament Lesson as in it we learn of a new covenant. Here we have the conditions of that covenant: All who believe have not their own, but God's righteousness through Jesus Christ; all of us have sinned and are justified by God's grace; Jesus' sacrifice on the cross worked atonement for us; and, the really big one for Reformation Sunday, it is by our faith and not by any works laid out in the law which makes justification possible. This all began with Paul's letter to the Galatians (2:16) and became a fundamental part of Paul's understanding of the Gospel. It is the linchpin of Martin Luther's Reformation theology as well.
The Gospel
John 8:31-36
True Disciples
It is only when we set aside all the previous preconceptions -- prejudice, our own wants and drives -- can we see the whole picture, the real truth. Especially the truth about ourselves. Verse 35 tells us that a son or daughter is always free but a slave cannot get free by him/herself. In verse 36 John uses the Greek hyios which he only uses in relation to God for Christ.
In this reading one can detect a debate taking place, with Jesus addressing the two points of the Jew's argument: Freedom and their lineage from Abraham. On the latter Jesus confronts them on the basis of their actions. The question is whether the Jews will accept that they are from the same inheritance as Jesus. Abraham is ancestor of both.
Preaching Possibilities
A. It's a rare Sunday when all three readings so fit together and build on each other. No doubt with Luther's emphasis on "scripture alone" our foremothers and forefathers selected these texts, all three being central to their author's works. If we use all three, an outline could go like this:
1. Introduction: Perhaps a story from Luther's life and times. Luther's insistence on the authority of the scripture.
2. Move one: Jeremiah tells us of a new covenant. And we really needed one, for we just couldn't keep all the rules so that God would remain our God.
3. Move two: Paul gets to the heart of it as he tells us if we have faith we can have God's righteousness. We all have sinned but we also have forgiveness from a grace-filled God.
4. Move three: John tells us what Jesus taught him. It's that we have a certain freedom and it comes from learning the truth from God. We learn the truth about ourselves, our God, and our ability to save ourselves.
5. Relate what these truths in these three readings mean to you personally and what you think they mean to those who hear your sermon today.
6. Return to your opening story about Luther's life and times and frame your sermon.
Of course any of the three lessons will stand alone.
B. The Jeremiah account can be a sermon on "Our deal with God." Because we have forgiveness and a new relationship with God, we know a different godly love for us.
C. The Romans 3 account begs for a textual sermon on verses 23 and 24 on "Justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ." You have your three points:
1. Justified, what does it mean?
2. Grace, how do we deserve it?
3. Jesus Christ, how did he do it?
D. The John account also is rich. We have the distinction between slavery to sin and daughter and son-ship of God. We could talk of freedom from what? It could be freedom from sin and freedom to discipleship.
Possible Outline Of Sermon Moves
A. Let's try a letter sermon today. Some suggestions would be: A letter from Katie Luther to son Paul about his dad, a letter from Katie Luther in Torgau to Pastor Buggenhagen at Wittenberg after Luther's death, a letter from Martin to Katie from the city of Worms just after he took his stand, a letter from Martin at the Wartburg during his kidnapping escapade.
B. If it is your first one, you could include the following elements:
1. The salutation and inside address.
2. The reason for the letter is to tell Paul about how his father died at Eisleben.
3. A paragraph about what his father confessed on his death bed: he still believed in faith alone, scripture alone, and the priesthood of all believers.
4. Katie's description of what she believes this means for her son Paul to live out in his own discipleship. He, too, is a priest in God's sight!
5. Some closing comments about Luther's belief on marriage and family and congregation as marital community.
6. A closing expression of endearment for her son.
Prayer For The Day
We celebrate this Reformation Sunday our heritage of living out our discipleship as freed and saved sinners. We pray we might also always be a reforming and reshaping church not resisting but encouraging change and renewal as our reformers of the sixteenth century did as well. In the name of Christ who asked for new wine skins for new wine. Amen.
Possible Metaphors And Stories
Tegucigalpa, Honduras: "A Honduran peasant has been freed after spending nineteen years in prison because penal authorities did not learn that he had been acquitted in 1976." Gusto Adolf Amador, now 57, was charged in 1975 with stealing colored pencils from a marketplace in the capital, but a court acquitted him the following year. The written release order did not arrive at Tegucigalpa central penitentiary, where Amador was held, for the next eighteen years (San Francisco Examiner, May 1, 1994).
Even though acquitted, we live as prisoners.
Pastor Helmut Hasse, who just recently retired as parish pastor after thirty years at the city church in Wittenberg, Germany, told of the day the Berlin Wall came down. During the worship service a man sat in the anteroom and listened to the radio for the news. He came out and told Hasse the wall was coming down. The pastor announced the news of new freedom to the filled church. He said they stamped their feet, cried, hugged each other, and sang, "Hallelujah." For a long time there was "no good order" in the sanctuary. Freedom at last.
In little Peace village in Sumatra they will show you a large haviara tree where the "Apostle to the Bataks," Ingwer Ludwig Nommensen, a missionary from the Rhenish Church in Germany, would buy slaves, give them freedom, and bring them into the Christian faith.
The Cathedral of Mexico City has a wire suspended from the ceiling to the floor with a plumb line weight on the end of it to show how far the building has moved and still is moving off center. I wonder if it could measure how much we move off the gospel center?
